An insanity has fallen upon the West, like a witch’s spell. We have lived with it long enough to know it, understand it, but not long enough to resist it, to undo it. The very stewards of the truth that would remove it have left their posts. They have succumbed to its whispers, become its servants. It has infected the very air and crept along the ground like a mist until it is within us and all about us. We utter its precepts like schoolchildren taught their lines.
Its power lies in being virtues, distorted goodness. If they were vices, they would be rejected. These virtues are proclaimed from the pulpits. They are established in our seminaries. They are the hallucinogen making our own cultural suicide bearable, even desirable. They are virtues, but disordered. They have floated to the surface of a culture once otherwise arranged. They are not alien but new in their order and new in their definitions. They are familiar, like cousins come to claim our inheritance.
Freedom has been with us for some time. It stepped forward a mighty warrior in oppressive times. Yet it is twisted backwards on itself, a freedom from, an independence, a self-rule, suited to fight tyranny. It falters as our leader, though, unable to direct us in a freedom to, a responsibility. It knows no company with love.
Freedom’s companion is equality, a noble virtue that restrains its selfish desires. Equality stretches its arms out wide to the ends of the earth. It smiles upon the poor seeking equality before the Law. It teaches that each individual has intrinsic worth. Yet this equality before blind justice has become an equity seized by ruthless warriors. Its appearance is altered. It is now a new virtue, equity, given a new definition. Equity once meant raising up the oppressed to give them equal justice. It has become the banditry of Robin Hood, taking from one to give preferential treatment to others. It cloaks itself in pious clothing, ‘God is on the side of the poor—but in demanding preferential treatment rather than equal justice. The blind judge is led away; social justice warriors gain the high ground of virtue.
How sinister it its companion, diversity, a virtue for the undoing of a whole civilization. There is no progression, no building, only cancellation. There is no valuation of good, only affirming everything as good. Yet for any who held the keys to the halls of civilization, there is no forgiveness. Repentance before execution is demanded, but no forgiveness, no grace, no mercy, and certainly no appreciation. Multiculturalism, multi-faith, ecumenism, co-existence, no citizenship, no borders, no boundaries, no laws, no punishment—the policies of diversity.
Inclusion, so welcoming a virtue, always wears a smile. It arrives with diversity and equity to deconstruct a civilization. The Dark Riders have come to the Shire. That word, ‘civilization’, is itself rejected—beheaded, shall we say. Everyone speaks instead of ‘culture’, and this is a holy word. There are no longer any failed cultures other than one’s own. All cultures are valued, creative gifts to the human enterprise. Babel is again being built. Multiculturalism is strength. Whisper nothing bad about your neighbour. Everyone’s god is treated as the same god, just not any God claiming to be the only One. To this the last pope himself bowed the knee. The King of England too.
Humility, that great Christian virtue, has become self-deprecation, the tool of deconstruction. All are welcome through our gates, our walls are torn down, our parents murdered. Humility has become humiliation, our own self-loathing. We have mistaken seeing others better than ourselves as a way of service for seeing ourselves as worthless for service. We have nothing to offer our invaders but the throne. God’s grace is not for salvation, His mercy not for forgiveness, His love not for sacrifice. They are no longer necessary. They are dismissed. All are welcome as they are, who they are, with whatever they bring, however they come, unrepentant, unchanged. Someone who needs no saving needs no grace, who has not sinned needs no forgiveness, who is simply loved needs no sacrifice for sin. If Jesus is not exiled, He is made to sit in silence at our inclusive table, humiliated. Why did you die on the cross? Not for our sins. Why did your Father let you die for nothing?
Honour is not achieved through obedience but self-expression. The knight has no code, no chivalry. There is no law but that to oneself. Even nature is outraged. We reject the Creator and set up idols to meet our every desire, and our desires are internally disordered against our Creator. We are mankind, a god to ourselves. We are not slaves to our passions and desires but eagerly pursue them. They define us. We honour ourselves by making our own world. What limit is their to what we can achieve?
We have turned love into desire, joy into pleasure, peace into surrender, patience into affirmation, kindness into guilt for micro-aggressions, goodness into a debt owed to victims, faithfulness into progressiveness, gentleness into riotous rebellion, self-control into self-pleasure. They are the fruit of ourselves, not of the Spirit. Our virtues are distorted and disordered.
What can alter the course of such a fast-flowing river? Not love itself, though the chief of virtues. Not blind faith. Not uncertain hope. We bring order with love, faith, and hope, we correct distortions of true virtue, but only if we know these virtues from God. The love of God, the faithfulness of God, the hope from God correct our moral vision. Every virtue is defined in Christ Jesus. We know the love of God in Christ dying for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5.8). We know God’s faithfulness in bringing righteousness Himself through Jesus Christ even when we were faithless, for He cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2.13). We know a living hope because Jesus has been raised from the dead (1 Peter 1.3).
The sun rises, the mist disappears, and we see the landscape clearly. We were once darkness, but are now light in the Lord (Ephesians 5.8). ‘Awake, O Sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you’ (5.14). For a culture covered in the mists of self-adoration, let us ‘Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim, till all the world adore His sacred name.’
English (US) · 