Godless cesspool

HOW sad. How very sad for his daughter, in particular.

That’s all I could feel as I read Owen Jacques’ column “Aussies are losing their religion” (TC, 01/07).

Jacques was commenting, gleefully, on the latest census data which revealed the decline in those Australians ticking the religion box.

Beauty, he implied, 30% of us ticked “no religion”. Yipee. And he states, my daughter will soon be doing likewise – you can see Jacques’ heart swelling with pride.

But, let’s step back for a minute or two and look at the implications of this decline and what others have described as a “(descent) into a godless cesspool” - not that this scares Jacques.

Writing a commentary in The Australian, Jennifer Oriel paints a rather bleaker picture on this decline in her article “Faithless Australians may lose more than just God” (03/07).

Without going into all the salient points she makes – you can do that for yourself – let me just highlight her main contention: “Christ gave us the soul of Western civilisation and the form of freedom. We owe Him more than scorn.”

Jacques picks at outmoded laws on abortion and extols the virtues of gay marriage – just “good sense”, he argues. He doesn’t, however, speak about the many laws based on Christian virtues which are “core values” says Oriel, “of Western society” – “prohibitions against murder, adultery, stealing, bearing false witness” etc.

Now, I’m not a card carrying Christian; I’m no “born again” (though I respect and have met such people) but I do see inherent dangers for a society where each person becomes its own little god.