Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. ~ Romans 11: 19-22

The great Malcolm Muggeridge from a few decades ago: So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense.

And it all happened in less than 50 years… Shame!

Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over – a weary, battered old brontosaurus – and became extinct. ~ Vintage Muggeridge: Religion and Society, 1985

Which leads me into Tim Jones in American Thinker and his ‘Hotel California and America’s decomposing values’ …

“Hotel California, the signature song by the Eagles and probably their most popular, is a stinging critique and indictment of the American dream and the dominant consumer culture.  There’s a certain irony in that, since the band hit super-stardom early in their career in the seventies and quickly succeeded in reaching the ultimate American dream of becoming rich and famous.

Like most rock bands, they emerged out of the sixties rebelling against the blandness and conformity of previous generations, but whether the band realized it or not, Hotel California is really a conservative song.  It paints a picture of a society run amok with hyper-individualism and selfishness that is the end result of a secular (i.e., godless) consumer culture that’s rejected the spiritual and conservative values of restraint, tradition, and obligation.

Not only is there a correlation between secular humanism and materialism, but there is also a correlation between a society that values entertainment and pleasure and the dark side it engenders, as portrayed in “Hotel California” – a metaphor for a country that has descended into decadence and despair.  There are two trends that bear this out.

First, there is the decadence as portrayed in present-day San Francisco.  Recently SFGate.com posted a story on how bad downtown San Francisco has gotten: junkies, the homeless and petty criminals “smashing and grabbing” possessions out of parked cars (which made me think of “Hotel California”). This is the flip-side of the coin of a society pursuing fun and good times, just in more socially acceptable ways.  

It is the end result of and logical conclusion to a philosophy of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that has been distorted beyond recognition, where happiness has become identified with “it’s party time,” rooted in materialism and detached from more significant and transcendental forms of joy and pleasure rooted in obligation and charity.

Continue to completion right here …

It is very difficult to comprehend people who truly believe that ‘freedom’ = ‘freedom from responsibility’. In actuality, freedom = responsibility. That is why the liberal DemoMarxist Left are difficult to understand. They are exactly backward in their thinking. When a person (or society) eschews personal responsibility, it creates a vacuum. That vacuum is filled by others in society, or government. When it is filled by government, the opposite of freedom occurs. Liberal DemoMarxist Socialists, therefore, are much too stupid to understand this.

As the great sage Malcolm Muggeridge outlined for us all (additional to his above ruminations): People think of faith as being something that you don’t really believe, a device in helping you believe simply, ‘it’. Of course that is quite wrong. As Pascal says, faith is a gift of God. It is different from the proof of it. It is the kind of faith God himself places in the heart, of which the proof is often the instrument … He says of it, too, that it is the heart which is aware of God, and not reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by reason.
~ Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom

And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.  So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding nothing how they might punish them, because of the people: for all men glorified God for that which was done.  For the man was above forty years old, on whom this miracle of healing was shewed. ~ Acts 4: 18-22

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Face of Jesus by Richard Hook

Soli Deo Gloria!