Spiritual Wasteland
Source: wallalay.com

The state of much of the world today can be characterized as spiritual lawlessness. What this means in large part is that basic laws of human behavior such as honesty, integrity, morality, and ethics are being ignored—or worse—not being taught or modeled to our children. This type of lawlessness is a sure sign of a declining civilization. It is indicative of a society that has allowed itself to become lost in a spiritual wasteland.

Spiritual lawlessness is a failure to apply the basic principles that underlie living a life of goodness. It also represents a failure to be mindful of the Ten Commandments and spiritual laws such as the laws of cause and effect, and retribution and compensation. It seems that a great many people have lost touch with these time-honored guiding principles.

These natural laws have guided human behavior and interactions for millennia. Are the generations now living going to be the ones who allow the most basic of God’s laws to be ignored and perhaps eventually lost in history?

There are many comparatively trivial societal laws with which almost everyone complies. For example, we all know that a red light means stop. We stop automatically because, if we do not, we believe that we will either get a costly ticket or cause an accident that could be fatal.

Yet, it appears that many who were taught the Ten Commandments as a child have since “forgotten” them even though violating them will bring grievous harm to them spiritually. Some may willfully disregard them because compliance would deprive them of serving their own selfish desires. While others may have lost sight of them due to societal pressure to conform to widespread materialism and pursuit of self interests.

Many of us have fallen prey to sophisticated marketing campaigns and programming that loosened restrictions on the depiction of violence and sexual depravity. As a result, the psyche of people in developed countries around the world was taken down a dark path of spiritual deprivation and lawlessness.

It is my hope that those who are not happy about the state of society will take a few minutes to not only read the Ten Commandments, but reflect upon their application in the context of today’s society and the many situations in which we see violations. It is easy to quickly glance over them and assume that you “know” them. However, a more thoughtful and deeper reading would be most beneficial.

I have given a few examples below to help us begin thinking about their practical applications. As an example, let us look at the commandment “Thou shalt not steal.” This is not just about things like shop lifting or burglary. We see many kinds of theft in today’s society. For example, over charging for goods and services by setting very high profit margins, putting forth another person’s work as your own, theft of proprietary systems, processes, and recipes to name a few.

Another commandment is “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” It is tempting to shirt past this one because superficially it sounds like something that applies to a courtroom. In the broadest terms, what it says to me is to not spread lies about others. We shouldn’t lie about what we may have seen or heard. We shouldn’t try to shift blame to someone else for something we did.

Thou shalt not covet things that others have is the gist of Commandment 10. I do not see any redeeming quality in being jealous of or longing for what others have. Doing so will likely lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction. I believe we should be grateful for what we have and stay within our financial means.

I encourage everyone to do their own analysis of practical situations where each commandment applies to human behavior today. It is an exercise that may be valuable for bringing the Ten Commandments back to the forefront of our minds and automatically signal a red light when we get into situations where they apply. This will give us a chance to carefully consider how to proceed.

Spiritual lawlessness has cast a dark shadow over the world. Let us each do our part to make sure that we do not participate in it by always being mindful of God’s commandments and natural laws. He gives us so much while asking precious little in return.

You might like to see the following related articles:

What Natural or Spiritual Laws Govern Our Lives?
The Law of Cause and Effect
The Law of Retribution and Compensation