“We are still paying the price for our abandonment of hypocrisy – in everything from family breakdown to drug spawned crime to the short-sighted selfishness and incivility that threaten to erode our institutions, wreck our economy and topple the pillars of our society. What, you ask, does hypocrisy have to do with it? Just this: the let it all hang out morality that crashed in upon us in the 1970’s accepts no standard, no morality, no code of behavior. The idea is that it’s ok to do whatever crosses your mind, as long as you don’t hurt anybody. Hypocrisy recognizes that the erosion of standards hurts everybody. It accepts the sanctity of societal standards, even while violating them.”
William Raspberry, “Open Marriage.”

“Were they ashamed when they committed abominations?
No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush.”
Jeremiah 6:15

Do you know where the word “weird” comes from? 

No, not from your grandpa’s dentures sitting in the glass on the kitchen table, nor the neighbor who walks his large boxer dog while dressed in his boxers. It doesn’t even come from the dark, bottomless mind of a man like Rick Dolphin, my friend who enjoys dwelling near the razor’s edge of sanity. 

Our society uses “weird” as a throwaway word – –  but it once was used to describe a dominant worldview. Ancients used this word to explain how life operated behind the scenes of visible reality. Here is what the author C. Fitzsimons Allison says about the word:

“Before Christianity came to Britain, the pervasive idea that corresponded to personal destiny was the term, ‘Weird.’ This Anglo-Saxon term was near equivalent of the Greek term moira, the word for fate. If people drowned fording a stream, or died of consumption, it was their ‘Weird’ or fate, their assigned lot or fortune.”

“Weird” is meant to communicate that there is no benevolent force directing the affairs of men, we are left only to fend for ourselves in an empty, uncaring cosmos. Mr. Allison says that as Christianity spread across Europe and the English Isles, the Christian concept of Providence slowly overtook “weird” as the way the majority viewed life. People started with the premise that there was a God and He had everything under control: “This is my Father’s world.” 

But over time, enlightenment philosophy started catching on and over-taking faith, where science, industry and the hubris of the educated elite replaced Providence. Needing the guidance of an all-powerful God was only for weak, superstitious people. Karl Marx, the great German thinker, viewed any spiritual curiosity as the machinations of a small mind, “religion is an opiate.” Listen to the psychologist Eric Fromm, 

“If man gives up his illusion of a fatherly God, if he faces his aloneness and insignificance in the universe, he will be like a child that has left his father’s house. But it is the very aim of human development to overcome infantile fixation. Man must educate himself to face reality. If he knows that he has nothing to rely on except his own powers, he will learn to use them properly.”

So the consensus began to break free from these “infantile fixations” and decided once-and-for-all to ditch their need for God. So, goodbye to the guiding hand of Providence, and now Progress and belief in the perfection of man is the new framework of the mature mind. Progress teaches that mankind is getting better and better through the help of the sciences, technology and government – – we can make a more perfect world without the need for any outside help.

We simply don’t need God anymore.

Or do we? I am not sure Progress means what we think it means? Listen to some of our progress in the last 30 to 40 years – – these facts were found by the Heritage Foundation as they gathered data conducted between 1960-1990:

• 560% increase in violent crimes
• 400% increase in illegitimate births (it has even increased since 1990, where in 1990 it was 34% and now in 2017 40% of births are to single mothers) “And don’t tell me this is a good thing!”
• A tripling of children living in a single parent home.
• 200% increase in teenage suicide.
• 75 point drop in SAT scores.

C. Simons Alison quoting from a book called, “Getting Use to Decadence” cited this observation: “In 1940 teachers identified top problems with their students as talking out of turn, chewing gum, making noise, running in the hall, cutting in line, dress code infractions and littering. When asked the same question in 1990 teachers identified drug use, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery, and assault as the big issues.”

Hmm, I wonder, are we progressing? Sure, technology, computers, and even medicine have greatly advanced, but the darkness of the human heart has as well. Just yesterday, I was sent an article written by the Gospel Coalition asking this question of the Christian church: “How often, if ever, would you say the following activities would be cheating on a spouse or partner?” Here are some of the results for evangelicals:

• Going to a strip club without your partner (37 percent)

• Being emotionally involved with someone besides your partner (67 percent)

• Romantically kissing someone other than your partner (78 percent)

• Having a one-night stand with someone other than your partner (77 percent)

• Having regular sexual relations with someone other than your partner (82 percent)

Shouldn’t a Christian view each of those activities as cheating 100% of the time? But not in our day and age, because Progress and enlightenment thought (secularism) has so permeated our culture that even those who attend church believe God doesn’t matter (lead, guide, nor care). We have become just like God’s people in the book of Judges where “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Each of us has now become the “Captain of our own Fate.” Weird?

So let’s talk about weird? I will mention a few weird things society now accepts as normal: The living Ken doll is a man who has paid for well over 40 plastic surgeries just to look like the toy Ken doll. Bruce Jenner, an incredible Olympic athlete in his day, recently had his sexual organs removed so he could become a glamorous woman. A woman in England is fighting for the legal rights to marry her son. Students in Ivy League schools are now demanding University Presidents and Professors to be fired because they had their feelings hurt. Our government spends more time arguing about bathrooms and gender rights than they do about terrorism and possible nuclear threats.

Our world has devolved back into the “Weird.” We have completed the cycle, Progress has devolved back to the beginning – “Weird” is popular again!!! If Progress taught us anything it is this, “Once you abandon God, you will lose your mind.” Weird, huh? Hopefully, people will wake up and realize they need God before we all start marrying our dog?

Speaking of dogs, I have to go for now, my Australian Shepherd is waiting for me to take him for a walk in my kangaroo shorts.