Tired

Sometimes in the late afternoon, when I get tired and lose focus and can't get anything done, I watch the news channels for a little bit. Now they try to distract you with pretty faces and colorful graphics, but the truth is that all they reveal is a weary, aimless, violent world. It's a world that has no goal, that isn't going anywhere, that can only wait for the next sensational event.

It's only sensation, not meaning. And in a world like that it's no wonder that children shoot each other, that people consider killing people who kill people an adequate way to show that killing is wrong, or that the aborting of unwanted children is a personal right.

It all reminds me of one of my favorite lecture quotes I've ever heard:

God is dead, Marx is dead, and I don't feel so well myself.

I don't remember who said it, but it's brilliant. Nobody has really thought out the dire consequences of having dispensed with God (and this is what Nietzsche was trying to point out in his famous phrase). The brightest secular and dialectical materialist dreams have come to nothing.

For the bright and exciting dreams of Marx we now have North Korea. Even the great American democratic experiment has turned into an imperialist oligarchy in which the democratic illusion is enforced by those who control the rhetoric and the content of the so-called free press.

If the Old Testament can teach us anything, it is that the Israelites had to turn back to God many times. So at least we can be encouraged by the knowledge that repentance is possible. Pray for the conversion of the western world!