THE DOWNWARD TREND AND DECLINE IN EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS

I grew up in the 70s and the 80s. I have a lot of memories. I remember how a lot of things used to be back then, and many of those things I remember with nostalgia.
Coming back home from primary school in the early 80s I was always looking forward to watching my favorite T.V programs and shows on the afternoon kiddies belt. 
I still have vivid memories of programs like, “Danger Mouse”, “G-Force: Guardians of Space”,  “Munch Bunch”, “Fraggle Rock”, “The Great Space Coaster”, and the more educative ones like “Telematch”, “Muppet Show”, and “Sesame Street”.
These were programs my siblings and I would eagerly sit around the tube to watch.
Memories, beautiful memories.

I am grateful for genuinely exciting and interesting  animated series like “Tom and Jerry”. They’ve been around for over 50 years and are still bringing good entertainment into a countless number of living rooms around the world. At least my children are watching a bit of what I watched while growing up.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the majority of content on offer today. 

As I look through what is meant to be programming  for children today I can’t help but shudder at the level of witchcraft, violence, lewdness, perversion and impropriety these programs are heavily laced with. The decline in quality is absolutely shocking.
Diabolism, Wizardry and Black Magic are now designed to look appealing to children. The younger ones get entrapped by “Sofia the First”, and the slightly older ones things like “Harry Potter”

We learnt so many things and still have fond memories of the likes of Sesame Street from which we learnt good diction and early analytical skills. The quality of T.V programming then was indubitable.

For the life of me I can’t put my head around what sort of education much of today’s programming is meant to give my children. 

The evening belt on T.V included interesting sitcoms like “The Jeffersons”, “Good Times”, and “Diff’rent Strokes”. These were shows we’d sit with our parents and watch till it was time to go to bed and retire for the night. 
Now, I look for sitcoms and see things like “Modern Family”, which is deliberately designed to put into the subconscious the “option” of homosexuality and the alternative family as a mainstream substitute.

Then there is a proliferation of what they now call reality T.V shows. “Shows” like “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” and different variants of “Big Brother” are the things that many families now refer to as entertainment. 

Jack Cafferty famously spoke about the travesty of having two girls with “the combined IQ of a box of cereal” (Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian) being role models for young people. 

That’s where we are today.

Seen a number of such “shows” that just made me shake my head. 
Amazing when it’s Snoop Dogg that has to teach us about “Fatherhood.” That’s the quality available to us right now.

I remember when lots of stuff on T.V was good and when it became bad

I also remember the kind of music we would hear coming through my dad’s car stereo, or in the barber’s shop, or the shopping mall. We would go for other children’s birthday parties and it would be the classic Stevie Wonder hit “Happy Birthday” that would be wafting through the air. 
I was recently listening to a radio station whose specialty is classic hits, as they went through each song I felt a wave of nostalgia go over me. Two songs they played were Donna Summers’; there was “Unconditional Love”, the song in which she featured the group called Musical Youth, and the other one they played was “She works hard for the Money.” They brought back lots of memories.
I remembered songs like Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita”, “Like a Prayer”, and “Holiday”.
As the years progressed it dawned on me that there was a point at which the songs considered provocative were songs like Madonna’s “Who’s that Girl?”
Looking at what makes the list of regular tunes today who would ever have thought that?

I was an ardent fan of Hip-Hop, and I remember Kurtis Blow who was the first mainstream rapper. Years later, I remember how Rob Base and D.J EZ Rock came on the scene with their “It Takes Two” album that featured a personal favorite of mine, “Joy and Pain”.
I remember the likes of Run DMC, and  Special Ed who would just rap about their props, their hood and similar trivial stuff. I remember Public Enemy, I also remember lighter yet more melodious rhymesters like  LL Cool J and Heavy D. 

Then I remembered when rap music took a downhill turn with 2 Live Crew that was eventually “Banned in the USA” for their lewd music and objectifying of women.
N.W.A (Niggaz With Attitude) took it off a tangent when they entered a new degree of gangsta rap. They glorified “smoking niggers”, and “f*#%ing bitches”, and all sorts of other lyrics that threw propriety out the window.
The likes of Eazy E, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube became the springboard for a new and more insidious genre of rap music. A genre that saw a journey through the tarot card and Ouija Board using group named “Bone Thugs N Harmony”, and several others like Snoop Dogg (who reportedly attempted releasing an album he called “DogsiNatas”, which is meant to be a reversible anagram or anadrome for “Satan is God”), and Notorious B.I.G and 2Pac (who incidentally was a very decent rapper when he was with Digital Underground).

Forgive my inexorable incursion down memory lane.

I remember when music was good and when it became bad

I also remember growing up, and how my dad loved cars. He had different Mercedes Benz cars and some other European brands. These cars were made in the 70s, were of top quality and were very rugged, they had very strong metal frames as well.
I used to joke then that if any of those cars ran into a brick wall it would smash through the wall and come out on the other side unscathed.
I love automobiles. So I can tell that they don’t make cars anymore like they used to.
Now, there are lots of brittle looking cars moving around. The plastic components of most of them have been increased considerably, while the steel has reduced. One of the reasons no doubt is to reduce gas consumption and carbon emissions.
Whichever reason is adduced one thing is sure…they don’t make them anymore like they used to. The quality is not what it used to be.

I remember when they used to make good cars and when they became crap.

I also remember the electronic gadgets I grew up seeing around the house. The Television sets looked like they were made out of some indestructible material or something, the stereo sets and turntables, the refrigerators, and practically every other appliance seemed like they would last forever. Now I try to contrast them with much of what is obtainable today….
Only recently, the first set of mobile phones were very tough and rugged. You could very easily have your infant drop your Nokia 3310 on the concrete floor and you’d be sure nothing would go wrong with it. That was their level of quality.

Think about what would happen to that iPhone if it dropped on a carpet now.

I remember when they made good and durable phones and appliances and when they became debile and pallid. I remember when they were good and now they are bad.

I can recall very clearly when I went on my first date; I still have vivid memories. I was thirteen years old was a girl I wanted to take out. He gave me one of his ties; over twenty five years later that tie still exists….somewhere.
The suits and winter jackets my dad had in the 70s and 80s were so rugged that most of them still exist in 2016.
I have had “designer” suits I bought within the last ten years that ended up having a tear designed somewhere less than two years after buying them. They just don’t make suits the way they used to.
Going to buy school shoes for my children I couldn’t help noticing the durability of the leather most of them were made with. I compared them with the shoes and sandals I used while going to school. Of course they were of far less quality.

I remember when the quality of shoes and clothes they used to make was enduring, and now they don’t last.

By now the keen observers among you would have noticed where I am heading with this.
There is an unfortunate trend that has pervaded almost every facet of life and aspect of society. That trend is quality products are fast giving way to more substandard ones, leaving us with only memories of “the good old days.”

The most tragic thing about it is that this trend has also pervaded and permeated Christianity today.
There was a time the word “Christian” was synonymous with terms like “Integrity”, “Morality”, “Faithfulness”, “Commitment”, and every other virtue that could ever come to mind. 
It is no longer the case.
There was a time men of the cloth were viewed with unbridled reverence because of their chaste and moderate lifestyles, and their focus on transiting people to higher realms of glory.
That is mostly no longer the case

I remember books by servants of God. Books that made a profound impact on me after I began my journey of faith. Literature from men like A.W Tozer, Andrew Murray, C.S Lewis, Watchman Nee, John Eddison, E.W Kenyon, and Kenneth Hagin. I can’t help but compare them with many of the books that are peddled in mainstream Christianity today.
The difference in quality is clear.
There was a time when many of the messages that came from the pulpits were soul-stirring and placed a deep conviction in the hearts of the hearers. It would seem the only thing that is stirred when many sermons are given today is uncrucified desires. Most are merely intellectually stimulating discourses and pep talks that tickle the fancy. 
Many ministers today are anything but what they ought to be.

Eugene Peterson said, “The Pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are pre-occupied with shopkeepers’ concerns- how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money. Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists…..The only problem is that we are called not to be shopkeepers, but shepherds.”

This story is true for several doing ministry in Nigeria today.

A.W Tozer said, “There Tozer said,

“There has come in modern times a new cross into popular evangelical circles. It is like the old cross, but different; the likenesses are superficial, the differences fundamental….The new cross does not slay the sinner, it redirects him. It gears him into a cleaner and jollier way of living and saves his self-respect…The Christian message is slanted in the direction of the current vogue in order to make it acceptable to the public…The old cross is a symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a human being….The cross made no compromise, modified nothing, spared nothing…We who preach the gospel must not think ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish 
goodwill between Christ and the world. We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum. God offers life but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death.”

This is very sad. The same decline of quality that has percolated through society has also suffused through the primary agency for the redemption and transformation of humanity- the Church.
Many of us are now public relations managers and are taken in by the PC squad. We muddle the truth all in our bid to be appealing to everyone. Political Correctness has swept large portions of the Church in America and its spreading round the globe real fast.

The quality of everything seems to have dropped substantially, tragically also in the areas that matter most. Until we realize this we will never take the necessary steps to correct this rot in our personal experiences. 

I remember when the cross was at the core and Jesus at the centre, and now the things that truly count are on the fringes.