For decades we Christians have been watching with horror as the moral landscape and values have changed in America. To say it another way, we are not just in a downward spiral, but a “going down in flames” death dive of immorality. I contend that moral change is the enemy of a viable civilization. Without the moral standards and practices endemic in a Christian worldview, society will soon be enveloped in a deterioration that can only lead to collapse.
1. A lack of moral standards and behavior reduces the protection of vulnerable people. The poor, the powerless, and the oppressed are more subject to abuse and danger without the guardian sheriff of a moral foundation to society. There will be unchallenged violence against them, unrestrained economic unfairness, and judicial injustice.
2. A lack of moral standards and behavior breaks down the family unit, resulting in less stability in society and a detrimental diminishing of all authority structures. Without respected authority structures, as we read in Lord of the Flies and we see in our police-defunded cities, civilization collapses into anarchic chaos and violence. Without strong families, children are raised without boundaries and even moral sense, and society becomes the domain of the loudest, most powerful, or most violent.
3. A lack of moral standards and behavior promotes criminal conduct. When theft is not prosecuted, as we see going on in places in California, crime becomes commonplace. When violence is ignored, as we saw in many cities in the summer of 2020, burning, looting, and beatings are the norm. When sexual immorality is rampant, respect for human dignity dives.
We will never turn back the clock, but the moral example of moral people could eventually persuade society—one person at a time—that morality is a more productive framework for society than a permissive one. It is only as Christians, and plenty of others, pursue a lifestyle of moral integrity that we have a chance of wooing and winning culture back to a more stable model for civilization.