Have you experienced a driver carelessly cutting in front of you recently? Or walked past a group of youths who hurled abuse and foul language in your direction? What about people pushing in line? Today we see a serious and growing erosion of traditional biblical values such as respect for the dignity and rights of others.

"It's a tradition we have lost as our values are eroded," stated British Home Secretary David Blunkett as he "blamed parents who fail to accept responsibility for instilling values of respect in their families and a breakdown of neighbourliness in villages, towns and cities" (Daily Mail, May 21, 2004, emphasis added throughout).

Of course, Britons in the hundreds of thousands still show respect for others while conducting their daily lives. They not only behave in an orderly, civilized manner, but also have raised their children to imitate their own conduct. Nonetheless, many observers freely acknowledge a serious and growing erosion of traditional biblical values.

Myriads of examples

Newspaper columnist Melanie Phillips laments the waning of the quality of respect in the British Isles: "You can see examples everywhere in the myriad incivilities of everyday life: the shouting and swearing in the streets, the lighted cigarettes dangled carelessly in children's faces by rush-hour crowds; the casual slovenliness on the Tube [subway], as passengers anti-socially chomp their way through hamburgers and leave rubbish littering the carriages.

"You see it in schools where teachers find it increasingly impossible to impose their authority upon badly behaved pupils. You see it in those children's parents who proclaim the impossibility of controlling their children and then threaten teachers with physical violence if they dare to discipline them" (ibid.).

There is no question that there are some very big holes in the British national fabric, as in other Western nations. Relationships are becoming increasingly fragile. The land is full of broken marriages, lonely people, single mothers, confused and uncared for children—accompanied by a marked decline in courtesy, civility and good manners—in another words, plain old common sense in showing respect for others. Even the standard of driving has suffered in recent years and road rage is now becoming all too common.

This general decline in traditional values is not without its major causes, and ignorance of biblical standards constitutes a fundamental one.

The decline in Judeo-Christian influence

As British author Leo McKinstry observed: "Children growing up today know nothing of the central tenets of Christianity: the Ten Commandments, the four gospels, the Sermon on the Mount... We are living in a religiously illiterate society, where young people are not even given the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they believe in God or not because they are so ill-informed about the religion which built our civilization" (Turning the Tide, 1999, p. 6).

Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of London, adds: "We have become less religious, and religion was the classic source of our belief in a revealed morality, commandments engraved on tablets of stone. We have become more culturally diverse, and we now know that what seems wrong to one group may be permissible in a second, and even admirable in a third" (Faith in the Future, 1997, p. 17).

Spiritually speaking, what is being taught in the educational system can be very detrimental to our young people. For example, one Oxford professor wrote: "Some people think that the Ten Commandments are a set of universal moral rules, which everybody should obey. But they are not. They are addressed to the Jews... Again these are not universal moral rules for the whole world" (Keith Ward, God: A Guide for the Perplexed, 2002, p. 73). A shocking view indeed!

The observing of biblical standards is definitely on the wane in the British Isles and elsewhere in the Western world. Confusion reigns as to what is right or wrong, good or bad, truth or error. The Hebrew prophet Isaiah looked at his own age, and what he saw certainly applies to ours. He wrote: "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20).

Remedies for root causes

Clearly the fact that our culture is in crisis testifies to the existence of a moral universe ruled by basic spiritual principles. There is a cause for every effect. "The curse causeless shall not come" (Proverbs 26:2, KJV).

Hear again the leading Jewish rabbi, Jonathan Sacks: "In teaching our children moral relativism we have placed them in a world without a moral compass, even hinting that there is no such thing. In the name of tolerance we have taught that every alternative lifestyle is legitimate and that moral judgment is taboo, even 'judgmental'...A political order based on liberty and tolerance has yielded a Britain significantly less tolerant and more violent, harsh and abrasive than the one my grandparents knew" (op. cit., pp. 14-15).

Some solutions are being offered. British Home Secretary Blunkett has called for "police and government to work together to find ways of reversing the decline" of simple respect for the dignity of other human beings (op. cit.). Melanie Phillips adds: "Respect can be restored, but only if we acknowledge limits to selfishness and impose again the disciplines that create respect for oneself and for others" (ibid.).

While these solutions are certainly a start, we who preach Christ's gospel must emphasize a restoration of respect for the God who created human beings and for the laws He established for our good. We urge a change of heart and a turning to an altogether different direction—one of love for others by obedience to God's basic spiritual law, the Ten Commandments.

The biblical solution

What the prophet Isaiah wrote so many centuries ago applies equally well today: "Cry aloud, spare not; lift up your voice like a trumpet; tell My people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins" (Isaiah 58:1). For what purpose? To restore the abundant blessings that spring from obedience to God's laws.

Isaiah also wrote: "'Come now, and let us reason together,' says the LORD, 'Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land'" (Isaiah 1:18-19).

Luke's version of the Great Commission emphasizes repentance in particular: "And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem" (Luke 24:47).

The United Church of God publishes a substantial booklet about God's law, The Ten Commandments, showing how each and every one is as powerful, active and unchanging as the physical law of gravity. This basic spiritual law is the summation of God's absolute standard for the conduct of all people. You cannot afford to be without this publication and the companion brochure called Making Life Work. They are both free for the asking. WNP

Once Upon a Time: Our Green and Pleasant Land

World-famous British novelist, the late George Orwell, wrote of his countrymen in 1941:

"Their extreme gentleness, their deeply moral attitude to life...the gentleness of English civilisation is perhaps its most marked characteristic. You notice it the instant you set foot on English soil. It is a land where bus conductors are good-tempered and the policemen carry no revolvers" (The Lion and the Unicorn, 1941).

Writing 14 years later in 1955, American anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer echoed Orwell's words and added his observations: "The English are certainly among the most peaceful, gentle, courteous and orderly population that the civilised world has ever seen. The control of aggression has gone to such remarkable lengths that you hardly ever see a fight in a bar [pub] and football crowds are as orderly as church meetings" (quoted in Norman Dennis, Rising Crime and the Dismembered Family, London, 1993).

Today no author in his right mind could conscientiously write such glowing words. What we now see about us has happened in one or two generations. The behavioral changes within one century are truly astonishing.

Yet reversal is possible if we would only begin again to teach the spiritual absolutes regarding how a society should behave. The Christian pulpits in the Western world have a serious duty—an awesome responsibility for which they will be held accountable.