What Becomes of a Culture When Even the Pope Seems to Have Given Up Believing in God?

I watched on in despair this week as Pope Francis told an interfaith gathering in Singapore that the Christian faith was just one of many roads to God.

He said it doesn’t matter if you’re Sikh or Muslim or Hindu or Christian – it’s all the same thing and it’s all good.

Why should this matter?

Some saw it as a wonderful admission that we are all right, in our own way.

Others saw it as a humble confession that none of us can claim to be right.

But most - and I suspect the Pontiff himself - saw it as a way of being inclusive.

Ah yes, inclusiveness. It’s now the number one priority in our culture.

But to be inclusive you have to include people around something. Our culture, having given up on truth, is trying to include people around inclusion.

Having given up on shared values we’re trying to create social cohesion around a shared desire for social cohesion. It’s a fool’s errand because none of it makes sense.

In order to be inclusive the Pope told those assembled that no-one should say their religion was more important or truer than anyone else’s.

If you have to deny truth in order to be inclusive, then how valuable is that inclusion?

If inclusion is based on a denial of the truth, then aren’t you including people in a lie?

And if inclusion is only made possible by inviting everyone to close their eyes to reality, then aren’t you seeking to include everyone in a kind of insanity?

The Western World is in crisis right now. Yes, inflation, and housing, and energy and security and the cost of living are enormous challenges.

But the greatest crisis we’re facing is one of reality, and of meaning.

In the Western World we are now so confused that we dare not say for sure what a woman is.

We are now so befuddled that we boast there are dozens of genders, and new ones appearing all the time.

We are a society that is producing guided missiles and misguided men. We can fire rockets to the stars but cannot say for certain which way is up.

Heck, we can’t even look down - in the shower - and say for certain we know what any of it means.

Hollywood celebrities no longer talk about truth except as it relates to themselves.

The only truth they acknowledge is “my truth” which may be the opposite of “your truth”. But as long as each man is true to himself then we are satisfied - though what any of that means is absolutely anyone’s guess.

Politicians, taking their cues from culture as they have always done, have given up talking about truth and falsehoods.

Instead they speak of misinformation and disinformation – the ultimate in subjective terms – which they now seek to enshrine into law.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowlands is raging against Misinformation and Disinformation

So we increasingly have laws that are entirely subjective because, having done away with objective truth, subjectivity is all we have left.

So if a man feels like he is a woman then most of our State Governments will readily change his birth certificate to reflect his feelings – and who are you to argue?

Do people not realise the enormous danger in this?

When everything – even the laws of the land – are subjective, then the only way to determine what is right is through might.

Having abandoned any truth beyond our own hearts – which let’s face it don’t always serve us well – there is no authority beyond ourselves to whom we can appeal.

And so, to ensure inclusion and social cohesion, the Government benevolently steps in.

State-control tightens, and bureaucratic tribunals are given the power to rule on everything we say and even on what we think.

There are unserious politicians in the UK who now seriously believe that the State should be able to prosecute citizens for praying in their mind - if the person’s private thoughts to God violate the State’s ideals.

To summarise, in professing to be wise we have become fools.

We are the sailor who, having given up on trying to navigate by the stars because he felt it too arbitrary, decided to tie his lamp to his ship’s mast and navigate by that.

It is, of course, only a matter of time before he will crash into rocks and even then, he will be completely clueless as to why he ran aground. No doubt lawyers will find someone he can sue. And the compensation payout will enable him to buy a bigger boat so that he can do it all over again, and again, and again.

The only hope for our sailor, who of course is metaphor for Western culture – with is another way of saying you and I - is that he once again places his trust in the heavens.

But how can men rediscover reality when even the Pope seems to have given up on believing in God?