So another TV star falls again from good old ‘Coro’ Street’.
Shock horror! Who’s next? A famous old Australian TV star we all grew up
respecting is exposed for some past sin. Do we really want to know?
Digging back into others lives seems to be a global media mania,
gaining traction due to the universal availability of information and easy
communication. Looking back 40-50 years is no problem now. A lot of people must
be looking over their shoulders.
There is good and bad in all this and all of us must be
aware of the dangers of rampant self-righteousness not to mention the changes
to values and morals over the last 50 years. The 1960’s to the 1980’s was a
period of liberal and careless living for our growing population and are we now
paying for it?
Judging things long in the past is a dangerous business because our
viewpoint changes with the times. For example society now approves lifestyles
we found abhorrent 50 years ago yet we pass judgement on events that occurred
in a different age and context. Hypocrisy is becoming commonplace in our new
‘politically correct’ morality.
Our forefathers offer some sage advice on “letting the dead bury the
dead” and staying focussed on the future. “Forgetting those things that are
behind” Paul advises. Our faith is that God is the only Judge who can know the
real truth of matters.
In 1750 Thomas Gray wrote his famous “Elegy in a Country
Churchyard” reflecting on the lives of those who had passed on. Here is a
verse:
Beneath those rugged elms, that
yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a
mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever
laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet
sleep.
Gray paints a poignant word-picture
of the brevity of life and need to appreciate those who were before us. We must
not buy-into the new judgemental attitudes of a convenient morality that is
just a cloak for the same old immorality.
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