(Click the photo.) The world's population collapse isn't "going to happen"... it's already here. The article "You can’t stare down reality: population collapse has begun" explains that many people dismiss warnings about the world running out of people. They attack the messengers as sensationalist gloom-and-doomers or pronatalist fanatics who care nothing for the environment and would force procreation by religious edict.

But by 2100, populations in some major economies will fall by 20 to 50 percent, based on UN projections. This includes Europe, North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, India, the Middle East and North Africa. The global support ratio of working-age people to senior citizens was 9.7 in 1997. Today it's 6.5, projected to be 3.9 by 2050. In "Global North" countries it is 3.9, projected to be 2.0 by 2050. Seniors will account for a quarter of global consumption by 2050. While we should continue combating the birth dearth, let’s face it: our reality is a decreasing fertility and a youth deficit that will sharply reduce the working-age component of societies across the globe. This is not sustainable for modern society: it is collapsing.

What accounts for this birth dearth? Our ARC-News lead articles in the Nov. 30 and Dec. 14 issues of last year provided several reasons: The first is the "Age of Reason" in the West that exalted human rationality and its ability to analyze and control the natural, material world. Some call this the "Age of Enlightenment" but it should more aptly be named the "Age of Endarkenment" because, as St. Paul wrote – "although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:21-22).

Second is the industrial age, which ushered in the ability via steam engines, electricity, and oil products to vastly expand mankind's ability to produce material goods. This caused us to further change our focus from the world as God's creation to a world that is just waiting to be exploited for mankind's material gain and comfort. Education became completely secularized. We now have homes with central heating and cooling, kitchens full of modern appliances to make life easier, cars and smoothly paved roads to drive on, and unprecedented wealth per capita. But we've also polluted our air with petrochemical exhausts, our waters with microplastics that cause infertility, and our land with radioactive and poisonous chemical waste.

Get the full article on our ARC-News blog at blogspot.com.

Agape Restoration Society has helped Vision Complex Orphanage and School in Bunda, Tanzania with seed money for their rice crops to feed the kids, a well and pump to provide water for their vegetable gardens, solar panels to power the pump, a computer and large-screen TV so the kids can participate in our online "Morning Prayers" (go to Friday's recording to see Simon and some of the kids!), and funds to start building their own Agape Restoration Community (ARC). They now have over 70 orphans and village children to feed, clothe, provide medical care, shelter and education for.

Many of the 20 new kids are village children whose parents have witnessed and even helped with this "Expanding the Vision" project and now want their children to attend school there. A generous donor in Germany has provided enough money to complete the down payment for a "Bajaji" three-wheel electric vehicle so Vision Complex can transport these kids the four miles from the village to the school and back, with the parents paying for this transportation so the remaining balance for the Bajaji can be paid off. Simon needs $300 each month to pay the remaining $1,200.

Now they need sponsors to provide the funds for support of the additional orphans and school uniforms for these new students: here's a photo of the new group. Please go to "new kids" (starting with Isabella) to see their individual photos and support one of these new kids!

Building the ARC

You might ask – "Do I look like Noah? Why would I want to Build the ARC, anyway?" Here's why: my wife and I were missionaries to Russia for 17 years. Secular materialism has led to the de-Christianizing of the world: in its extreme form of communism, about 250,000 church buildings in Russia were destroyed or confiscated and turned into museums, breweries, factories or "Lenin Houses of Culture" during the Soviet era. Secularization worldwide continues to lead many people to become dependent on the state for answers to all their problems, diminishing the role of the church in society.

Poor, disabled, and elderly Christians must free themselves from the idea that an unnamed "they" – meaning someone else: the government or "the rich" or other Christians – ought to pay to build wheelchair-accessible housing and new churches. But the secular state isn't going to do it, the rich generally aren't very charitable, and there isn't enough money in all the Christian churches and mission organizations in the whole world for these organizations to build enough of such buildings so that our country and other countries can again be called "Christian nations."

Almost all Christians, however, including poor, disabled, and elderly people, have a place to live, so Christians already have the wealth needed to carry out the task of re-Christianizing their countries, in the form of their current homes. This is a "DIY" (Do It Yourself) project: by exchanging their current home for a home in an ARC – an Agape Restoration Community, they are providing a wheelchair-accessible building where a church can gather to worship and fulfill its God-ordained ministry to "the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind." We need to restore the spirit of agape-love and voluntary mutual self-help communities, then simply train and organize ourselves to just do it! We have the training and organization ready to go!

How do you start building it? First, you gather people who are committed to living together as Christians in community. In his book The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher describes the immense pressure in today's world to force moral and ethical compromise upon Christians and tells how to apply The Rule of St. Benedict to the Christian life not in a monastery, but striving to lead a life of spiritual discipline and genuine Christian community in the midst of a secularized society.... [read more...]