r1364378_19200262Things are getting worse. There’s no doubt about it.

In the midst of the sodomy of Gomorrah, the very fabric of the family has been ripped to shreds and is being trod triumphantly underfoot by those who wear their own Pride with pride. This ascendant Pride is seeking to trample the humble under foot, rubbing the noses of Christians in the dirt. In some western countries, those who espouse the morality that people have always espoused throughout the whole of human history are now being sent to prison for the crime of calling a sin sinful. The very word “sin” has been banished from the vocabulary, as has “virtue,” making all discussion of morality impossible.

As secular fundamentalists in the West make a mockery of traditional morality, Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East are raping, pillaging and butchering with reckless abandon. Refugees, fleeing from the Islamic butchers, flood into a faltering and falling Europe.

No, there’s no doubt about it. Things are definitely getting worse.

And yet there really is nothing to worry about. No. Really. There isn’t.

getting worseAt this point, many will no doubt believe me to be a latter-day Nero, fiddling merrily and perhaps madly while Rome burns. My response would be that it is the world and not Rome that is burning. Rome remains, while the world around her burns. Rome, in the other-worldly sense in which she is rightly called the Eternal City, always points to the Heavenly Jerusalem that is forever beyond the reach of the flames of infernal worldliness. It was this sense that T. S. Eliot had in mind when he omitted Rome from the list of “falling towers” of worldly pomp which were ultimately “unreal”:

Falling towers

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vienna London

Unreal

Rome, in this sense, and for the sake of avoiding an ecclesiological argument that does not serve our present purpose, refers to all of Christendom and may be seen as a symbol of the Church Militant, i.e. the Church at War, the Church on earth, which never surrenders its divine mission to the world and its whims. There can be no compromise, in our age or any age, between the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the Age, between the Heilige Geist and the Zeitgeist. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the difference between these two spirits is the defining difference that separates the sheep from the goats.

The sheep, those who belong to the flock of Christ, do not concern themselves with the world and its self-destructive decline towards the abyss to which it owes its allegiance. Things are getting worse because the towers of pomp are falling. Why should such falling towers worry those who seek their home in Heaven? It shouldn’t. There is nothing to worry about!

Those who worry about the world are those who have invested too much of themselves in it. If we find ourselves becoming despondent because of the way things are going in the decomposing culture of death, it is because we have invested too much of our hope in the hopelessness of the situation. Hope is not to be found in hell, nor in those who owe their allegiance to it. In short, those who worry about the ways of the world are those who are too caught up in the world and its ways.

Let’s remind ourselves of the words of Christ that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. If we treasure the world, believing the Devil’s lie that we can make heaven on earth, we will lose our heart to the world and have our heart-broken on its broken promises. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and you will see that there’s nothing to worry about!

There is, however, one other distinction that we need to make. There is a difference between the world and its worldliness, which is the kingdom that Satan offered Christ as one of the temptations in the wilderness, and the beauty and majesty of God’s Creation, which is given to us as a candle in the darkness of the shadowlands of sin. The goodness, truth and beauty of the Trinity is to be seen in the goodness, truth and beauty of Creation. Look at the stars and see them as candles on the altar that the cosmos raises to its God. Look at a leaf and see it as the life that God breathes into all that He makes. Look at yourself in the Mirror of the Gospel and see yourself as a son of God and a brother of Christ.

image1What would Jesus do if he walked amongst men in our own deplorable age? He would do what He has already done. He would reject the chance to rule the world when Satan tempted him with it, resisting the temptation to stop things from getting worse and to make them better. He would remind the one who tempted Him that we should first seek the Kingdom of God and that His Kingdom is not of this world. He would remind those few, those happy few, the band of brothers who followed Him, that as the world had hated Him, it would hate them. He would tell them that He had nothing to offer those who follow Him, this side of death, except the carrying of the Cross, though He promised that he would help them bear the burden.

The enduring immutable truth is that the Majority, the Mob, always crucifies Christ, hating Him and hating those who love Him. The price of loving Christ is being hated by the world. It is not only a small price to pay but is the pearl of great price for which we are meant to sell everything the world has to offer.

Yes, things are getting worse. There is little doubt that the world is going to hell. This should come as no surprise because it has always been going to hell. Only a fool follows it there.

The good news is that Christ has conquered the world as He has conquered the death that is found there. Things are getting worse. The towers of death are falling. Deo gratias! There is indeed nothing to worry about!

Books by Joseph Pearce may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore.

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