Deface the Bible and Call it Art

Deface the Bible and Call it Art July 23, 2009

This piece from the Daily Telegraph reports on a ‘modern art’ project in Glasgow in which there is a box of pens next to an open Bible and viewers are encouraged to add their own  thoughts to the Bible. It has resulted in public blasphemy and defacing of the Bible. The project was organized by the local metropolitan church–a community church for the LBGT crowd.

The ugliness of the comments that were scribbled in the Bible illustrate the ugliness of the increasingly vulgar anti-Christian atmosphere of modern Britain. When I lived in the UK there was a prevailing sense of polite and languid tolerance. A sort of cultural laziness, a louche, devil may care sort of attitude was commonplace. For example, a friend made the droll comment about homosexuality, “I don’t mind really, as long as they don’t make it mandatory.”
This languid sense of tolerance soon developed into a kind of amusement, then annoyance at anyone who presumed to stand up for virtue, for truth, beauty or goodness of any kind. Along with this was a cynical assumption that virtue was not only laughable, but impossible. Thus a nice, middle class church going doctor said about the idea that young people might learn chastity, “Oh goodness, you can’t imagine that young people are going to stop having sex!”
What is interesting to see is that this easy going tolerance soon developed into amusement at those who had values and beliefs, and then the amusement turned to annoyance, and now the annoyance is turning to anger and now we are seeing the anger turn to rage and the rage will soon turn to violence. Organized violence will erupt against Christians because we dare to challenge the decadence of the age.
It is often said that America is five years ahead of Britain and what happens here soon crosses the Atlantic. That may be true of technology and social trends, but the highway is a two way street, and in the moral and spiritual arena it is the other way around. Britain is ahead of America, and Americans should witness the social decay and emergent anti Christian violence and take it as a sober warning. 
Unless we change our ways, we’re next.

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