In These Troubling Times...

  By: Gary L. Hutchens

​     These are truly troubling times!  This world is engulfed in a turmoil of violence and chaos resulting from a culture of violence that sweeps around the globe.  The problem is widespread; it crosses national, ethnic, racial, social, educational, economic and religious lines.  The violence takes different forms and is based on different reasons, motivations and ideologies from place to place, group to group and person to person.

​     There are wars between nations and civil wars within nations.  Serious tensions persist between other nations that could escalate into war.  Terrorism, national and international, is entrenched as a reality in today’s world.  In many places it is simply a way of life.
     The violence inflicted on individual lives by the effects of illegal drugs is itself obscene.  But beyond that, countless beatings, stabbings, shootings and other violent acts are perpetrated by individuals under the influence of illegal drugs.  The drug war itself rages in open violence on our streets as gangs battle and kill for turf, power and money with innocents often caught in the crossfire. 
     Even our children are becoming more violent, commonly turning to murder as a supposed honorable means of settling disputes with other children. 
     These are troubling times!  Immorality has become the norm and morality the oddity in our culture.  Immoral lifestyles that not long ago would have embarrassed those living in them are now lived openly and without seeming shame.  Indeed, in many cases an in your face attitude seems to prevail. 
     It’s almost as if a great many people no longer know the difference between morality and immorality.  The latter, in various and numerous forms, has become so commonplace that it often simply goes unnoticed anymore.  At the same time, people who take an open stand for morality, particularly if they dare to point out immorality as being immoral, are seen as weird, narrow minded bigots.  Values have been turned absolutely upside down!
     These are troubling times!  Marriages are falling apart, and homes are crumbling at a catastrophic pace.  The home is the basic unit of society.  Children are raised to adulthood and prepared to take their places in society by the home.  Broken homes tend to produce unprepared adults.  As fewer homes exist that effectively prepare their children to become productive adults, society suffers.  If not addressed, we’ll eventually reach a point of critical mass, with more dysfunctional homes raising children to become dysfunctional adults than good homes raising productive adults.  Society is already in serious danger!
     There is an answer, something can be done!  Our society must turn its basic focus to God.  Godliness, living godly lives, is the only answer to problems that are the natural products of ungodliness.  While this solution is almost instantly dismissed as narrow and naively unrealistic, it is nonetheless the only solution.  The trouble we face is largely the result of people turning away from God’s way to ways devised by man that were supposed to be more enlightened.  But any path that diverges from godliness always leads into darkness.  As more people’s lives become focused on godliness, they will become better examples to the people around them, and the effect can be to change our culture for the better.  We’ve tried man’s philosophies; it’s time to give God a try…