I’m just going to say it up front – if your god is yourself, then God help you. Many people wouldn’t go so far as to call themselves the god of their own world for fear of sounding arrogant or even crazy, but the more I observe western culture in the present day, the more I discover most non-believers (including ex-believers) live this way. They believe in a god, it’s just a self-constructed one. I would argue that right now, the twenty-first century, in 2015 – the year of hover-boards and power laces, we are living in one of the hardest time periods to navigate if you want your life and your convictions to be anything but cold porridge (more on this analogy later). The twenty-first century has great benefits thanks to technological advances that mean we are easily connected, easily informed (at least on a basic level thanks to Google/Wikipedia) and easily entertained. Fortunately in the west we don’t live under oppressive political regimes and therefore consider ourselves fairly well versed in and blessed with freedom. Unfortunately though, despite this freedom we are in many ways selfish, stunted, slaves to a cruel dictator called uncertainty. Until fairly recently, even free/western societies held to core belief systems that guided moral standards, governance, logic and order. Not so today! Instead we inhabit an age of arrogance, in which a very vocal secular segment of society has thrown off any sense of objective morality and is determined to redefine right and wrong based on personal preference, effectively generating their own brand of ‘social responsibility’.

Continue reading →