I find conservatives very interesting. They complain about the degradation of society and are very verbose about it as well. Article after article comes out daily from every conservative site tolling the decline of morality in society. And then along comes a government with a plan that will actually combat this to some degree, and they all freak out.
I think this comes down to two things really, 1) a distrust for the government, which is fair enough, and 2) the natural conservative inclination for reacting against any change to the status quo that they did not think of first. There is almost this inherent conservative desire to react against any suggested change. Conservatives want to complain about bad things, but actually doing something?
No, that would require working with governments we don’t like (something Daniel, Joseph and Moses did) and making actual structural changes to society (something the Church of the past did a lot).
But the truth is something needs to happen with social media. It is like social cocaine and is especially terrible for kids. It needed to be restrained. Many conservatives have identified this as a problem for some time, but have been loath to do anything about it.
It’s interesting how humanity does not learn, isn’t it?
Israel refused to allow the land to have its allotted Sabbaths, properly, as God had ordained for it, and so he forced them off the land that it may have its Sabbaths,
“20 He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfil seventy years.”
2 Chron. 26:20-21
They did not voluntarily do the right thing, so God forced them to do it through the power of the Babylonian state.
In the same way, many parents have been neglecting their children by allowing them free access to social media from stupidly young ages, or using their kids to build their social media presence. Even though the clear harms have been documented, discussed and publicized for years, which parents are fully aware of. So now God is using the power of the “spiritual” Babylonian state to take it away from them, giving them no choice.
People forget that the principle that God gives bad peoples bad leaders is a reality, not just the observation of preachers. When populations do not properly steward that which God has placed in their authority, he will bring leaders who enforce it on people and use authoritarian means to do so.
This has happened in many ways in Australia, with many laws. The state does not just randomly decide to get involved in things that should be the authority of parents and parents alone out of the blue. This has long been invited. Australian parents have begged the state to provide, teach and train their kids more and more over the years, and therefore the state has become managed by those who were effectively raised by it and are simply paying that forward. When such a state sees parents not using their authority to stop something, they will naturally interfere.
If you want the state to stop interfering in such things, the responsibility is on us to stop the state providing, teaching and training all of our kids. And the responsibility is on us to not need the state to tell us how bad social media is for kids, after all, we are already aware of that. It is not great even for all adults. Right?
