Are things actually getting better?

 

“There are Lies, Damned lies, and Statistics.”

Mark Twain attributed that remark to Benjamin Disraeli, but there is no record of Disraeli’s ever having said it. Perhaps it was one of Mark Twain’s ‘lies.’ A commenter on my previous column, however, has made great use of statistics.

"Things have always been this way!"

 

A 2013 poll asked: ‘Do you feel things are getting better, staying the same, or getting worse?’

Back then, only 42% responded that it was getting worse. 

In a poll of Americans in 2025 that asked the same question, 65% answered that things are getting worse, and only 6% answered that things are getting better.  

 

A commenter on my column about the UN attacking religion said: “The predictions of end times have been going on for 2000 years. The end is eternally nigh. 10,000 years from now, you guys will still be saying it's the end times.”

 

This guy probably doesn’t know it, but he just fulfilled another prophecy about the end times. 

2 Peter 3:3,4 says: 

“In the last days scoffers will come who make a mock at everything--men governed only by their own passions, and asking, "What has become of His promised Return? For from the time our forefathers fell asleep all things continue as they have been ever since the creation of the world."

 The last time I flew, I couldn’t help thinking about the first time I flew…1968, Portland to Honolulu. It was a big deal. I wore my best suit. We walked up to the counter, displayed our tickets, and were ushered onto the plane by a couple of the most gorgeous women I’d ever seen, wearing reassuring smiles and confidence-inspiring Pan Am uniforms. I hung on their every word as they explained how to buckle and adjust the seat belt, and about using the seat cushion as a flotation device in the event of a water landing.

 

There were no x-ray machines, no luggage searches, no metal detectors, no pat downs. There were no announcements about not leaving your bags unattended, no bomb-sniffing dogs; no one asked if I’d packed my bag myself.

 

The last trip was much different. First was all the folderol of getting through security at Sky Harbor… the long zig-zag line, shoes off, belt off, hold your pants up with one hand while taking everything out of your pockets with the other, put your laptop in a separate bin, no liquids more than 3 ounces, all liquids in a separate see-through hold-all… They waved through the guy in front of me who was carrying a 5-foot hickory walking stick with knobs on it. If he was – as I believe – Chuck Norris traveling incognito, he could have used it to take out the entire flight crew and half the passengers. But if I had an 8 ounce bottle of Pepto-Bismol, that was a security risk.

 

But wait, there’s more. Step into the Pro-vision L3 Millimeter Wave Scanner, hands up, (but don’t drop your pants.) My wife’s hearing aid created some sort of alert that prompted a guard to grope her chest while another waived a wand over the back of her head. I waddle over to collect my shoes, belt and flash drive – did I mention my flash drive had to be scanned again? Must be an even bigger threat than the Pepto – then walk barefoot over 50 yards of e coli- and Legionella-infested carpet to get to a bench Homeland Security has thoughtfully provided for humiliated passengers to retie their shoes and try to recover their dignity.

 

During the pre-flight safety briefing, someone remarked that anyone who doesn’t know how to use a seat belt shouldn’t be allowed to fly, and his seatmate replied that (as we were flying from Phoenix to Atlanta) if we had to deal with a water landing we had much bigger issues to think about that using the seat cushion as a flotation device.

 

How did we get to this point? Worse, how did we get to where people seem to think that this is just a temporary inconvenience, or worse still, that this is perfectly normal behavior? 

Does mankind really think things are going to turn around? Do they think that somehow the terrorist threat will be neutralized? Or that science will come up with a simple, non-intrusive foolproof scanner that will be able to take out the bad guys before they can even come to the airport?

 

Perhaps things are NOT going along ‘exactly as they have been ever since the creation of the world.’

 

In 1956 Dad bought a new Chevy. It featured a handle around the ignition, which was marked ‘Lock, Off, On, Start.’ A person could turn the handle to Lock and remove the key, and that was considered a sufficient theft-deterrent. However, you also had the option to turn the handle to ‘Off,’ remove the key and toss it on the dresser, and start the car with the handle alone, as my folks did for the next two years before trading it in for a new car (something else single-income households can't do anymore, but that's a different discussion.)

 

Which begs the question: Why would GM build a car in 1956 that needed no key? If things are no worse today than they were in 1956 why are cars now built with security systems that rival missile launchers? With features that, if you forget to arm them, will arm themselves? Is it because car manufacturers needed more features to sell? Or is it because the rate of car theft went up?

 

The top disciplinary problems in school in the 1940s and 1950s included chewing gum, running in the halls, and cutting in line. Today that list would include teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, teacher abuse, mass-shootings, and suicide. Again, does anyone believe these changes are temporary?

 

Medicine has made amazing advances, but people are sicker than ever. Science has figured out ways to triple and quadruple crop yields, but a billion people still go to bed hungry each night. There are more starving people today than there were in the last great famine.

 

And those of us who are not starving are malnourished: we stuff ourselves with nutrient-deficient Big Macs, trans-fat fries, genetically modified soy protein, estrogen-enhanced milk, and hormone-altered chicken nuggets.

 

People's morals have changed. The novel "50 Shades of Grey" was described as 'soft-porn for women', yet it broke sales records. Some reviews of the movie complained that it wasn't raunchy enough. Movies have to keep pushing boundaries if they want to keep selling tickets to an increasingly jaded public. Bumper stickers that used to bear warm fuzzy messages like "visualize whirled peas" have been replaced by slogans such as "Don’t honk, I’m reloading as fast as I can." And unfortunately, there’s more truth than poetry in the latter. Your grandmother’s world didn’t include phrases like “going postal” or “road rage.”

 

If you do not believe these are the last days, how bad do things have to get to convince you?

 

Please leave a comment. To read another of my columns on this subject click here. 

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Bill K. Underwood is a columnist and author of several books. You can help support this site by following the link here to his books on Amazon.com. 

The UN’s coming attack on Religion, Part 3

In Part One we discussed the unprecedented move of the UN not only in castigating the Catholic Church for hiding its pedophile priests instead of protecting children, but going beyond that and criticizing the Church's doctrines on homosexuality, abortion, celibacy and birth control. That column ended with the question, Does the UN have any teeth?

The UN and religion, Part 2

Is the UN a paper tiger? Does it have any teeth?

It is not an academic question. There will come a time when it will need teeth.

A Texan might describe the UN as 'all hat and no cattle.' Sometimes it seems like they can't agree on when to break for lunch. Since its inception the General Assembly of the U.N. has passed over 14,000 resolutions. Unfortunately, nearly all of them have been “non-binding.”

 So basically they are suggestions.

---

The Security Council of the U.N. is different. Their edicts do have teeth. They have 15 members, 5 of which are permanent members: France, Russia, England, China, and the U.S. The other 10 are filled in rotation by General Assembly members. Only the “Permanent 5” have veto power.

For most of its existence, that has meant deadlock: nearly everything the U.S wanted Russia vetoed, and vice versa. But not always.

In the summer of 1950 the ambassador from the Soviet Union boycotted the UN because of its refusal to admit Communist China. The U.S. used that absence to pass a resolution and, on June 25, the Security Council began sending UN troops to Korea.

The incident prompted the General Assembly to pass resolution 377-A. 377-A states that, in cases where the Security council is deadlocked in a crisis, the General Assembly may issue any recommendations it deems necessary to restore peace and security.

Since that time, the UN has sent blue-helmet-wearing soldiers on 60 missions, 16 of which are still ongoing. 10 years ago, 36,000 military personnel wore the blue helmet. Last year, over 100,000 did.

The UN doesn’t have a standing army. When they need troops, they borrow them from member states. There are two problems with this arrangement:

• Response time: Countries are slow to supply the promised troops – 4 to 6 months, typically; not a good thing in an emergency.
• Loyalty. Borrowed soldiers tend to be loyal to their own country first, to the blue helmet second.

One solution the UN has tried is hiring mercenaries, contractors such as Halliburton or Blackwater. These names may be familiar to you. They have been in the news for their less than ethical record in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places.

There have been instances of these ‘security employees’ kidnapping, torturing, even murdering both combatants and innocent bystanders. When the crimes came to light, their bosses whisked the offenders to another country.

Loyalty is an even bigger problem with mercenaries than with rank and file soldiers. A mercenary’s first loyalty is to his paycheck. His second is likely to his own country. Loyalty to the UN, if it exists at all, would be far down the list.

The UN’s ‘working group’ on mercenaries has, for the past 10 years, been consistently recommending against hiring mercenaries, at least until a mercenary code of conduct is agreed to. Though that issue is still not resolved, they continue to employ mercenaries.

If borrowed soldiers are too slow, and mercenaries are unethical, what is the solution? Many members of the UN believe the solution is for the UN to have its own standing army: soldiers whose loyalty is not to a paycheck, nor to their birth country, but to the UN itself. Watch the news for developments on that front. (Revelation 17:12, 13)

Now, what does any of this have to do with the UN attacking religion?

The UN has a love/hate relationship with religion. They refer to them as FBOs – faith-based organizations.

From the beginning, religion has lent legitimacy to the UN. After World War One, Pope Benedict XV pushed for the creation of the predecessor to the UN, the League of Nations. The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America went so far as to suggest that the League would be a better peacemaker than God’s Kingdom. Since then, various popes have said:

• “If ever an assembly of men, gathered at a critical crossroad in history, needed the help of prayer, it is this Assembly of the United Nations.” – Pius XII
• It is a “duty of all peoples to accept the autonomous force of the United Nations as an international police.” – John XXIII
• “This organization represents the obligatory path of modern civilization and of world peace.” - Paul VI
• The UN is “the supreme forum of peace and justice.” – John Paul II
• “My presence at this Assembly is a sign of esteem for the United Nations.” - Benedict XVI
• “I look forward to continuing cooperation between the United Nations and the Holy See, under the wise leadership of His Holiness Pope Francis.” – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Another reason the UN loves FBOs is that they are better suited for humanitarian aid. They are often first on the scenes of disasters with medical care, food and water… the UN simply doesn’t do anything fast enough to be useful in an emergency.

But: the UN also hates FBOs. They refer to governments based on a religious text, such as the Koran, as “theocracies,” and they don’t mean that in a good way. They mean that theocracies such as Iran, as opposed to Magna Carta-based governments, are radical and difficult to reason with. In the last year, the UN’s news agencies have pointed out that:

• Christians are slaughtering Muslims in Central African Republic
• Muslims are slaughtering Christians in Pakistan
• Sunni Muslims are slaughtering Shia Muslims in Iraq
• Muslims and Catholics are slaughtering each other in the Philippines
• Buddhists and Muslims are slaughtering each other in Myanmar
• Muslims and Coptic Christians are slaughtering each other in Egypt

A recent study showed that fully one third of the world’s governments, comprising 75% of the world’s population, severely restrict religion. Worldwide, religious hostilities are up 24% since 2011.

Another reason the UN hates FBOs: FBOs meddle. If a special interest group can’t get the laws they want at a national level – issues such as abortion rights, birth control, same-sex marriage, drugs, stem cells – they dub themselves an FBO and take their case to the UN.

In 2008, after studying the problem for several years the UN created an agency called Global Interfaith Network for Population and Development that brought together over 400 different FBOs.

It’s getting out of control. And, as noted in Part 1 of this series, pendulums always swing back. Some in the UN are beginning to see that their faith in Faith-Based Organizations was misplaced. They argue that “religion is too contentious and should not be involved in public life,” and cite the many UN representatives that have been killed in the Middle East, Africa and other trouble spots in the name of “religion.”

There’s another UN-linked threat to religion: The growth in funding for FBOs is threatening the NGOs – non-governmental organizations, such as Red Cross, Red Crescent, and women’s rights groups, that have had influential and lucrative partnerships with the UN. As the FBOs start impacting the NGOs pocketbooks, we should expect to see NGOs lobbying for the UN to turn a cold shoulder to religion.

Finally, the latest accusation is that more than 70% of the NGOs and FBOs working with the UN are ‘Christian.’ So now Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish organizations are pressuring the UN to correct what they perceive as a bias toward Christian programs.

You can almost see how one or more of these issues might finally drive the Secretary General of the U.N. to step up to the microphone and order the destruction of religion, similar to what I fictionalized in my novel Resurrection Day.  

Okay, so maybe it won’t happen exactly like that. But, as we’ll see in the final part of this series, it will happen…

 Read Part One of this series.

Read another of my columns about the U.N.

Check out my latest novel: 

 

Bill K. Underwood is the author of several novels and one non-fiction self-help book, all available at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books.