Age of Temptation

July 1, 2009
They used to say that the hardest words to say in any language were "I'm sorry," and
that was certainly true during a time when relationships still played a more significant
role in our society, and for a lot of people it may still be so.

But from the increasing incapability I'm observing in my fellowmen to hold or conduct a
relationship successfully, or, in many cases to even show a glimpse of interest in having
one, I'm beginning to suspect that the hardest words in this new age of Temptation,
where the acquisition of possessions, position and diversion seem to play a much
superior role than other human beings to deal with, perhaps the hardest words to say
right now are: "No, thank you!"

We figure that we have to take anything that life offers us.

After all, coincidence has become our god, along with luck, since our whole existence is
based on the theory that we're one lucky shot in an innumerable amount of universes
where life happened to find all its necessary ingredients, and so, if luck happens to hand
us an opportunity, we tend to grab it without giving the consequences much thought.

Maybe it's different in your part of the world, but that's what I'm observing life to be like
for much of the younger generation in Germany at the onset of the 21st century.
Of course, there are always those who seem to be a bit more mature and responsible
than the majority of their peers, but I even observe it with some of us more mature ones,
who ought to know better:

There seems to be that in-built mechanism in us that makes us tend to accept a

tempting offer, rather than to decline, even if whatever it is we're getting to enjoy may not
all be that good for us in the long run, or the nature of the opportunity may turn out to be
questionable.

Prudence has gone down the drain in this, our age, in which a large deal of our
supposed enlightenment consists of advertisement. After all, you must be enlightened if
you can come up with such sophisticated commercials full of high-tech trickery worth
millions of dollars, as we do, just in order to sell other people our goods!

Well, I've already shared my thoughts on the difference between advertisement and
genuine enlightenment, I think.

But it always seem to get back around to it.

We're being offered so many things from so many different sides, we just about accept it
our god-given duty to accept at least some of them.

That probably shows one difference in strategies between the original advertizer and the
Guy he's trying to imitate: the Original Creator. While God's slogan is, "Quality, not
quantity" (as in "many are called, but the chosen are few,") His opponent goes by the
opposite credo. He figures the more garbage he can dish out, the more of it we're bound
to swallow, ruining our taste for quality and rendering whatever discernment we once
might have had for what's the real thing and another cheap fake useless once and for
all.

That's because he's getting ready to present us with the ultimate temptation of all, the
greatest fake of all times, his plastic utopia and wonderful new world order, including its
new, cashless economic order that all the bigshots are crying for right now, with himself
at the top, and a system definitely too perfect to be real, and from the looks of it, a lot of
people are going to fall for it the way Eve did when he pulled his first stunt 6000 years
ago...

We may not have evolved, but adverisement and propaganda have, and all for a good
reason. We're all being prepared for the hour of temptation, "which shall come upon all
the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth" (Revelation 3:10), and blessed will be
those who have learned to say these hardest of all words, "No, thank you!"