Dennis Peacocke comments on the breakdown in society

Dennis Peacocke

"...honor the king."
1 Peter 2:17

Ours is an age of contradictions; we heap lavish honor, attention, and money on athletes, musicians, and movie idols while at the same time, mock and challenge the value of the historical authority figures. Parents aren't worthy of honor; teachers aren't worthy of honor; neither are public servants of any kind. Isaiah foresaw our day and described it with stinging accuracy:

I will make boys their officials; mere children will govern them. People will oppress each other-man against man, neighbor against neighbor. The young will rise up against the old,
the base against the honorable.
Isaiah 3:4,5 NIV

Let me give a personal illustration recently acquired from a conversation I had with a public school teacher in a city where I was doing a Business Leadership Seminar. The teacher recounted the following incident to make the point of the loss of honor and respect for authority in our tax-supported school system. The teacher, a middle-age female, was in the bleachers at a school assembly supervising the high-school students. A male student lit up a cigarette, contrary to school rules. The teacher climbed up the bleachers, confronted the student and took the cigarette away and turned away to walk back down the stairs. Suddenly she was violently pushed from behind and sent tumbling down the stairs.

She emerged bruised but not broken. Nothing was done about the incident, and I asked her why. Her response was a classic true-life indictment against our humanistic culture. First, she didn't dare go back up to the area for fear of being physically attacked again, and second, she couldn't report the incident since she didn't know conclusively who pushed her down the stairs. The others were too frightened to identify anyone in such a situation. Even more telling was this tragic fact: If the principal did find out who pushed the teacher, he couldn't expel them anyway for fear of being fired himself. It seems, in his zeal to protect his teachers and remove the obvious outlaws from his school, that he had expelled too many students already and was reminded that school districts get state funding on the basis of the number of enrolled students. Expelling more students would require personnel cuts, and he was told that he would be the first to go. Welcome to America. By the way, this wasn't in Watts or Brooklyn.

As our culture continues to worship man, authority must continue to erode since man's authority is rooted in the fact that he is created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28). Remove God, culturally speaking, and you remove the fear of God and the knowledge of accountability to higher powers. The net result is violence and "jungle morality." Where honor disappears, so does the care for the young, the aged, and those who are physically weaker.

Dishonor will continue to be the order of the day until we Christians, as salt and light, do something about it. What are you waiting for?

Reprinted by permission. This article is excerpted from Dennis Peacocke's book "The Emperor Has No Clothes" available at www.gostrategic.org