Jamaica suffering spiritual collapse

A TOTAL collapse of the moral-spiritual world has occurred over the last four decades. Decency, kindness, a love of God, His commandments, proper behaviour and the Church have become museum pieces in our modern Jamaica, once a small but powerful symbol of civilisation. The spiritual collapse has led to material collapse, a goal towards which we are tending.

Without God, there is no right or wrong, the world falls apart, we no longer treat each other with respect, care, and decency.

Among the larger nations who rule our destiny, there has been the invention of guns, bombs, nuclear weapons. This has brought about fear and hostility between nations. (For what other reasons have these been created than to kill?) People, their homes, their schools, hospitals, and churches no longer seem to matter. Power, possession and control seem to be all.

This has brought about the death of love, and the beginning of the end of mankind. Instead of love, there is sex, which is no longer a sublime activity between man and woman: sex is there just for pleasure. People are just things: buildings, cities, machines are more valuable than people. Money is the object of life and humanity is like ants, to keep the city going and to produce quickly. The huge populations gathered together in New York, London, Hong Kong, Mexico City are machines that knit us in and knit us out.

The only moral principle in our times is production: once money can be made, people are viable; if they are non-productive, they are disposable. Thus, the elderly, the cripple, the retarded, the sick, the indigent are to be eliminated. The child in the womb gets in the way of women's activities, therefore kill it! It is a cold, heartless world, without feeling, without love, without spirit, without soul.

Blind confidence

We see under the disguise of glamour, the ugliness of ego-centred living. This masking is evident each day in the media, teenagers are considered chic, clothes are not to cover their bodies but to reveal it, smartness in the young regarding the ways of the world is admired, not wisdom. Selfishness and a strong sense of one's self-importance are admired rather than the selflessness and humility of a Christ-like youth.

All this is foreign to a lyric and a Christian Jamaica. The avant-garde middle class and technically advanced become rich and flaunt their outrageous views as conversational pieces in a bold march with blind confidence in materialism and the pleasure principle.

The world is burning; men have become reckless playboys, and women have become heartless. The youth have become aged and bored, the womb is the most dangerous place to be, and we are advancing toward being atheist. The words of prophets are now ignored and forgotten.

The end has not come, as has been predicted for May 21. But the joy and happiness of an innocent people living in trust of one another, running along slanted beaches, climbing mountains and waterfalls in a virgin world of beauty, has come to an end. Jamaica, the paradigmatic paradise for our entire globe, has gone the way of the old world. We have become old, before reaching maturity. The greatest thinker of the last century, Carl G. Jung, a psychologist, says, "What is falling, push." There seems to be little chance of pulling back our modern world riding on a rollercoaster headed for the cliff and the dark blue sea.

Yet, I remember the Lord's words: "Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it will not bear fruit." (John 12: 24). When everything collapses and the great catastrophe wrought by man's folly occurs, something new will begin to sprout.

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