Calling Out the Idols: Part 2
“First you must say, black is white. Then you must believe black is white, then you come to know that black is white and finally, you deny that there was ever a difference between black and white.”
George Orwell, 1984
Once a society denies what is obviously true, it slips and falls. They become victims of their own foolishness. Such was the dystopia experienced by 1984’s main character, Winston Smith. He lived in a world made of lies, but he rebelled because reality has its own voice. When you are hoping for a utopia, first you hear only the whispers of reality. After many disappointments that same voice speaks clearly. Finally, in your own agony, it shouts at the top of its lungs. We could call it Reality’s Revenge. It is a process, it seems gradual and slow, then as it gains momentum, you notice the change and suddenly, it’s an avalanche. The idol of skepticism, agnosticism, and atheism exemplified in the myth of religious evolution and moral progress led to a denial of what was obvious, and they chose to worship other humans, avatars, and creation itself. They rejected revelation, they reasoned without revelation which always leads to foolishness. So, God did what he does:
“So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired.”
Romans 1:24a NLT
In large part, this has already happened with a simple majority of Americans. God has not forsaken us. He has however, given us our head and said, “Ok, have it your way.” Our society has agreed to live for desire rather than obedience to his laws and principles. It is often said to follow your heart; this is terrible advice particularly because:
“the human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.”
Jeremiah 17:9,10 NLT
God puts good desires in us. That is confirmed by Paul’s description in his letter to the Philippians (2:13), “…God is working in you giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” However, when left to our own devices, when we have decided not to listen to God, he lifts his hand from our shoulder and the decline begins. The idol of human desire is an abyss of decadence that is degrading to the soul.
“As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies.”
Romans 1:24b NLT
This could be called the sexual revolution. In George Orwell’s 1984, The Ministry of Truth building was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete which soared up, terrace after terrace, 300 meters into the air. There were the three slogans of the Party:
1. War is Peace
2. Freedom is Slavery
3. Ignorance is Strength
“What?” You want to grab your head between your hands and shake it. You say to yourself, “That is nonsense! It's upside down and backward. Have they have lost their minds?” Everyone knew it was nonsense, until they didn’t. When you see a riot on television and the commentator tells you it is peaceful, you shout, “What?” Yet if you hear and see it enough you finally say, “Maybe there is some truth in that.” That is how revolutions begin and that is how Lucifer changed society’s mind about sexual behavior.
I didn’t go to Woodstock, but that was my generation. The 1960s were tumultuous, it was a decade of sexual permissiveness, free love, unabated public nudity, increased violence in movies, and the popularity of LSD and mood-altering drugs. Traditional morality was being challenged in music and literature. Rebellion was in the air, protests on college campuses and marches in the streets were normative. There was everything from the violent Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, and student rebellions to Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. There was school desegregation, bussing, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, The Fair Housing Act, and the 1960s closed with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. There were riots in Chicago at the Democratic Party National Convention and Richard Nixon was elected President. The Vietnam war was in full swing and it was unpopular. The 1960s spilled over into the early 1970s with the Watergate Scandal and the resignation of President Nixon. When Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, city desk writers at the Washington Post, broke the Watergate case they became national heroes and won the Pulitzer Prize, and America lost its innocence.
From my perch as a high school student, then a college student, and then as a newly married young man, I was a bystander to all this. I became a Christian in 1967 at a small Christian university and then joined an evangelical student organization. The sexual revolution happened all around me, but not to me. The church was clearly a bystander and was not penetrated in any noticeable way in the 1960s, through the middle of the 1970s.
About this time, I was given a bible with a cover that proclaimed, “Revolution Now!” Our goal was to fulfill the Great Commission by 1976 in the United State and in the world by 1980. We went about this mission with all our beings and with complete sincerity. It is fair to say that much good was done, great numbers heard an abridged gospel, millions world-wide prayed the sinner’s prayer; only God knows what really happened. If the Great Commission was fulfilled, the result didn’t include societal change, or a culture of higher moral values. Society has become more morally confused, its institutions more corrupt, its leaders more feckless. Presently, the national character is collapsing. Truth as a serious category has collapsed. The only place people want the truth is when they walk into their bank. A society built on desire is like a house built on the sand.
It has become like Isaiah’s lament:
“What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.”
Isaiah 5:20 NLT
Those of you current on your Karl Marx might recall the term false consciousness. It goes something like this … You may think you’re happy in your home, with your little family, singing in the shower, mowing the grass, going to work every day, having dinner at 6:00 pm every night, but you’re really not. Someone has just taught you that. Actually, you are unhappy. Your life should be better. It is false consciousness; it is a form of mental illness. You may think only women can have babies, but that is just a social construct. Men who pretend to be women can beat actual women in a foot race, boxing, arm wrestling, and hairy chests. The glorious thing is that it’s all fair, and people don’t think these confused men are cheating. It’s all so glorious. The welfare state is not a trillion-dollar con; it has worked, and we need more of it. If you appease rioters, don’t arrest them; let them go with no bail and they will stop it because down deep they just want what’s best for humanity. They won’t take it as weakness and do it again.
When you exercise your constitutional right as a woman to terminate a pregnancy, that goblet of flesh inside of you is not a helpless innocent human being; it is a potential life that would have hindered or threatened your freedom. Don’t worry, it is not a person who would have called you mommy, brought great joy to your life, grabbed you around your neck and said, “I love you mommy, I love you.” It wasn’t a loving son or daughter who would have taken care of you in your old age and given you grandchildren. That is just false consciousness.
We are at that stage in American society where many leaders in politics and media are asking us to deny reality. Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes. The most grievous denial of reality presently being perpetrated is that there is nothing mentally wrong with Joe Biden, the democratic party’s nominee for President. I know I will be accused of getting really political here, but actually I am not. We all know that he is suffering from dementia. It is obvious, and no one is allowed to bring it up as a serious issue. It seems to me that his family and his party have a responsibility to run a candidate who is capable of being President. The desire for power, however, has flattened any serious effort to remedy this problem. If he is elected, he is President of all the people. He will be the most powerful man in the world and our country, and our lives will be in his hands. You may feel just as concerned about Donald Trump for other reasons. But it can be clearly seen that one man is in dementia and one is not. What the democratic party may not appreciate is what might be called Reality’s Revenge. When people vote, they may believe their lyin’ eyes.
We are living in a world that, in some significant degree, God has lifted his hand of guidance and protection from. He has abandoned us to the shameful things our hearts have desired and to do shameful things with each other’s bodies. We have traded the truth of God for a lie. Truth is temporarily set aside. Let’s see where it leads us.
