When Cultures Collapse

 The world “collapse” came to me this morning. It’s not a very positive word, but it is part of life. One dictionary defines collapse as: “to fall or cave in; crumble suddenly.”

I remember looking out from the roof of our apartment in LA during the Rodney King riots and seeing how quickly social order collapsed in our neighborhood. I watched footage on the current riots taking place in Minneapolis where entire neighborhoods are burning. Life as we know it can collapse in a moment. That reality is unsettling.

I remember how quickly things changed in a divided Germany when the Berlin Wall came down. I recall the rapid fall of the old USSR. These changes appeared to take place suddenly, but the ingredients of their collapse were added to the mix over time, long before the physical collapse took place.

We are in a time when some things we thought immovable and forever secure will begin to collapse because they cannot bear the weight of needed change. Each generation hopes that collapse will take place somewhere in the future, not in their lifetime. While no one wants to experience social collapse, our desire to push needed change forward into another generation could be our contribution to an eventual collapse of a culture. 

What can catch us off guard is the suddenness of a cultural collapse when it does occur. A neighborhood can be a familiar and secure home to generations of a family, and in one night, it all burns to the ground as the sad fruit of a riot. Nations given almost omnipotent status can fall in a day. Only God is unchanging and immovable. Everything else on earth is subject to sudden collapse.

Before any more history unfolds, it would be wise for each of us to take time to reorder our thinking and reaffirm where our hope has been placed. Nothing on earth is immune to change and eventual collapse. Only in Jesus can we have true peace and an immovable hope.

“I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16: 33).