UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES

While it is relatively easy to see or even to describe the times, it is another thing to understand the times. It is not that many are not trying to comprehend the tremendous reversals in our worldview that we are observing around us. Even though these reversals are not new, they are still perplexing. They seem to represent the rejection of everything that had once been valued. Let me just give you a few examples:

·       JUSTICE had involved punishing the perpetrator his crimes. Now, it has become a matter of shaming according to sex and skin color.

·       HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY is denied. We are merely the product of our nature and nurture. Freewill is frequently denied. The idea that all criminal behavior is the result of a lack of love and absence of therapy has taken its place.

·       ISLAM is indulged and touted as the “religion of peace” despite its teachings, history, and its present-day mass-murders and sexual assaults across the West.

·       CHRISTIANITY has been consistently maligned and repressed in the schools, media, social media, and among almost all the power brokers, even though it has served as the basis of Western Civ. Even now Third World scholars are studying it to learn the secrets of its success.

·       SEXUALITY had been a matter of biological inheritance. Now, it is a matter of choice, even for pre-teens.

·       CHILDREARING had been the domain of the parents. Now, the State is increasingly co-opting this domain, bringing in drag-queens to teach children contrary to the values of their parents.

Meanwhile, the socio-political polarization is growing alarmingly and is increasingly characterized by hatred and violence. I asked a gay friend if he understood what was behind this growing divide. He too was perplexed but offered that it seemed as if his own leftist subgroup was merely in opposition to everything that the other side believed in. Although he didn’t mention “rebellion,” this was the word that came into my mind.

The Bible also recognizes this perplexing reversal of values:

• “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!” (Isaiah 5:20-21)

It is noteworthy that those who call evil “good” regard themselves as wise. How can we explain such self-deception? Jesus explained it as a hatred of the truths of God:

• “And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved. But he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, that they have been wrought in God.” (John 3:19-21)

The truth exposed by the light is a threat. It exposes us and reveals who we really are, not the good and wise people we want to believe that we are. We run from the light, because we are aware that there is something radically wrong with us and don’t want it exposed. Our feelings of guilt and shame reinforce this awareness.

This revelation is so threatening that we are engaged in an unending quest to validate ourselves in the face of our invalidating feelings. We feed ourselves with positive affirmations and surround ourselves with true believers, but these strategies are only capable of covering the problem - that we are sinners who need the Savior. However, we have rejected the Savior:

• “Therefore as the tongue of fire devoureth the stubble, and as the dry grass sinketh down in the flame, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust; because they have rejected the law of Jehovah of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.” (Isaiah 5:24)

They have rejected the only One who can heal them. Therefore, they must now become the healer, but how? By convincing themselves that they are wise, good, and deserving, at least more deserving than others, those who abide in the Words of their Savior.

Because they have rejected God’s gift of righteousness and wholeness, they are compelled to establish their own righteousness or value. This had been Israel’s problem:

• For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to [God’s] knowledge. For being [willfully] ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. (Romans 10:2-3)

Why had Israel been ignorant? Because, as others, they had suppressed and rejected the truth and Word of God (Romans 1:18-20). However, this did not free them from the demands of God’s righteousness. Why not! Because His righteous and moral standards had been planted within them (Romans 2:14-16). Consequently, they still needed to fulfill God’s righteousness in order to feel at peace.

How do they accomplish this? Through their idealistic dreams and by convincing themselves that they are more deserving than others. But how? They convince themselves that the moral standards under which they had once unsuccessfully tried to live were all wrong and even supported the malevolent status quo, and that their progressive moral standards were far superior. Besides, they would be ready to sacrifice themselves for their ideals, something that the wimpy Christians were unwilling to do, according to their self-serving assessments.

This would enable them to feel more righteous and deserving than others. However, instead of serving moral truth and others, their progressive ideals would now serve and glorify them instead of those who they claimed to help.

However, such moral acrobatics requires continual maintenance. They would have to convince themselves that what is obvious ain’t necessarily so. Christians might look good, but the progressive must remind himself that they are really racist, sexist, and homophobic bigots. He must also convince himself of the inherent guilt of all white males who have silently profited from this “racist system.”

Even though the progressive is also white and privileged, establishing his self-righteousness by becoming an “ally” of the “oppressed” proves to be of greater value than anything else.

To reinforce his righteous credentials, he defends his agenda with fundamentalistic zeal. He cannot allow Christian values to get a foot into the door. Instead, all of the “oppressive” old ways must be resisted in favor of the progressive. Everything about the old has now become either immigrant-phobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic nazis, and we have become “the most genocidal nation that has ever existed,” as one college student had informed me.

Meanwhile, they have convinced themselves that they are the protectors of truth, peace, and love, even as they resort to violence and intimidation to silence opposing views. However, the Light is ever on the prowl.