How would you explain how a light bulb works to a person born blind? You could hand one to him and let him feel its shape while you explained how its light made it much easier for you to find your way in an otherwise darkened room. He's likely to shrug and hand the bulb back to you in bewilderment.

Christians face a similar problem when trying to explain how the wisdom in the Bible lights their path through life. A society's culture is molded by the predominant belief systems of its citizens. When America's culture was firmly based on a majority belief in Christianity, the social atmosphere was lit by a widespread application of Christian principles. Even non-believers were familiar enough with the written and unwritten laws through constant exposure to adopt Christian-like behavior to comply with the prevailing social custom and laws.

Our society is in increasing spiritual darkness as fewer people learn about the Bible and live by its wisdom with each generation. Other cultures are shining their lights into the mix. To the non-believer, this often appears to be an attractive mix of light, somewhat like replacing a string of pure white bulbs with a mix of different colors.

However, objects seen by this mix are dimmer and distorted, their true colors altered by the prevailing lights near them. This coloration of one's vision is precisely what is intended, but that does not make it an improvement over the clarity afforded by white light giving an undistorted view of the object. Indeed, harmful beliefs may slip into the culture disguised as just another variation in the spectrum of lights.

I signed up for a classical literature email course where links to different works are sent. I remember reading some of them, including "The Canterbury Tales." Somehow, I don't remember them as I studied them in college in the same way that I'm interpreting them now. Why are they considered such a classic that a well-educated person should have at least a passing familiarity with them? Why have they been such a standard of illumination in American college English courses?

My college education took place in the early 1970's, just after the campus protests against the Vietnam war were winding down and after feminism had gained considerable acceptance. I was naive enough that a great many of my views were being shaped by what I was reading and learning from well-educated and seemingly trustworthy individuals. "The Canterbury Tales" seemed a bit coarse at the time, but it was part of a course meant to broaden my education so I suppressed my feelings of squeamishness about their frank sexuality.

After all, we women were supposed to be sexually liberated now. The old taboos had been denounced as enslavement. We were supposed to be free to enjoy sexuality without the old restrictions, free to be more fully human in this major aspect of our lives. I was reading articles about reproductive rights, about how doctors had learned that unborn children were little more than blobs of tissue so that elective abortions in the first trimester simply removed this unwanted tissue before it could develop into an actual human being.

I was a young scientist in training with a strong interest in nuclear engineering. I had been entranced with a TV show called "Star Trek," where the heroic crew went forth into grand adventures in space. They appeared highly principled in their contacts with other races they met, allowing them to develop without interference into what they would choose to become. They were open-minded, tolerant and welcoming of others who would join them in peace when the race developed sufficiently to understand space flight, and presented a vision of what humanity could aspire to as we moved into the next great frontier in the universe.

Interestingly, they were also sexually liberated. That somehow made works like "The Canterbury Tales" easier to swallow, just as it made it easier to swallow the material about abortion being an acceptable medical procedure. This was presented as part of growing up and growing in wisdom, acquiring a mature adult viewpoint on these topics. It was part of mankind's great leap into the future, one where all its problems would be solved through science and understanding and tolerance towards people and their differences.

There would even be an understanding reached with our enemies, although this was not reached with the enemy Klingon race in the original "Star Trek" series. It would be reached in a later series based on this first program in what bloomed into further series exploring this worldview. Even the Klingons were integrated in a starship crew. We just had to follow the dream of universal brotherhood and peace would prevail.

I had grown disenchanted with "Star Trek" before the end of the original series, though. It had presented some excellent stories and a great deal of inspiration about what mankind could achieve scientifically and even morally in being more accepting of people outwardly different from ourselves. However, it began introducing anti-Christian themes more heavy-handedly and noticeably negatively, and I began feeling deceived by their intent.

I didn't even have a particularly strong Christian viewpoint then. It hadn't been hard to abandon Christian principle about abortion in favor of the new "scientific" facts about fetal development and to accept the pro-choice viewpoint as part of my viewpoint being shaped by my college education. It all seemed quite reasonable and well-founded in legitimate medical research. There didn't seem to be any reason to doubt what I was being told by medical authorities. It was time to leave childish fears behind and go boldly into the brave new frontier ahead.

It was therefore quite a shock when my heroes began boldly going into stories where there were more overt swipes against Christianity. Mr. Spock resembling the Devil in an ancient holy book, the ignorant savages who had held it sacred having to be taught about freedom by Captain Kirk because they had forgotten about what that meant when their civilization slid back into savagery after a major plague, that episode was a slap in the face. The episode where a being represented as an ancient Greek god still demanding love and worship from humans held captive and having to be overcome by human wits and technology was the last straw. Mankind clearly wanted to be its own god and we didn't need the old one telling us what to do even if he would love and take care of us, thank you.

"Star Trek" had been a wolf in sheep's clothing, a way to comfortably and subtly introduce unpalatable ideas to smooth their acceptance into a society being shaped by the people who wanted a world like this instead of the Christian world under assault in the 1960's. Some of their ideas, like the integration of a black and female person as a respected and competent member of the crew, were positive ones that actually did agree with the Christian ideal of non-discrimination among different racial groups and the sexes. After all, we're all one race descended from common ancestry. There is no scientific basis for discrimination just because someone is from a different family branch whose members resemble an ancestor who looked outwardly different from your ancestor. Women are as fully human and capable of competency in education and careers as men.

However, that sugar-coated the idea that all belief systems are equally valid and to be tolerated to promote human harmony, an idea which is not only not true but actually dangerous. It ignores the clear evidence of history showing that some human belief systems lead to oppression and even war. The lessons of World War II showing that some belief systems had to be opposed rather than accomodated had been lost barely two decades later by the time of "Star Trek" and the Vietnam war. How had we forgotten that after so many millions of lives had been lost and so much devastation had been wrought over much of the planet?

What changed was the belief that mankind should create its own world based on human wisdom. Decades of intellectual ferment against the Bible and in favor of philosophies and political ideologies had so undermined the Christian underpinnings of the First World countries that competing worldviews were coming to the fore as possible solutions to end further world wars and the miseries accompanying them. Christianity was deemed to have failed, and now mankind would find its own way to solve its problems. Never mind that failing to follow God's ways as they were supposed to be practiced was actually why the problems developed in the first place, let's throw out everything and start over.

And so the population was to be educated into this new worldview gradually by wrapping the necessary principles in sheep's clothing by weaving them into more familiar concepts. Put a competent and respected beautiful black female officer in a futuristic space saga to show what could happen if we would get over our prejudices, but put her in a miniskirt because sexual liberation was part of the show's theme and, after all, sex sells.

The hypocrisy selling sexual promiscuity and abortion as part of women's liberation was subtle, successful, and yet should have been so obvious. The visibility of the Playboy bunny and pornography as part of our overall sexual liberation should have been a dead giveaway, yet it was so cleverly packaged as adult maturity and wisdom that we suppressed our squeamishness at these less savory aspects of the message and tolerated them as part of the overall good of greater freedom.

But did we really gain greater freedom?

What I've been reading in "The Canterbury Tales" is just the same old conflict between men and women caused by irresponsible sexuality. The miseries we inflict on each other haven't been changed by moving them onto a starship and into space. If anything, our scientific advancements have made things worse when pressed into the service of promoting and aiding promiscuity. The reasons for the abortion of unwanted babies haven't changed, only the technology for the procedure has improved. Women still suffer and babies still die. We just do it for noble human reasons and not because of sin . . . or so we say when millions of healthy babies are killed for no reason other than the woman doesn't want to be pregnant and care for the child at the time.

This reasoning is now falling on women and children and even elderly men being denied medical care, even food and water, for scientific reasons. We have become accustomed to viewing doctors as our white lab-coated gods, wiser and more capable of telling us what to do about our fellow human beings. After all, weren't they right about the state of unborn fetuses when we wanted elective abortion for our convenience? So they surely must be right when they tell us that a disabled woman like Terri Schiavo won't suffer when her food and water are removed for thirteen days, aren't they? And if the Bible tells us to relieve the suffering of the weak, including giving them food and cold water, we can ignore that and just believe that starvation and dehydration is a painless, peaceful death, just like we can ignore God's concern expressed towards the unborn as living human beings just like the rest of us.

So we stumble forward in the dimming, multicolored light of our own making, blending different cultures together to create our own nightmarish world for so many of our fellow humans. Those who are well and strong and advantaged can enjoy the carnival atmosphere while their lives are good and the consequences of their behavior haven't fallen upon them yet, ignoring the tragedies mounting around them as someone else's problem that will never befall them or at least will be solved by science or medicine or political power.

God doesn't leave people in complete darkness about His existence and the validity of His Word. As long as there is a chance that the person might be open enough to listen and gain more knowledge of Him, God will continue to supply more light to give him a chance to come to a full knowledge of God and accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. However, if the person refuses to believe the truth about God long enough, God will withdraw His light until He finally does acknowledge the person's choice and withdraws entirely. At that point, it is virtually useless to try to explain anything to him. Without the assistance of God's light, the person will be in such blindness that he simply can't understand what you are trying to tell him.

And the multicolored lights glitter and the horror stories fill the news and yet can't break through the deceptions woven into the stories still pressing the same old lawlessness and its resulting heartbreak to the fore as the cutting edge of a brave new world.