We hope, pray, and preach that out of our present chaos, many will find their way not merely to a forgotten cultural heritage carved into the side of the rock, but to the rock itself. As Spurgeon famously said: “Oh blessed hurricane, that drives me to the rock of ages.”

So much has changed, so many opinions altered, so many illusions undone, so many institutions exposed, so many alliances broken and made. The old certainties have shifted. So many people now say and do things they could not have imagined saying or doing before, both for good and for ill. And all in such a short space of time…

Does anyone else feel like the last half-decade feels longer than several decades put together?

So much has happened in the social and political and religious spheres, it’s hard to believe it fits into less than half a decade. The consequences of all that has been crammed into these historic years will likely remain imprinted upon us for decades to come.

So much has changed. So many opinions altered. So many illusions undone. So many institutions exposed. So many alliances broken and forged. So many people moved to say or do things they previously could not have imagined saying or doing before. And all in such a short space of time. All experienced so fast, as if we’re sat on a train watching the world we knew speed past us.

Rarely do we have sufficient time to reflect and take stock because as soon as something has happened or been spoken about, there are already several other paradigm-changing things apparently demanding our immediate attention or interpretation.

If someone was in a coma for four years they would think they had woken up to a new world altogether, where so many of the previously reliable “certainties” have been substantively and irreparably undermined. Things just don’t work the way they used to anymore. You can try to ignore it, but the world—and the way people think and talk about it—is nonetheless changing the way it’s changing.

Historians will surely analyse this as a time which substantially shaped the course of the next half-century at least, one way or another. There are, of course, noted parallels between the digital revolution (and its effects on the socio-political world) and the impact of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Industrial Revolution.

But it’s not merely an issue of technological innovation and access to information. It’s also a revolution in how people think and act (no doubt in part due to the way people’s minds have been shaped by the digital revolution). But unlike many modern political revolutions, the revolution of thought we are currently experiencing also involves people returning to older ideas which they did not know they were “allowed” to think about.

The Changing of the Ground

There is a creaking in the floorboards of what we thought we knew, of what we thought was not ok to say or do. The pull is in both directions. As the liberal elites become more progressively intoxicated with their empowered derangements, those who see the poverty of their thinking began to realise that even the ground on which they were holding firm was already indirectly “held” by the progressives.

Gradually and imperceptibly, we had already begun to contribute to the downfall and were heading in the same direction, albeit at a slower pace. We had already given away too much ground, and much of the ground we thought needed defending was already compromised as it was.

However you describe it—whether via the effects of the “red pill” movement or the reactions to the societal forest fire that is “Woke”—for many people it now feels impossible to go back to talking the way we did about socio-politics, theology, mission the way we did even half a decade ago. Things have changed.

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