Babel 2
However...
…As things transpired, amidst my wanderings and wonderings at how anyone could even call some of this stuff “Art”, I turned a corner and was stopped in my tracks by the exhibit shown in the photograph. It stands about 20ft (6.5m) high and is built purely from electronic media devices. The base of it has some radios built by famous manufacturers who have disappeared into the history books – Grundig, Marconi, Pye – and as the exhibition rose up through its height the manufacturers become more modern – Sony, Panasonic, JCV – to be finally topped off with music players of a similar type made by Apple, Motorola and Samsung.
I was astonished. Mesmerised. It was an epiphanous moment for me. I recognised it instantly as the modern day, social media Tower Of Babel. I didn’t actually find out until later that it was actually named “Babel II”.
Suddenly a lot of things became clear. Relating to the
Tower of Babel in Ancient Babylon, the Bible says this “That is why it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the
language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face
of the whole earth”. Gen 11:9 NIV. The "Tower Of Social Media - Babel 2" may not be confusing our language but it is most certainly confusing our values and standards.
We appear to be living in a society now in which everyone claims to be “entitled” to stuff. Free social housing. Free benefits. Free health treatment. Freedom to be identified as whatever we want to be known as.
But this “freedom” has brought
its problems. For it is a freedom without responsibility. People want to
self-identify as a specific gender (or non-gender) without taking the
responsibility of the health and social problems this can cause. And without
taking into account their responsibility to their fellow human being. Is your
family comfortable with having brought up a son only to find that they now want
to be treated and respected as a woman? And vice-versa? Are other children's parents comfortable with a transgender pupil suddenly wanting to use toilet facilities?
We advocate social
standing by claiming the one group of lives matter but don’t care about other
groups. We now have phrases and words like WOKE, MOPE, binary and non-binary
genders. And truly, we are now heading for a society in which no will know what
anything means or what anything stands for.
Proverbs 29:18 says Where there is no vision, the people perish. We have moved away from our societal laws, traditions and standards and are now demanding respect and recognition which we do not fully deserve. Social media has used the label of “opportunity” to create rich people who have not worked for their money, and poor people who work hard at their jobs and stay underpaid. Compare the “wage v. responsibility” scenario of a successful sports star against an emergency/health services worker.
This equality/entitlement/woke concept – which is driven by social media and trash television - has opened up a Pandora’s Box on society. Criminals are being pardoned and pandered to while health seervice and charity workers are being robbed. Lawyers are more interested in how to get a client off than how to make a charge stick.
Most people have heard of the story of Pandora's Box. However. Very few people ever
hear the end of the story of Pandora’s Box. And that is – After all the evils
of the world have been unleashed there remained one thing left in the box.
Hope. And it is that which people are clinging to now. Society is now starting
to challenge the ideas promoted by social media. People are starting to look
for balanced justice and a return to the norm. Surely, amongst all the mayhem and confusion of social media, our hope in Biblical teachings must be the only thing left we can turn to.
Comments