The Enemy is Despair

Eddie Cross

It was a completely fascinating talk as he described the crisis now enfolding the developed world. In country after country, he showed statistics of the rates of suicide and declining life expectancy in the most developed countries of the world.

He explained the phenomenon of Donald Trump and the Maga Movement in the States which seems to have taken hold of the US political system with terrifying results. This coming week we will discover if the nomination of Kamala Harris is going to save the USA. He highlighted the impact of the collapse of so many industries which had supported growth and the quality of life for so many in the developed countries and were now just rusting buildings in the wilderness. The fact that these countries still have historically high incomes and low unemployment does not seem to have any impact. People feel they are worse off, the so called “Rust Belt” States of the US are the key States in the Maga Movement.

My Grandson was going to leave school and go on to study mass communications, even made a short movie which was shortlisted for a prize in Egypt. However, he is an active Christian (like me) and got involved with several Youth Groups in local Churches. As a consequence, he made contact with young people who come from high income homes and good schools, for whom the world is at their feet and yet a common feature was loneliness and despair. Many taking drugs, others contemplating suicide. He was so challenged he switched careers and is in his third year of University studying Psychology. With this he wants to help this lost generation.

Ferguson likened todays USA as a replica of the Soviet Union in its dying days. He pointed out that when that communist giant fell apart and revealed its total bankruptcy as an Empire, the people turned to alcohol on a scale never seen before in history. In the USA the epidemic of drug abuse and alcohol is on a similar scale. I recall when I travelled to Europe for the first time and found a Continent where Christianity was a memory of things past. A good friend in France who was a brilliant economist, said to me when I described my faith in God and belief in Jesus Christ that “You should be in a glass case in a museum!”

My conclusion was that France was the most godless country in the World, and I see nothing to change that view today. In Africa atheism and agnosticism are unheard of, the idea that God does not exist is simply impossible. Sure, Christianity is by no means the sole religion but the idea of a world without God in its history is simply not regarded as possible.

By contrast in the developed world which owes its prosperity and strength to a faith it once espoused, is now largely secular. In the USA there is little understanding that the Constitution that guides their lives as a nation was crafted by men of faith who knew their Bibles and based their ideas on accountability to God and faith in His word. It reflects biblical values and norms faithfully and has worked.

Intellectually it may be difficult to justify a faith in God in this crazy world but all I can do is relate to personal experience and extrapolate that into the world around me. A Professor in one of the great Universities of the UK became a Christian. Like C S Lewis, late in life, and wrote a book he titled “Good God, it Works”. That is my experience in real life. I grew up in an agnostic home where we never even owned a Bible. Never went to Church and faith played no part in our lives. My father, a clever, even brilliant man, a successful businessman, became a full-blown alcoholic when I was a young boy, and we were raised by a single Mother for some years.

I heard the Gospel for the first time looking for a girlfriend whose family were Presbyterians, went to the wrong Church by mistake. Did not have any understanding of what it was all about but made a decision of faith on the Stoep of the Ranch I was working on. It changed my whole life, not in theory, in reality, and later in life I had the pleasure of seeing my father, turn to Christ and become a new man. Since that time over 60 years of faith I have seen this transformation in lives many times.

It is impossible to understand the small blue ball that we live on in endless space without a belief in God. If you read books about life in the Soviet Union, you will come across a book called “The Cancer Ward”. In this story the author writes about a science city built in a remote location where the Soviets kept their top scientists in isolation. Isolation because if they studied space or matter, they saw design, order and evidence of creation. They could not deny the reality of the existence of God in an atheist society.

Look around you at the world you live in, the evidence of God the creator is everywhere. And if He is real in space and time, then there must be purpose to life on earth, Purpose is the answer to despair. It gives meaning to life in all its forms. If you do not have this in your life then everything that you are doing loses meaning, nothing has real value. I have relatives who are immensely wealthy, there is no evidence that they are any happier than a simple worker in one of their factories who has a faith.

So, I agree with Ferguson, the evidence that the West is in decline is everywhere, but its not because the empire has run out of steam. It is because the moral and ethical values that created the society, the economy and the culture that they enjoy was built on faith, a faith that they have abandoned.

The casualties of this are everywhere. Broken families, children who do not know if they are boys or girls, record suicide rates in wealthy countries and Communities. Loneliness in crowded cities, a sense of despair and even hopelessness. The near complete collapse of integrity in business and life, corruption is endemic and massive and respect for all basic human rights is more often ignored than respected. Leaders who worship power and wealth and do not give a thought to those in need.

And in all these circumstances the danger of the emergence of strong leaders with a false vision of a new world while the old one is dying. Germany with Hitler, Russia after the Tzar and Marx with his totally false view of history and the future but offering hope where there was none. Mau after the collapse of Chinese society. Trump in the USA. I am waiting for the emergence of the next monsters in Europe because they will surely arise.

Ferguson raised a very serious issue in that the developed economies of the world are built on debt. The world of faith in the centuries gone by created immense surpluses of wealth. These have allowed countries to borrow on the basis of their balance sheets and revenues. China and Japan are the worst examples where debt is now 250 per cent of GDP. The USA has a national debt of over 100 per cent of GDP but has other forms of debt like credit card liabilities that are massive.

As any economist will tell you this debt is not real, its printed money which has value because a banker says it has value. If this is lost the currency collapses and those of us who live in Zimbabwe know what then happens, it wipes out your savings and destroys income. This is the hidden threat that faces the whole world today.