Today's prayer points in Operation World (mobile edition) have good analysis, including the following:
Massive cultural shifts are occurring right across the continent as Europe finally reaps the harvest sown from the Enlightenment through WWI up to today. Christianity was effectively replaced by humanist philosophies and nationalism. Europe can be regarded not only as post-modern, but also post-rational and certainly post-Christian. It is no accident that the regions of the world where relativism, individualism and existentialism reign supreme are also spiritually the bleakest. This has had several debilitating effects:
- Cynicism is now apparently the "-ism" of choice, as the younger generation increasingly disengages from traditional civic responsibilities, such as politics and community service, and feels alienated from older generations. The elevation of the individual and instant gratification spur on hedonistic, nihilistic lifestyles that often end in dysfunction, emptiness, loneliness and despair.
- Moral uncertainty. With transcendent authority undermined (and the authority of the Bible dismissed long ago), right and wrong are determined by consensual bureaucracy or individual inclination, leading to a morass of relativism.
- Societal disintegration. Traditional values regarding the family, childbirth, marriage, sexuality, sanctity of life and community are being dismantled not just culturally, but also legally. These have severe repercussions in the areas of demographic decline, future economic burdens and psychological and social health. As traditional foundations of healthy societies are deconstructed in Europe, some suggest the term "sociocide", self-aware civilizational suicide, as an adequate description. Pray that Europe's sophisticated societies might turn back from the brink, a firming and working out together the Judeo-Christian values that so profoundly shaped them and gave them the freedoms they now misplace.
