A Broken Society

Conservative Party leader David Cameron has been talking a lot during the election campaign about mending Britain’s broken society. I would certainly agree with Mr Cameron that our society is badly in need of repair but I somehow doubt that we would have the same opinion as to how we got here or indeed how we fix the problem.

The Causes

A number of things have happened over the past few decades and successive governments whether Conservative and Labour have to bear some of the responsibility. The Thatcher government that arrived in office in 1979 certainly had its’ work cut out to restore our nations economy, the previous labour administration had destroyed the economy as Labour governments are want to do. Marxist lead unions were holding the government to ransom and we had just been through the winter of discontent. Margaret Thatcher rightly tackled Union domination and greatly improved our economic standing. However, there was a culture of self-improvement spawned, which meant people wanted to succeed in life no matter what the cost. This created a selfish materialist mindset in the minds of many which meant that people didn’t care whom they trampled on as they made their way up the ladder of success.

Then came the Blairite ‘New Labour’ administration in 1997. Certainly there were things that this government did that are to be commended. It increased investment in areas like health and social care that were perhaps a little neglected by the previous Tory administration. However, Labour made the mistake that all left leaning governments make. They think that we need the state to do everything for us and even think for us. They tell us how to eat, they tell us what opinions we must have on moral issues and generally invade every aspect of our lives. Pursuing this type of policy generates a mindset of dependence on the state which is self perpetuating and the state just has to get bigger and bigger costing more and more to run. This leaves a society where citizens have no sense of personal responsibility and expect the state to do everything for them. A good example of this is the recent flight chaos due to the ash cloud; stranded British citizens across the world seemed to think it was the governments job to get them home. What a joke! Did the government ask them to leave the country?

Not only have recent administrations created a nation of selfish irresponsible citizens but all of the major parties have lost their moral compass. There has been an erosion of the family where government considers two men together or two women together to be a family. Singles parents are encouraged to continue in their lifestyle while married couples are hammered by the tax system. The family should be the basic building block of society but the policies of both parties have done little to encourage it. The Liberal Democrats have not been in power for many years and that is good because their policies in these moral areas are even more ‘progressive’ than the two bigger parties.

Government has also been keen to push the teaching of evolution through our education system. This has succeeded in raising an army of citizens with no real thought of God or His word and in fact deny his very existence. When there is no God there is no absolute, where do we get right and wrong from if it does not come from an over arching authority, are we to decide our own morality? Is right and wrong to be decided by prevailing public opinion.
This Society is broken all right!

The Cure

What our nation needs more than anything else is a keen awareness of its state before God. Our people need to realise how far they are separated from God and the ultimate consequences of that. They need to turn in repentance towards an offended God and to put their faith in His Son the Lord Jesus Christ as their only hope for Salvation. In short we need revival! Pray that the Lord would be pleased to move by His Spirit on our day and in our generation, we desperately need a Revival.

‘Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?’ Psalm 85 v6