ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

EXCERPT: from How Then Should We Live: Chaper 11: Our Society (Francis Schaeffer, How Then Should We Live)

Gradually, that which had become the basic thought form of modern people became the almost totally accepted viewpoint, an almost monolithic consensus. And as it came to the majority of people through art, music, drama, theology, and the mass media, values died. As the more Christian-dominated consensus weakened, the majority of people adopted two impoverished values: personal peace and affluence.

Personal peace means just to be let alone, not to be troubled by the troubles of other people, whether across the world or across the city--to live one's life with minimal possibilities of being personally disturbed. Personal peace means wanting to have my personal life pattern undisturbed in my lifetime, regardless of what the result will be in the lifetimes of my children and grandchildren. Affluence means an overwhelming and ever-increasing prosperity--a life made up of things, things, and more things--a success judged by an ever-higher level of material abundance.

For several generations the fragmented concept of knowledge and life which had become dominant was taught to the young by many of the professors in universities around the world. All too often when the students of the early sixties asked their parents and others, "Why be educated?" they were told, in words if not by implication, "Because statistically an educated man makes so much more money a year." And when they asked, "Why make more money?" they were told, "So that you can send your children to the university." According to this kind of spoken or implied answer, there was no meaning for man, and no meaning for education.

Much of the mass media popularized these concepts, pouring them out in an endless stream so that a whole generation from its birth has been injected with the teaching that reason leads to pessimism in regard to a meaning of life and with reference to any fixed values.

This had been that generation's atmosphere. It had no personal memory of the days when Christianity had more influence on the consensus.

The work ethic, which had meaning within the Christian framework, now became ugly as the Christian base was removed. Work became an end in itself--with no reason to work and no values to determine what to do with the products of one's work. [...]

Humanism, man beginning only from himself, had destroyed the old basis of values, and could find no way to generate with certainty any new values. In the resulting vacuum the impoverished values of personal peace and affluence had come to stand supreme.

And so, as we come to the end of the weekend, we turn to Francis Schaeffer to tie a couple of the arguments together, as he explains how secular humanism has led to the decline of both the work ethic and secondary education. When nothing means anything, a diploma is just a ticket to get you a better job and the job's only purpose is to make you money--which, since you can just make the government give you money, sort of makes having a job seem like a sucker's game. Of course, that creates a system that is inherently unstable, but like any good pyramid scheme that you join onto early enough, there's always the hope that you'll be able to cash out before it all goes bung. Thus Europe. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 8, 2003 7:50 PM