Watching the World Burn

 It was one of the more memorable quotes from "The Dark Knight". Alfred Pennyworth, after telling Bruce a story about his days as a mercenary in Burma, wraps it up by saying: "..Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn." His words were pithy and meme-worthy, but echo sentiments often seen in the world today. 

There are people walking the earth with us today who cause trouble, not to better their life or to further an agenda or to gain anything positive. They just want to cause trouble and watch the aftermath. It's like an arsonist who sets a fire, then joins the gathering crowd to watch the efforts to put it out. 

It's my opinion that there is no better playground for these cultural arsonists than the internet, more specifically, social media. You don't have to be a longtime Twitter user or be wholly invested in the world of Facebook to know this. The same types exist on every platform that they can use to spread the flames of hatred. Personally, I don't use Twitter or Facebook, but I use YouTube like everyone else in the world. The comments section is a frontier where anything is allowed in the name of free speech. 

Common decency is not so common anymore. People don't recognize the need to exercise common decency or common respect. If you hold the door for someone, it is right for you to expect a "thank you". Get angry when you don't receive it and you are withholding decency in your own way. My pet peeve of late is the withheld thank-you wave. If someone lets me into traffic in front of them when I didn't deserve to be there, I offer a thank-you wave. I expect it, too, but seldom see it these days, so much so that I'm filled with joy when I see someone offer the wave. Common decency isn't quite dead yet, I say to myself. Not dead, but definitely in the throes of death. 

Back to YouTube comments...

If someone creates content for YouTube, they find value in what they are doing or showing or exhibiting or saying. If you don't necessarily agree, or if you don't find value in the content, that's OK. No content creator in their right mind could think that their creations should appeal to everyone. If YouTube has 2.3 billion users worldwide like they say they do, then even a small portion of that can find value in almost anything. 

Right now, I support, through my viewing, liking and comments, a number of woodworkers. There is a nice community of woodworking content creators on YouTube, and they work to support one another. There are, after all, enough views and viewers to go around and a rising tide does indeed lift all boats. Every now and again, someone will slip in and criticize a lapse in safety here or a method there. While I'm sure it was supposedly offered in a spirit of goodwill, it doesn't often have the same effect in was intended to have. In a line of positive comments, the negative stands out. 

One of my favorite woodworkers was creating an item that had a particular motif incorporated, a three-dimensional star with 6 points. The host called it the "Texas star" design. I quickly took issue, if only within my own thoughts. As a lifelong Texan, I knew that the Texas star--a symbol widely used in the Lone Star State--has only 5 points. The State Seal of Texas incorporates the 5-pointed 3d star, as do many other official and unofficial symbols of Texasness. What I ultimately decided is that nothing positive would be served by correcting his harmless mistake. There are times in the past that I haven't been so gracious in not correcting mistakes of little consequence. I usually regret saying anything at all. 

Assuming that my own little observations here will make any difference...well, I know better. I know that American society is on an irreversible slide toward something less than it has ever been. I know that freedom of speech, long a hallmark of American foundational freedom, is disappearing. One only has freedom of speech if no one disagrees with what is said. This isn't freedom though, is it? 

To me, it seems to have began when the notion of "hate speech" was created. If certain speech can be labeled as "hate speech", then it can be labeled as wrong. If you disagree with what is said, label it as "hate speech", and you've won a victory. Speech may be hateful, but outlawing it doesn't remove hate. It just transforms it into a more dangerous form. 

It is also easy to see how our present society that is propelled along by easy communication and free access to social media--where opinions are freely shared and restraint is a "boomer" virtue--how this fuels the fires of this present hatred. 

Ultimately, I blame the Godlessness of society. Worship, specifically the worship of the God of the Bible, is the worship of the source of virtue, goodness and everything positive in this world, and those who worship this God have supported and encouraged virtue in this world for generations. The absence of Godliness and Godly virtue has created a vacuum into which everything unsavory has flowed. 

Call me hopeless, but I see no return to these golden days of Godly virtue, whether rooted in worship or in tradition. Our present trend spirals toward the bottom, where no good thing dwells and where all hope for goodness and love are snuffed out. 

But, being a worshipper of the One True God, I know He exists and sees over all things. He watches men destroy decency and is not surprised. He's known it would happen all along. 

The ages-old question of the faithless has always been, "If there is a God, why is there evil in this world?" Well, it's because the world is populated with people like you, and honestly, like me, too. The good things in this world are covered with God's fingerprints. As we work feverishly to wipe down this world and remove all evidence of it's creator's touch, how is it that we expect Him to overpower us and miraculously save us from ourselves? 

 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Read the rest of Romans 1. It's all good. 

So, rather than trying to save the world, try to save yourselves. Turning back to God, or turning toward him for the first time, is the only thing that will turn things around. One person at a time.