Have you seen the movie A Quiet Place? The premise is that fierce, man-eating, blind aliens have invaded the earth and viciously and violently attack human beings based on their keen sense of hearing. Survivors have learned through gruesome experience that they must be completely quiet or they'll greatly endanger themselves and most likely be instantly killed. The people live in fear. They have to give up all sorts of freedoms, including the freedom to speak, in order to merely survive. The good life is no more.
We submit that this is how more and more conservatives are feeling in our environment today. People who believe in the Biblical God or who merely espouse traditional family values are shutting up because of the climate of intimidation and punishment that is prevailing in every aspect of modern living: media, work, school, church, even friends and family.
In only a few decades societal norms and perceptions have completely flipped. We here at SoL, born in the 1950s, grew up in a culture of shared values, a culture that taught and supported and promoted God and life and goodness and reality and order. Now we find ourselves surrounded by a culture that in the most important aspects of human existence teaches and supports and promotes vice and death and evil and fantasy and chaos. And if we dare to make a sound decrying these monstrous invaders we may greatly endanger ourselves--our jobs, our financial security, our church membership, our social standing, our reputation, our relationships. Which amounts to a loss of freedom, even of feeling free to think and converse according to the dictates of our conscience.
Small case in point: The other day we received in the mail an anti-sexual revolution sticker from our friends at Mass Resistance and actually hesitated to put in on our Jeep!
Think we're exaggerating? There are more and more examples coming to light. Bakers, photographers, florists, printers, targeted, harassed, sued, punished financially, even losing their livelihoods, for daring to stick to their religious convictions. People fired from their jobs merely for standing for traditional values/marriage or being too conservative. Others have been targeted, marginalized, cancelled, forced to resign. We've been cancelled multiple times ourselves.
Tim Allen comes to mind regarding his TV show on ABC, Last Man Standing, in which he stars as a die-hard conservative, exactly what he is in real life. This extremely popular sitcom aired for six seasons and then one day it just got cancelled. The network stressed that Allen's conservative leaning did not factor into the decision and gave some really lame excuses, such as they decided not to have comedies on Fridays. What? (It has since been picked up by Fox.)
Spoiler alert: In A Quiet Place, the father, who has protected the family all through the movie, screams out to save his daughter and is instantly attacked and killed by the stealthy aliens. In other words, he got cancelled. Is it any wonder people are either switching their lifelong beliefs or going totally silent?
There is some good news. We were talking about how when we were growing up there was rarely any mention of Jesus or even God in the mainstream---not at school (except during the pledge), not at community activities, not on TV, not at the movies; only at church and church activities. Well, now we can watch religious cable channels and Fox and lots of stuff online and hear about God and Jesus all the time. There are Christian movies in the theaters pretty regularly. These are signs of revival. But alas, too little, too late?
It turns out that most of the big folks supposedly on the side of God and goodness made a great mistake. Generally, they have merely spoken up for the good (as in pro-life and pro-marriage) and neglected to decry the evil (as in abortion and homosexuality). In doing so they pretty much forfeited the right of truly God-fearing people to speak out against evil at all. This is how evil has come to bully and dominate our society.That is how so many people, even churches, have come to be either silent or compromising on these issues.
There can be no peace between good and evil. The more evil infiltrates, the less good will be allowed. That's where all of this is headed--toward more evil--where else? And they want us all participating.
We ordinary people who love God, who believe in striving toward and conserving goodness and rightness, are living in a dangerous, post-apocalyptic, nightmarish, quiet place. Many are feeling that they must give up all sorts of freedoms, especially the freedom to speak up and live according to their consciences, in order to merely survive. The good life is no more.
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