What is the “Eden State”? It is a nation that believes the self-evident rights of its citizens are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights — privileges — were precisely the ones bestowed on the first humans. And we all know how that turned out. Perhaps we are on the precipice of a similar catastrophe.

No Surprise

The trajectory of American culture should come as no surprise. Futurists like Francis Schaeffer predicted with uncanny accuracy where we were going in the West 50 years ago. Wherever the values of a nation rest on personal fulfillment, affluence and security, decline is inevitable, Schaeffer said. We have arrived.

A few years ago, I submitted a post I called, “The Culture at Midnight.”* In it I decried the release, screening and newspaper review of a movie that dealt with the subject of bestiality. Frankly, I was uncomfortable even writing about it, so astonished was I that such a film had been made, much less screened and reviewed.

New Frontiers?

Thankfully, it was from the fringe of cinema. It came and went without much further notice, but considering how inexorably, if slowly, the fringe becomes part of the warp and woof of American society I feel I should recall it. Now, we live in a world where sex and sexuality is newsworthy by definition. What would have been scandalous to discuss in public a decade or so ago, is now considered the next frontier of liberty. What lies ahead, we can only imagine.

I may be grieved by all this, but I am not surprised. The decline of the Eden state is inevitable. What is left to me as a follower of Yeshua’s way is to remain humble, devoted to my Master and compassionate toward a world that may, in not too long, become intolerable for many. I want to be ready invite those refugees from this dying world into the kingdom of heaven.

*I suspect I will be noting other evidence of cultural decline, so I have added a this phrase as a new category.