I recently read an interesting article here. There’s plenty there to digest, but the crux is as follows:

If total sexual freedom was embraced by a culture, that culture collapsed within three generations to the lowest state of flourishing — which Unwin describes as “inert” and at a “dead level of conception” and is characterized by people who have little interest in much else other than their own wants and needs. At this level, the culture is usually conquered or taken over by another culture with greater social energy.

According to this thesis, civilisations rise and fall according to their sexual choices. And the takeaway here is that ‘western’ society is well on the way to collapsing.

For the first part of the 1900’s, mainstream Western culture was rationalist and experienced enormous technological advances — from horse-and-buggy to cars; from hot air balloons to supersonic flight and spacecraft landing people on the moon; from slide rules to computers. Unwin’s three main predictions — the abandonment of rationalism, deism, and absolute monogamy — are all well underway, which makes the ultimate prediction appear to be credible … the collapse of Western civilization in the third generation, somewhere in the last third of this century. 

I’m not sure I would agree with all Unwin’s analysis or categorisation, but the general conclusions seem sound.

The Christian Church has always intended to be salt and light. To season, preserve and bless the culture in which it sits. To counter the inevitable decay that sets in for any culture after time and to keep the light of truth burning. A Church which fails to do this, fails to speak and act prophetically in the culture, fails to pray, well…..

“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.

Luke 14 v34-35

Our western society is not somehow immune to the forces of decline that ended previous cultures. We need to be wise, when all around us are chasing after the wind of latest fashion. We need to speak differently, be different, live differently – and be able and willing to reach out and rescue those who get burnt, to salve their wounds.

We need to know the signs of the time, where we are and where we’re heading. Be salt and light. Trust in the things of God and not in the trappings of our current culture, which like the stones of the second Jewish temple, may not soon be found one upon another.

“Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”