Posted on 04/24/2020 9:02:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
The coronavirus pandemic and its fallout will usher in countless trends. The neoliberal consensus, already battered since the transformative populist 2016 phenomena of Brexit and Donald Trump's presidential election, will come under even greater scrutiny as we navigate the deepest global recession since the Great Depression. Nations the world over will grow more skeptical of the Davos class's peddling of free trade and free travel as unalloyed goods, preferring instead the comparative safety of self-sufficient critical supply chains and secure borders. Overall, the New World Order of President George H.W. Bush may have finally met its demise in Wuhan, China.
But the virus will shape our lives far beyond the realm of geopolitics. On a more profound level, a worldwide catastrophe of this nature ought to cause us all to step back from the flashy distractions of everyday life, reconsider the importance of bedrock values and first principles and reprioritize how those values imbue our lives.
Specifically, the collective weight of a true pandemic -- one of the oldest scourges of mankind -- ought to remind us of man's innate fragility and inability to control either his environs or destiny. In short, the pandemic should lead more Americans back to God.
As a Millennial, I, all too frequently, see the materialism, shallowness and lethargy of my self-centered generation. In an age without military conflicts necessitating conscription, our ethos of national service has dwindled. Popular culture, corrupting the impressionable, has disseminated the destructive lie that shiny objects, sleek cars and plastic surgery can supplant more traditional religious values as sources of comfort and meaning. The cult of scientism, which risibly conflates the scientific discipline with claims of transcendental truth, has given rise to a purportedly "enlightened" atheism. Every year, a larger percentage of younger Americans identify as irreligious.
As horrific as the coronavirus is, a religious revival could be the most meaningful and longest-lasting silver lining. Hurricanes and other natural disasters aside, no one alive today has experienced the existential wakeup call of a true pandemic. But there is some historical precedent for possible effects. The Black Death of 14th-century Europe, the most lethal recorded pandemic, precipitated widespread religious fervor (zealotry and destructive fanaticism in its most extreme forms, to be sure). Overall, more Europeans reacted to the plague not by questioning the church's authority but by aggressively expiating the sins that they believed brought about the epidemic.
American history, furthermore, has been marked by numerous Great Awakenings. There is no better time to expect a new Great Awakening than in the aftermath of an all-encompassing worldwide crisis of meaning. There can be no starker reminder to the partisans of scientism and radical environmentalism that Mother Nature is not necessarily our friend. Earth-worship, which has ancestral pagan roots even before the Greeks sang the praises of the goddess Gaia, is incapable of providing meaning to the human condition. Rather, genuine meaning can only be found by dedication to pursuing permanent truth, discerning permanent truth, and, ultimately, living in accordance with permanent truth.
The solution, in short, is religion. The solution is the need for a revival of America's distinct Judeo-Christian heritage, whose substantive underpinnings have chastened our excesses of intemperance, inculcated virtue across generations and permitted Americans to freely engage in the most fundamental pursuit known to man: seeking and abiding by truth according to the dictates of one's own conscience.
Religion in America is an instrumental good -- for example, religious people generally give more to charity and claim to be happier than the irreligious -- but it is, first and foremost, an intrinsic good. Religion gives meaning to our lives.
In his Farewell Address, President George Washington said, "(L)et us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
The post-coronavirus recovery would be a perfect time to make Washington proud.
I’m waiting for the religious Great Awakening.
I’m also waiting for the political Great Awakening that has been promised.
Either of these should be enough to wipe away the Democrats.
The only catastrophe is our response to this thing. The virus will kill a lot of people, just like every other Coronavirus has. It’s the shutting down of the world’s economy that’s gonna leave a mark.
I repeat the old joke: The world’s economy is like the guy who jumps off a 20 story building and as he passes us here on the fourth floor he says, “so far, so good.”
The gound is coming up fast. And it won’t be pretty. The real question is, “what will rise out of that mess?”
“New World Order of President George H.W. Bush may have finally met its demise in Wuhan...”
It’s good to maintain contact with your enemy while he is in retreat. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to do to China what they were trying to do to the rest of the world. Just use them as a source for cheap labor and a market for our excess supply of crap. America first.
Maybe in another 100 years, but I doubt it.
1680’s
1830’s
1980’s
Three big periods, I don’t think the success of the Evangelical movement in the 1980’s has much steam left and the leading movement figures left haven’t a leader among them I can see (second and third generation names and the usual bunch of tv hawkers).
Their loss is no gain for the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, which have their own obvious problems.
But, for the time being, here are some good plague-related novels to read while you're cooped up due to the current man-made, economic disaster:
'Year of Wonders' by Geraldine Brooks
'Station Eleven' by Emily St. John Mandel
'The Girl with All the Gifts' by M.R. Carey
Overall, the New World Order of President George H.W. Bush may have finally met its demise in Wuhan, China.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pray that it is so.
We used Chinese to build the railroads, intending they go back home. That’s when the liberals in the courts decided to create birthright citizenship so foreigners could take over in due course.
Nation of immigrants we are, and don’t you forget it.
It finally did it for me. Whatever it takes. Eternity is ....forever.
As a kid I loved that song. Now, it annoys me. I think that angels and aliens are, in in many ways, two different cultures explanation for the same thing.
As a kid I loved that song. Now, it annoys me. I think that angels and aliens are, in in many ways, two different cultures explanation for the same thing.
Great Awakenings are cyclical. Depends on who you ask, but there are about 7 G/A’s that have happened in America.
The last one was on the 1970’s. Before that was the 50’s.
The heart of America is too hard these days. I don’t see a new one coming soon.
There was a huge revival in the early seventie..enormous. I remember it with longing, it was great.
During the Tribulation many seeing the long promised outpouring of wrath will repent even though the price of salvation will commonly be martyrdom.
At this time wrath is being shown, I would suggest, in the form described in Romans 1:18-32 but few seems to be aware of this for we seemingly live during the falling away that precedes the Tribulation. When people depart from the knowledge of the Lord by going along to get along.
When you see homosexuality being embraced in and championed among those who claim to be Christian understand that the proverbial canary in a coal mine has already died.
Homosexual act are so patently obviously wicked that by the time someone can compromise on that they have already departed from the knowledge of the Lord and some (the blind guides of the blind) may already be turned over to reprobate minds. Now is the time to flee from them, run screaming from the building it that’s what it takes, because friendship with the world enmity towards God.
We also need to rediscover our history, including the fact that America is legally a Christian Nation, not “no-religion” as pushed by the Left.
This was declared by the U.S. Supreme Court in the nineteenth century.
“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” —II Chronicles 7:14
One thing that is certain, a LOT of people a year from now are going to be cursing the day we were told to shut everything down, changing their lives for for the worse over the months and years to come.
I don’t think so, at that point we will be seeing millions of dead in other countries, if not ours, people will realize that the measures were necessary.
In Ecuador there are hundreds of people lying dead in the streets. They are not able to bury them.
https://twitter.com/Rntk____/status/1251585914020564993
no
Yes. There will certainly be another great awakening in America. The question is whether it will happen in our lifetimes.
In the early 90’s my evangelical friends “sensed” that one was just around the corner; unfortunately it hasn’t moved from that position in the intervening 3 decades.
On the other hand, there is something brewing with Kanye West’s name on it. I don’t think he’s bluffing — he’s a major influence on our society and appears to have undergone a very genuine conversion. No one is taking him seriously yet — other than prisoners.
So maybe it’s 10:1 but if there is a great awakening there are decent chances he will be (one of) the catalyst(s).
And by the way, listen to Jesus is King twice from start to finish. Just try it. It’s very powerful.
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