135 Age of Temptation

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!"