April 11, 2007

Our increasingly secular culture fails to acknowledge the consequences of living without God. Yesterday’s London Daily Telegraph ran a large headline story called “a generation betrayed” which graphically makes the point.

A “lost generation” of unemployed young people is costing the economy billions of pounds a year in benefits, youth crime and educational under-achievement. The percentage of the English population not in education, employment or training is more than double that of Germany and France and is still growing.

The rising tide of youth crime is costing one billion pounds for year. For the dollar equivalent, double the pound amount.

People need a reason to live. In previous generations they found it in a close relationship with god. But secular England and the Church of England which mostly addresses trivialities and not the substance of the scriptures, long ago abandoned the faith. If the church has lost its reason for being, what can it say to people who have lost theirs? Meanwhile, the Muslim threat advances. They know what they believe and they want to impose it on Europe and then America.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.