I think the post-modern culture is void of the concept of justice. If we enforce our laws, we are morally bad. If we act in self-defense we are morally bad. It’s actually a mental pathology: unless we are the beaten wife always blaming herself for the abuse she receives, then we are just as bad as the abuser.
In this view (especially pushed on us by the UN types), every culture is equally valid - except ours. Ours is based on this old, out-dated concept of justice, that people are free to make their choices but they will get the consequences for their choices.
I think what we’ve got now is a perverted Christianity, a worldview that is so “nice” that it knows nothing of justice. There always have been and always will be two sides to God’s character: His justice and His mercy. If you ever eliminate one side of His character you become dangerously warped. Islam is a perverted view of God’s justice alone. Liberal “Christianity” is a perverted view of God’s mercy alone.
They are both at war with the proper view of God and of the way God knows that reality has to work:
The left-hand (governmental) kingdom concerns itself with civil justice - and by “justice” I don’t mean feeding the poor. I mean justice - an eye for an eye. Every person’s rights held in equal balance with everybody else’s. A day of reckoning for those who have trampled their victims.
And the right-hand (religious) kingdom concerned for the souls of people, which means using the Law to bring bold, confident sinners to repentance and using the Gospel to bring repentant sinners to faith and a knowledge of forgiveness.
I think the world powers are mixing up the left-hand and right-hand kingdoms and totally botching up both justice and mercy. I think we’re seeing the right-hand kingdom (religion) giving its place to the left-hand kingdom (government) - which is mushing everything together so they are punishing the innocent and rewarding the guilty. The one and only time God ever condoned that was the one-time sacrifice of His Son taking the capital sentence for all sinners, so God could satisfy the requirement of justice while still showing mercy to all of us who deserved punishment. It was God taking His OWN “money” (the riches of His grace) and lavishly pouring it out for those who didn’t deserve it. Those who - because they KNOW they don’t deserve it - have not an entitlement mentality but a profound thanks for that gift of love which changes their whole life.
The government now is trying to be God, but they don’t have any “money” of their own. All they can do is take from one person and give to somebody else. Steal from the innocent to pay the guilty. That’s not mercy, and it’s not justice. All it can be is somebody pretending to be God, unable to do what God does because they are not God.
It’s a dysfunctional view of reality that most people are under, being pressed on us by a culture that is anti-Christian. As more and more people lose the Christian worldview the world gets crazier and crazier. We will (if we haven’t already) reach a point of no return, where the depravity will reach its logical conclusion.
Sad thing is, it appears to be too late to stop it. It reminds me a bit of the Cold War. Most people believed the Soviets would ultimately triumph over the West. It took Reagan to adopt a bold new strategy of calling the Soviets the "evil Empire" and having the foresight to see the failure of communism. I think we are in a similar boat now as we were in the pre-Reagan days. We are going through the motions of a "war on terror" as we did the "cold war", but with the belief that we will probably be over-run by the Muzzies sometime in the future. Unless we get a new Reagan-which seems unlikely.