Sweden Traverses the Arc

Devolution Before Our Eyes

We were reading a piece on Sweden recently that was entitled, "Sweden Lowers Intelligence Requirement For New Police Officers".  Hardly a promising outlook for Sweden, one would have thought.  However, the body of the article contained some information far more compelling--it offered an explanation as to why Sweden is needing more police officers and so has been considering lowering the entrance requirements..

In the forty years since the Swedish government decided to turn Sweden into a multicultural society, the rate of violent crime, and rape in particular, has soared to unprecedented levels. According to the Gatestone Institute, Sweden is now number two on the global list of rape by country, hitting 66.5 rapes per 100,000 people in 2012, second only to the tiny south African nation of Lesotho.

In 2014, some 6,620 rapes were reported in Sweden, up from 421 reported to the police in 1975, an increase of 1,472 per cent. Violent crime meanwhile has risen by 300 per cent in the same period. [Breitbart London]

If you are wondering which country sits at the top of the list of countries with a rape culture, to which Sweden has become a fast-following second, it is Lesotho, the land-locked state within South Africa.

The politically correct frame adorning most commentary upon Sweden is that it has achieved socialist paradise.  It is offered as a model of Progressivism, a blueprint for how gradualist, Fabian socialism can achieve the best outcomes possible for human society.   Socially liberal in almost all human lusts, wants, and desires, Sweden is also economically prosperous in the sense that one can live quite comfortably without working a day in one's life--so generous are the welfare transfer payments.  There appears to  be little lacking.

Yet, crime is rising.  Rape in particular.
 Maybe the Swedes have announced the abrogation of original sin somewhat prematurely.  Whilst we are reasonably sure that there has been a recent increase in rape and violent sex attacks since Sweden opened its borders to economic migrants from the Muslim world, that does not explain how rape has become part of popular culture throughout the nation.  Sixty-six rapes per 100,000 people in 2012.  That's the second highest rate of rape in the world.  The incidence of rape has risen by over 1400 percent in just under 40 years--in other words, in one generation.  Violent crime in general has risen threefold over the same period.

If something is rotten in the state of Denmark, the malodorous whiffs from Sweden are overpowering in comparison.  What might be causing this regressive devolution?  Here are some suggestions.

Firstly, sexual libertinism--for which Sweden is infamous, or famous, depending upon one's world-view--does not deliver what it promises.  The promise is freedom and liberty.  The reality is progressive enslavement to lust.  At root, sexual libertinism is narcissistic.  The "me" demands that desires and lusts ought to be respected and since such demands are also "human rights", ought to be serviced by others.  It represents the very opposite of self-control, self-government, and self-mastery.  It represents the inversion of a more Christian social ethic which puts others before self.  You cannot build a lasting society on a social ethic of "Me, Myself, and I", served up with lashings of smug custard.

Secondly, the Christian Church in Sweden has withered away to virtually nothing.  Sweden opted for state financing for the Church.  Whilst this was doubtless seductive to Christians and churches initially (after all, think about how much "good" could be done with all that state money), the spiritual reality is that the Church of Jesus Christ in that country has morphed into a social service agency under the effective control of a secular state.  State funding has always had a devastating effect on the spiritual reality and vibrancy of the Church.  In the longer arc of Sweden's history this will have had a notorious influence.  Swedish society and communities will have lost out on the leavening effect of the Kingdom of God.  The vacuum will have been filled by the only alternative on offer: the raging lusts of the Libertine, tacitly endorsed and encouraged by the secular State.

It is ironic that Sweden has suffered under the more recent tender mercies of randy Islamic men, patrolling in predatory gangs, forcing themselves on women.  "They dress like whores; we treat them like whores" seems to be the idea.  But this ethic of "Me taking what I want from You" appears to be consistent with Swedish culture as it has developed over recent generations.  There is a strong affinity between the culture of Islamic rape and the Swedish culture of rape.  Both represent the ethics of the narcissistic Self.

The fruit of the Kingdom of God, versus the Kingdom of Man: take your pick.  Here is the Bible's description of the Kingdom of Man--of which Sweden is a developing exemplar:

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. (Titus 3:3)

And here is the Bible's description of the Kingdom of God, which Sweden once more closely represented:

 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (Titus 2: 11-14)

Two kingdoms, two realities, two outcomes.  Sweden has traversed the arc, transitioning from one into the other.  The 1400 percent increase in the incidence of rape in a generation is a certain and sure evidence of the  direction and velocity of movement through the arc.  Once Sweden more closely reflected the description offered in Titus 2: 11-14; now Sweden is devolving rapidly, conforming to the description given in Titus 3:3.