So you’re a radical? A rebel?
God is dead! Gender is fluid!! Life in the womb is merely potential!!! Respect my pronouns!
That is merely the modern translation of the ancient serpent’s hiss.
You are not a radical but a conformist to the spirit of your age. Until you disagree with everyone around you and stare into the spitting maw of your own generation you can not claim to be a radical.
Tell me first how you disagree with everyone around you on even one crucial issue, then you become interesting but if you’re just marinating in and spitting out the same online sources as everyone else you’re not different.
Don’t tell me you’re a radical because you agree with everyone around you but not your parents. It’s easy to reject the morals and principles of those who love you the most and desire your happiness.
Jesus felt the lash of disapproval, have you? Until you’ve heard the titters and cheers brought on by your stumbles, please don’t claim to be a radical.
Real rebels don’t cheer banning or cancelling others. You celebrate sameness. You enforce conformity. In fact, your sameness is your weapon.
There’s no easy way to become a radical. You have to do the work. No easy button. No escalator. You have to take the stairs.
When you’re online, read original sources. Read the darn documents, not the news. News is just truth filtered through the spirit of the age. Unfilter. Make up your own mind.
It’s easy to say you’re a rebel because you don’t believe in marriage or you don’t think having children is an ethical choice. That’s an easy pose. You know what’s hard? Loving another person, committing yourself, and creating life. That’s the big gamble. The ultimate challenge. That’s 52 card pickup. That’s how you find yourself on your hands and knees doing the hard work of building something.
Refusing to love or saying no to children is folding. It’s posing ironically in the bleachers.
The chorus of the living drowns out the whispering wisdom of the dead so read classics, not modern criticisms. The dead have so much to offer. Listen to them.
There is this strange belief right now that each generation evolves and the world is growing kinder, better, more moral on its own. Martin Luther King Jr, said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
I don’t see how that can be argued honestly. I don’t believe it’s true and in fact, it’s a dangerous thought that implies humanity is improving just by the passage of time.
The moment you let go of this belief that humanity is somehow improving, evolving with each generation, evolving into some supernova event where man becomes God, you’re better off. That, in fact, is exactly what the serpent promised. “You shall be like gods.” Until you understand that the arc of justice can be turned into a scythe you don’t get anything.
You see how that thinking plays out. You’re better, smarter, more evolved just by being born later. In that thought lies the death of wisdom. Nobody before you has anything to offer you. That is how civilizations are destroyed.
When I read the Old Testament I see me. When Adam and Eve eat the fruit, I see me. When Cain chooses violence I see me. Because that is the truth of human nature and it is unchanging. There’s not an upgrade. There is no humanity 2.0.
I’ve often wondered how we could step out of the bloodiest century in the history of man and consider ourselves somehow evolved further than our ancestors. There’s at least just as much evidence going the other way.
I don’t understand how so many believe that their generation is so highly evolved that they’re the first to understand that humanity is a cancerous fungus on the planet.
In a way, they’re re-creating Genesis. Man is a fallen creature. Undeserving. On this we can agree. But the world can not forgive. The world can not raise up. Only God can.
Theirs is a worldview without mercy, forgiveness, or grace. They can only tear down civilization. They do not have the words or concepts to build. So while you play with the piece, others will come who know. They will pick up the important pieces and seek to establish something once again. Something that points to God. Something timeless that recognizes wisdom, love, grace, and forgiveness.
