We live in censorious times. “We used to punish bad actions,” Matthew Parris wrote in The Spectator last week, “not thoughts.” And he had an interesting theory as to why that had changed: an increasing decline in a belief in God.
Parris, a non-believer himself, noted that in former times there was a general belief that God was watching over everyone, and knew what was in everyone’s heart. This was disconcerting, to say the least, but it relieved people of the task of judging others. When people did or said things of which we disapproved, we could let them go, comfortable in the knowledge that, in the end, God would deal with them in His own way. “Not my business,” Parris points out, was a phrase that one used to hear quite often. Not so today. Now, everything is everyone’s business. We have all become God, judging our fellows and, often, bringing punishment down on them.
