The UK: Prosperous but Disfunctional?

Ian Cooper

We are ridiculously prosperous in the UK; well fed, clothed and housed to excess never mind the shiny cars, foreign holidays and plethora of expensive, must-have gadgets. Yes, a few are excluded and the level of debt is frightening but our consumption is undeniable – the planet is heating up because of it. At this point Christians can get uncomfortable as wealth worries and its true there is the danger of materialism but it need not be so. In fact biblically, wealth, per se, is good as long as it fits into the biblical framework i.e. it’s fairly acquired, generously shared, never the main thing and received with thanks.
What should worry us much more is what else is going on in our society. Take family issues for example. The UK divorce rate, single parent quotient, abortion numbers and STD statistics are amongst the highest in Europe. Ask yourself the simple question about the children of this generation, the products of today’s families. Are they better mannered, better educated or even happier than before? Or take the community. Do we feel safer, less subject to crime and vandalism, do we volunteer more or do we even vote more?
So amidst the prosperity there is a tremendous unease. Even our cultural elite recognise this and all sorts of initiatives, ASBO’s etc. are rolled out. The derogatory cry of ‘moral panic’ thrown at those concerned with the collapse of standards is no longer used. Why this unease? Well there are factors like terrorism, rapid social change, ecological concerns that go way beyond the UK. Then our prosperity has been achieved without respect for the biblical framework. In the society at large there is undoubtedly materialism but this is part of the larger picture which many of you will recognise as a society that has rejected the God of the Bible. Now this is true but we must not stop at this point. We must go farther and look at what has replaced Christianity.
It’s not just the absence of a Christian world view in our society but it’s the presence of a secular world view and the values that go with it. It’s this secular world view which we must subject to criticism and exposure just as intently as the secularists have done to Christianity. The interesting thing is as soon as we start to do this seriously we see the weakness of the secular view.
So what is the essence of the secular world view? Quite simply, nature is all that there is and science is the only path to knowledge. Within this framework there can be no meaning or purpose to life. Human beings are just sophisticated animals who live, reproduce, and die. Now not only is there no meaning but there is no morality either. The laws we have are just rules for human convenience not because there is any final right or wrong. OK let’s think about that for a moment. Morality is what we make up (convenient for getting rid of traditional sexual morality), but hey, if it’s just social opinion where does that intense head-swivelling, hot under the collar political correctness come in? PC isn’t just social rules, offending PC is WRONG. Never mind the content of PC for the moment – it may be reasonable – but where does the morality come from? Out of thin air.
This is just one example of the contradictions of our secular worldview. If we read what Sartre, Beckett, Foucault, and their likes wrote we will have to come to terms with what they all admitted. W. B. Yeats writes, ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…’ In other words, our culture no longer has any authoritative foundation upon which to stand. In the light of this, as Christians, we should not be intimidated by secular culture or be on the defensive. Rather, we should be asking some tough questions. In doing this we can expose the cracks in the edifice, opening up opportunities to speak the truth of the gospel into those situations.
(Author: Ian Cooper)

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