The End of Trust in our Institutions
A review of the degradation of our American institutions
As I approach my five decades on this planet, I can’t think of a time when we had less faith in and were gravely skeptical of our institutions than we do now. I am sure that someone is older than I am can probably think of a time, which would probably be in the Vietnam era in most recent modern history. But never on this scale has divisiveness and distrust reigned as before.
Using social media and the internet in general, so much hate and garbage are poured into the public like never before. This new term of “misinformation” and “fake news” has entered the lexicon of our everyday speech. To quote the Joker from the 1984 Batman “Who do you trust? Who do you trust?” Frankly, most Americans do not trust anyone anymore. We’ve lost faith in just about every one of our national institutions.
Our government
If you trust our government without any doubts, I have some beach front property in Arizona I would like to sell you. We may have some leaders we trust but as a whole our country is just about evenly divided. But it doesn’t matter what branch of the United States government you point to very few of us have faith or trust in it. This article is not advocating for any particular side. There are crooks on both sides of the isles. There is no way you can enter politics and come out the other side as a millionaire and not be doing something corrupt. Money and lobbyists have corrupted our faith in our greatest institution conceived by some of the greatest minds that have ever lived. Even Ben Franklin commented on the fragility of this great venture in governing and the perseverance required to maintain it. No one is fleeing to go to any other country in the world but the United States of America. I don’t blame anyone who is trying to come here to make a better life for themselves. It should be evidence enough that we need to preserve our Constitution and the Bill of Rights that makes our country so great.
Take a moment to read about Dr. Oz Guinness’s theory of the Golden Triangle of Freedom.
Our police officers are catching the worst of it all from societal distrust. The people we look to the most to protect our safety and property are under the most pressure. The actions of a few bad officers is bringing down the entire institution of our police force. The people we once looked to for protection are now looked upon with fear. Whether that fear is justified or not it is being exacerbated by the news and social media. To “defund the police” is the most absurd notion unless you believe in anarchy.
I think the only faith people seem to have in any more are just our troops in our armed forces. Once you are a general with a star on your shoulder, you are essentially a politician from there forward, relying on political alliances to maintain your position and rank. The military industrial complex has reached new heights like the world has ever seen. Our military budget is greater than the economies of most countries. I am all for giving our people in uniform the best training, equipment, and support but all that money seems to be funneled somewhere else instead of our troops currently serving and those that have served. It looks like after they’ve made their sacrifice, our government neglects their needs after the fact. Visit a VA hospital and tell me you think they’re getting the best care. Ask anyone that has to go to the VA for help and see what answer you get.
Our News Media
I don’t think I have to write too much on this subject. Depending on what news media you consume will tell most people what your political leanings are. If you watch CNN you are probably liberal. If you watch MSNBC you are probably alt-left. If you watch Fox News you’re probably conservative, but if you read News Max you’re alt-right. If you watch the Blaze – you are perceived as a complete nutcase and conspiracy theorist. You see how people are divided up so easily just by the news you consume. What news media you consume determines what you believe to be the facts and or the truth of those facts.
Back in the past – journalists used to just report the facts. There was some speculation on events based on the facts but that was about it. What we have now is editorial journalism were its all about people’s opinions. Why? Because it sells. If there was any other industry other than the music industry that the internet has decimated – it’s the news industry. No one buys a newspaper anymore. There was an advantage to the printed news. It took time to gather the information before it went to print. You had to have 3 sources for verification of the facts. Many hands touched the information about to be disseminated. During that time the information was updated and refined before it went to print. Yes, this is a gross simplification of the process and the methods, but you should get the point about the purity of the news then compared to today.
Now its just takes a few keystrokes and the click of the mouse and the information – right or wrong - it is out there on the internet. You’re lucky if there is an editor reading what is being written. I doubt very seriously if there is anyone going behind the writer verifying sources and double checking the quotes of people. The failures of this institution hurt the people’s interest the most. Whether it be television or the printed news via the web, we need to have a pure source of trustworthy information on local and world events.
Sadly, I am skeptical anything will change because people do not support “just the facts”. We want to be stimulated with our news – not educated. We don’t want to wait for the facts. Like everything else with the internet – we want it NOW and we want it for FREE.
How much are you willing to pay for the news? How much is it really worth to you to know the truth? Is it really that important to you? How much of your life decisions are based on the facts of what’s happening in the world?
If you took the Covid-19 vaccine it was probably based on two things: your trust in the government and the news or you had to take because your work mandated it. Think about the life choices you are making and preparing for the future because of the news. As actor Denzel Washington so famously said, “If you don’t watch the news, you are uninformed. If you watch the news, you are misinformed.”
Our churches
This is the saddest of them all that I can think of. How have we lost trust in God’s people? Well, we simply stopped being God’s people. We have become self-focused and selfish with our time, talents and resources. We’ve allowed politics divide us. We’ve made church worship something we consume. Many denominations use “numbers” to justify their actions. We’ve focused on luring members from other churches instead of focusing sharing the Gospel with a lost and dying world and making disciples as we were commanded. We’ve lost faith in our leaders because of either sex scandals or because of heresy that stems from their need for celebrity and or to sell books. We can’t trust people in the church anymore because the world is full of predators. We must do background checks on everyone that works with children. We use wealth and prosperity as a measuring stick for God’s blessing in our lives.
We’re too selfish to invest in other people’s lives because it takes away the pleasure we’d rather pursue and the time we’d like to spend doing our own things. We’ve forgotten that sinner’s sin and that’s what they do. We don’t want to taint ourselves with being around such people, but that’s what Jesus did. Jesus loved the world so much that He took all that sin unto Himself and died for it. But we can’t be inconvenienced by having to hang around someone who drinks or smokes or uses bad language or have differing worldviews. We would rather be around people more like us and who think like us, which is human nature. But the Gospel and the Holy Spirit is supposed to change our human nature. Instead, we use human nature as an excuse. Human nature is tainted and flawed by sin. We seem to have forgotten that fact especially when we talk about sexual sin and alternative lifestyles. Even if we do remember, we love to beat people over the head with it, instead of answering them with understanding, love and the truth in way that Jesus would. The church has lost it’s focus and its true love for people.
Our schools
Our schools have become a breeding ground for so much depravity. The agendas and ideologies being pushed on our kids is unbelievable even at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Even private schools and Christian private schools have their similar issues like public schools. Our universities are pretty much a breeding ground of Marxist thinking. Tenure has allowed people with these crazy and unrealistic ideals to continue to spread their intellectual rubbish to all these young minds. Students are ostracized for having contrary worldviews. These students must bend to these teachers thinking to get the grades. Its despicable what is happening in our institutions of learning.
The purpose of education of all the different curriculums (math, science, literature, history, etc.) is to teach a person how to think and to draw from these different disciplines to form a conclusion based on the facts of each of those. To have a proper education, you should be exposed to many different ideas, not just one. When this generation of people coming from these environments are confronted by someone from a different worldview, they just breakdown. Instead of teaching our children how to think they are being taught what to think.
As much as I would like to be an advocate for home schooling, we have another generation of children who are growing up not understanding many social cues and with abnormal social behaviors. I see so many homeschooled kids at church that don’t know how to cooperate and or how to interact in group settings especially with kids unlike them. This is exacerbated particularly when they are around other adults because they think their interactions with their parents is how they are supposed to act around other adults. They also struggle if they go to college because they are unfamiliar with learning in a classroom environment. Also, homeschooled kids run the risk of being socially and culturally ignorant. The world is full of diversity and diverse people. Being homeschooled will impede their exposure to different people and beliefs.
Many parents turn to homeschooling out of fear of what our schools are teaching to our children, and rightfully so. But if you are relying solely on the school to teach your children and you are not teaching them anything at home, you are more of the problem. As parent it is your responsibility to educate your kids as well. My wife is the math and science teacher. I am the English, Bible and History teacher. You must ask about what they are learning. If you are doing your part and not allowing the school, their peers and the media they consume to imprint what they should know and or how to act – your child will be fine in public schools.
Our communities
When was the last time you walked across the street and said hello to your neighbor? Do you know them? Do you know them enough to trust them? Or do you look across the street and wave and that’s the extent of your interaction? We’ve become isolationists in our communities. As much as I like trunk or treat at church, one of my greatest childhood memories was walking around the neighborhood trick or treating. The visiting of all the houses and learning where everyone lived was a part of developing community. My kids were fortunate as they were little to grow up in a neighborhood that still had houses handing out candy. We learned who our neighbors were. We’ve forgotten how to be neighborly, or even friendly at all.
If you want to see how much we’ve fallen in our communities – attend a local school sporting event. This past week we were at a middle school basketball game. How immature of an adult do you have to be to “boo” a teenage child on the opposing team? You would have thought there were cash bets on the line at this game. Two grown women started mouthing at eat other and almost got into a fist fight. We’ve come to a point where we cannot even gather communally for team sports with children. What are we teaching our kids through our behavior?
We’re even suspicious of the parents of our children’s friends. There is a fine line between being a concerned parent and being paranoid. Being a father of girls, the world is a frightening place. Between sex trafficking and all the grooming that is happening in our society from all these different arenas its hard to not to be overly cautious. We won’t let our kids stay over at friend’s house without getting to know the parents. Its just something you must do these days.
Our families
The world of predators doesn’t just mean from outsiders but from within the family unit as well. Comedian Chris Rock has a bit in a special where he talks about every family has the “child molester uncle”. Its sad but it seems that we’ve lost faith in our patriarchs and the males in the family unit in general. Those who are to be looked at the protectors and mentors of the family unit have a shadow of mistrust to be always cast against them. It’s a struggle to be a man of integrity in this world because you have scrutinize your every word and action for when an accusation is leveled at you it never goes away.
In marriage
Marriage is still a hotly contested subject even after the legalization of same sex marriage. In a recent interview with Matt Walsh and Joe Rogan, the topic of marriage came up. Of course, Rogan is pro-gay marriage and Walsh being a Catholic is a supporter of traditional marriage. Walsh didn’t put up a solid argument on for traditional marriage nor did he explain how gay marriage hurts straight marriage. In response, the reality is that gay marriage doesn’t cause as Rogan would say “physical harm” to straight marriage, but it does create harm to the institution of marriage.
To quote Dr. Michael Ramsden, even in a society like the ancient Romans who viewed homosexuality as a purer form of love, they would have never called marriage between two men or two women an actual marriage. Because in the Roman world view a marriage is between a man and woman and the benefit of that marriage is to product children and advance society. To Rogan’s point, what if the couple is infertile and can’t have children, it is still a marriage between a ‘man and woman’ which is part of the natural order. You can’t produce children naturally in a homosexual relationship which is not part of the natural order.
Gay marriage has opened Pandora’s box to many moral issues. If marriage is just an “agreement” between two people then it’s really nothing special other than a legal agreement. Then why can’t it be a legal agreement between three people, or four people or ten people. Why does it have to be between “people” and not animals or children? Will monogamy even be facet in marriage say in 10 to 20 years? You can push this argument in many different directions along those lines if all marriage is a “legal agreement”.
The demoralization of marriage will continue to grow unless a line is drawn where it should be which is between a man and woman. The institution of marriage will weaken because it has been degraded with each moral compromise made to it to where marital norms will no longer be recognized.
Our laws establish social norms, and norms define our society. There is something very Orwellian about allowing the government to define the definition of words like marriage. Marriage has been defined between a man and woman since the beginning of society. What right does the government have to change this?
Conclusion
Ultimately if we don’t turn these things around in our society, it will be our undoing. People look to these institutions for stability, safety and comfort. You may have noticed that I haven’t inserted any Biblical scripture in this article. If you are a Christian, then you know what the bible says about these things. If you are a Christian and you don’t know, then it’s time to crack open the bible. There is no hope in the future apart from the promises of God.
We are rapidly approaching what Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24 when he spoke of the Days of Noah. We are approaching a time of chaos, lawlessness, unbridled violence and moral depravity. And like in Noah’s time, people will be going about their daily lives and then the worst of God’s judgement is going to fall upon them. There are already signs and warning, but few people are willing to be Noah right now, warning people of the approaching danger. But there are some people who will say – the world has always been like this. We just know more of it because of technology. There is some truth to that but even during those times, their institutions which held society together weren’t compromised as they are now. Of course, I could be wrong about all this. Its just my perspective from the bottom end.