“For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” (Proverbs 8:35-36, ESV)

“We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which furious party cries will be raised against anybody who says that cows have horns, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening the mob with the news that grass is green.” G. K. Chesterton

I wonder if Chesterton guessed that it would take no more than a century for his prophecy to come true. Today we do live in a world where the most obvious and fundamental things are denounced as falsehoods. (I blame this to some extent on our system of postgraduate education, which requires graduate students to gin up ever more bizarre ideas on which to base their theses.) Today you can get in trouble – lose your job if not your liberty – for saying that boys and girls are different. That men can’t bear children. That babies in the womb are human beings. That race is not a moral category. That America was founded on principles of liberty. That it’s better to live in a liberal democracy than under a Communist despotism. Or an Islamic despotism, for that matter.

I’ve thought a lot about that Proverbs quote up at the top, over the years. The statement comes from Wisdom itself, personified as a woman, who is depicted standing at the crossroads, on the high places, calling out, imploring people to become wise. But they won’t. There are lots of things shinier and more interesting around, things easier to obtain and more fun than wisdom. But the warning comes at the end like a hammer blow – “all who hate me love death.”

And we do love death. Abortion is liberation, in our minds. Young people confused about their gender must be surgically rendered infertile without delay, before they can ever reproduce (abortion in advance). Suffering is not to be endured – better just to help people die peacefully. And the suffering doesn’t have to be that great. There are countries where you can request and receive euthanasia for mere depression. Who are we do judge?

I think there are two great evils in any society. One is poverty – a very great evil which must be fought by all moral means. But the other is prosperity. Prosperity allows us to build a shield – a wall – a screen – between ourselves and the rubs and nuisances of real life. The digital world gives us an unprecedented opportunity to create our own environments, safe and free from any pain we don’t bring into them.

It’s very much like porn. We focus in on an idealized image, and skip all the inconvenience and humbling and discipline of real relationships. We can fashion a world to our own tastes, a world where we need no patience, or hope, or charity.

And it’s killing us. As I contemplate the possible fall of my civilization, I do so with fear. I am old and not very strong, and vulnerable. But I know that the demolition of our Babel may be the only thing (if the Lord tarries) that saves future generations.