How Long?

A post-pandemic review of a pre-pandemic devotion

I wrote a four-day reflection on the book of Habakkuk in January of 2020. I had just begun my second semester at UNLV. There were whispers of a strange new virus coming out of China, but no hint at how that news might unfold. Reports of anger, division, injustice, and violence dominated the nightly news. Politicians raged. Students insisted on their rights. Civil discourse disappeared. Nothing new under the sun. I had time to think about the notion that people really are pretty self-centered by nature, and unless they were taught otherwise, a steady decline in civilization was inevitable.

What I wrote in those pre-pandemic days still holds. COVID protocols may have accelerated the deterioration of society, but human nature and the drive for influence and power made it happen. Yes, there are nice people everywhere. But power corrupts, and it’s clear that the people in power today are corrupted by the power they wield. A look at the current nonsense in Congress is just one point of evidence that nice people don’t last there. The more outrageous the behavior, the more contentious the rhetoric, the more obvious it is. And that’s both sides of the aisle.

Add a crumbling economy, violence in schools, children being abused by both miscreant parents and the social scientists, and an incessant pursuit of death amidst a crisis of isolation and mental illness, and we have everything we need for utter collapse. How long can these things continue?