Apocalyptic is right--what's ahead for our society--and a prescription for the soul

Thanks to the Anchoress, I am reading this amazing essay over at The Doctor is In (my bolds):

These vignettes in modern medicine are really not about medicine at all. They are in truth about a culture which has lost its compassion. Our calloused and cynical society has become a raging river fed by a thousand foul and fetid streams. We have, by turns, taught our children that ethics are situational and values neutral; taught our women that compassion and service are signs of weakness, that they must become hard and heartless like the men they hate; taught our men that success and the respect of others comes not through character and integrity but through callousness, cynicism, and greed; and taught ourselves that we are a law unto ourselves, the sole and final arbiter of what is right and what is good.

We have, in our post-modern and post-Christian culture, inexorably and irrevocably turned from our roots in Christian morality and worldview, which was the foundation and font of that which we now know — or used to know — as Western Civilization. Yes, we have preserved the tinsel and the trappings, the gilded and glittering exterior of a decaying sarcophagus, where we speak self-righteously of rights while denying their origin in the divine spark within the human spirit, made in the image of God; where we bray about liberty, but are enslaved to its bejeweled impostor, the damsel of decadence and libertinism; where compassion is naught but another government program to address the consequences of our own aberrant and irresponsible behavior, duly justified, rationalized, and denied. Others must pay so that I may play, you know.

This toxic stew of self-centered callousness has percolated into every pore of our society. In health care, the effects are universal and pernicious.

So true. Ethicist Margaret Somerville also sounds a warning this morning about the new eugenics, another consequence of our selfish, libertine, post-Christian culture. In today's Ottawa Citizen she writes:

History teaches us that the use of science in the search for human perfection has been at the root of some of our greatest atrocities in terms of respect for human life, individual human beings and human rights. That warning is of particular importance today, because of our unprecedented new technoscience powers. We must take great care only to use them ethically and wisely.

Proposals, such as in Quebec, to offer genetic screening for Down syndrome to all pregnant women, communicates a message that a woman is conditionally pregnant, until she is told there is "nothing wrong" with the baby. The affirmation of the pregnancy is suspended until the fetus is certified as "normal," which is a major change from needing an ethical justification to end the pregnancy, as has been the traditional approach.

We need to ask questions such as: How does this approach affect our concept that parental love is unconditional -- that we love our children just because they are our children? And if parental love is conditional -- we will only love them if they don't have certain traits (negative eugenics) -- should the same apply to traits we want in them? That is, we should be allowed to genetically design or enhance our children (positive eugenics)?

The Doctor is In has a prescription for the nihilism and selfishness that's taken hold. He writes:

So it’s time for a counter-revolution.

There is an alternative to our current cultural narcissism with its corrosive, calloused, destructive bent. It is not a new government program, nor a political movement; no demonstrations in the street, no marches on Washington. Its core ideology is over 2000 years old, and the foot soldiers of the revolution are already widely dispersed throughout the culture.

This revolutionary force is called Christianity, and it’s long past time to raise the banner and spring into action.

The true antidote to the nihilism and corruption of the age will be found, as it has always been, in the church. It has since its inception been a revolutionary force, transforming the hopeless and purposeless anarchy of the pagan world of its infancy by bringing light, hope and joy where there was none before.

It can happen again.

The church, of course, has to no small degree been co-opted by the culture it should have transformed. From TV evangelists preaching God-ordained health and wealth to liberal denominations rejecting the core truths of their foundation and worshiping instead the god of government and humanistic socialism; from pederast priests to episcopal sodomy, Christianity in the West has whored itself to a prosperous but decadent culture. Its salt has lost its saltiness, and it has, not surprisingly, been trampled underfoot by men.

It is time to return to our First Love. It is time once again to become light to an dark and stygian world. It is time for a revolution of the soul.

Let the revival/revolution begin. Let it begin with me, to paraphrase the old hymn "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me."