Am I Living in a Dystopian World?

Thinking about the future of religion and humanity

Sometimes I feel as though I’m living in a dystopian movie…

All the things I thought could never happen have happened. All those things I thought could only exist in my imagination already exists in the world I’m living in.

Let’s begin with the Coronavirus pandemic.

Who would ever imagine that we all needed to wear a mask as we try to live our daily lives? There was a time when you had to take your temperature just to enter the mall. There were even authorization papers and IDs issued just so you could go out of your house.

Another dystopian characteristic present today is the destruction of the environment.

Along with the continuous damage being suffered by nature, we experience various disasters and calamities. Who knows until when we could breathe fresh air without paying for it? Will there be a time when we may need to explore outer space because we’ve already destroyed our earthly home?

I can hardly see a futuristic movie these days that doesn’t present a grim image of the future.

It is usually one where poverty is rampant, pollution fills the air and people walk as though they’re mere machines without an immortal soul. And that doesn’t even include robots and AIs taking over the world.

Are we beginning to live in a dystopian world?

When it comes to religion, particularly Catholicism, I feel the same thing is also happening. People are beginning to forget about the supernatural as they give more reliance on material wealth and scientific knowledge.

Not that religion is against science. But more and more people are beginning to rely on technology alone.

Meanwhile, Christianity is being being reduced to something you have to practice privately.

Aside from those places where you can’t even pray in public, there is a growing stigma against those who continue to live their Christian beliefs.

To be secular today is to be normal.

To practice your faith is to be weird. If you’re not careful, you can also be tagged as a hypocrite who is judgmental of other people.

Tomorrow’s children

One day, the children who would grow up as the new generation of adults may no longer know what being a Catholic is all about. I can imagine someone discovering it for the first time. How would one feel upon seeing a Catholic mass being held?

I hope that if that day ever comes, the person who discovers the Catholic Church may find in it a refuge from a world that no longer recognizes God.

I hope that person discovers that there is more to life than the earthly pleasures and pursuits the world has taught her children.

May those who discover the Catholic Church find in it the truth they have been looking for, the hope that they have lost and the faith that can draw them closer to God.

Yes, may they learn there is a God who loves them. A God who loves them enough to die for them so that they may have eternal life!

“The Catholic Religion, He knew well enough, gave the only adequate explanation of the universe; it did not unlock all mysteries, but it unlocked more than any other key known to man; He knew, too, perfectly well, that it was the only system of thought that satisfied man as a whole, and accounted for him in his essential nature. Further, He saw well enough that the failure of Christianity to unite all men one to another rested not upon its feebleness but its strength; its lines met in eternity, not in time.”
― Robert Hugh Benson, Lord of the World

“For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo.” - Lois Lowry, The Giver

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