Values in an age of upheaval

The humanity of the 21stcentury appears to be in a situation of desperation and perplexity. We are living in an age of great cultural revolution. Our world is, as one historian puts it, “in a state of wildest anarchy” where basic shifts in the thinking, values and practices of people strike at the very foundation […]

The humanity of the 21stcentury appears to be in a situation of desperation and perplexity. We are living in an age of great cultural revolution. Our world is, as one historian puts it, “in a state of wildest anarchy” where basic shifts in the thinking, values and practices of people strike at the very foundation of human life and social organization. Within the space of a few decades the world has changed rapidly and the global mentality has been so radically transformed, that ours can be rightly described as an age where nothing agrees with anything else. On every side, we are confronted by confusion, contradictions and unresolved paradoxes. The conditions in which human beings live and the circumstances in which this existence is actualized have also been radically transformed that it comes as no surprise when we hear that there is a general situation of unrest and deep-seated anxieties in our modern world.
The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council painted a clear portrait of this state of unrest and confusion in the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World (1965). They said: “Ours is a new age of history with critical and swift upheavals spreading gradually to all corners of the earth. They are the product of man’s intelligence and creative activity, but they recoil upon him, upon his judgments and desires, both individual and collective, upon his ways of thinking and acting in regard to people and things. We are entitled then to speak of a real social and cultural transformation whose repercussions too are felt on the religious level” (GS 4).
Today, for instance, we can use our mobile phones to reach people in distant parts of the world, but at the same time many people seem to be alienated from people around them. We have access to the best ideas and excellent breeds of education, but many people have lost the sense of how to order their lives in consonance with the vast amount of information and knowledge they enjoy. Our world boasts of huge accomplishments in economics, commerce and finance, yet millions of people live in tragic situation of misery. Marriage and family life constitute one of the best and joyous human institutions ever known, yet many couples today are suffering from serious family crisis and are just living on the margins of life. We have the best technologies for making life comfortable today, but these technologies are also being manipulated and put at the service of destructive ends.
It would appear that with more knowledge and technological advancements humanity recedes to barbarism and savagery. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the man who went on to become Pope Benedict XVI, once said that in today’s world “the human mind is more resourceful in discovering new means of destruction than new ways to support life.” During the second half of the 20th century, Henry Queffelec wrote: “Technological progress in this century has far outstripped all predictions and expectations. The result of these advancements has been a great material wealth matched by an alarming decline in spiritual and moral values.”
Today, traditional moral norms and religious values that used to sustain human life and to keep society in check have been abandoned, such that many people live lives without meaning, purpose, and fulfillment. This situation is even more acute in Western societies where the viruses of individualism, subjectivism, relativism, hedonism, consumerism, materialism, nihilism and atheism have eaten into the fabric of societal life, destroying all those cherished values and beliefs that have sustained and enhanced human life for many centuries.
In our own peculiar African setting, many of these deadly poisons come in form of ideologies, technologies and patterns of life prevalent in the Western world. Many of them are finding their way into our homes and destroying the communal nature of our social, religious and cultural systems of supporting and enhancing life. Observers have said that many of the problems we face today as Africans have been as a result of our uncritical acceptance and importation of Western-styled life orientations. Think for a moment the social dislocations occasioned by our wholesale consumption of Western products, which are all too evident today. We have for too long been fooled by the idea that what is new, modern and Western is, ipso facto, superior and better.
Many people have said that we now live in an age of godlessness. We see manifestations of this in the spate of violence, the destruction of human life by technological means, the many crises in family life, the spread of destructive economic and political theories, and in the many ethical challenges facing our society. The deepest poverty today is not material poverty but spiritual poverty, the inability of many people to be joyful and to find meaning, happiness and fulfilment in life. Amidst the aspirations of many people to live happy and comfortable lives, we see godlessness driving people to the abyss of violence and banality. There is widespread suspicion today about the beauty, goodness and the grandeur of life. The conviction that life is altogether absurd, contradictory and bizarre is spreading everywhere and driving people into the devil’s paradise.
This inability to find joy in life and to share that joy with others has made the art of living practically pessimistic in outlook, such that many things seem not to function rightly today. This poverty assumes different forms and manifests itself in different guises both in the materially rich and impoverished nations of the world. The true problem of our time is really the “eclipse of God” as the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber calls it, the absence of God from the lives of many people. Many people live with the slogan that “God does not exist, and if he exists, he does not belong.” And since people can no longer recognize ultimate truths, but rather try to create subjective moulds of truth to suit their individual preferences, society breaks down and everything is left in disarray.
God is the ultimate good, beauty and truth, the source and fountain of life, our origin and final end. God is also the most profound lover of each person, even those that do not love him, believe in him or know him. The most important task in life is to seek God, to find him and to develop a loving relationship with him, because this is the only way human beings can be led to experience the most profound, deepest and lasting happiness they can ever yearn for in life. The challenge for today’s Christianity is to be able to communicate this truth to people; the truth that Jesus Christ is the most profound answer to the deepest yearnings of humanity and that it is only in him that we can find the joy of life.
In other words, the Christian of today has to live in such a way that he can, in word and deed, teach humanity that the eternity that man needs can only come from God. If God is not there, if he is absent from the picture, if he is banished from our hearts and from our lives, existence becomes sick and man cannot survive in that way. This is a pointer to the fact that the answer that man needs is one that he cannot give himself. He has to search for it, discover it, love it and live by it. And that answer can only come from God. Today’s Christianity must help humanity in this search, to lead humanity to where it can find that answer and to teach humanity to live by it.
Emmanuel Ojeifo is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Abuja.