No Longer Values
When God is perceived as so absent that he cannot be confronted directly, we rebel against his surrogate, reality. This rebellion currently takes a number of interrelated forms.
For example: Why is gender dysphoria an epidemic in the West? Because we no longer accord value to the traditional gender roles based in biological reality. Why do we no longer value traditional gender roles? Because we no longer value the continuation of our civilization, to which they are essential. And why do we no longer value the continuation of our civilization? Because of disillusionment at not being able to achieve utopia. This disillusionment, combined with loss of faith in any transcendent order, makes a horribly toxic brew that has come to taint almost every source of food and drink we have.
What can we do about this brew? The answer is two-fold. Negatively, to deal with the utopianism, every step of that stairway to hell has to be rejected—forthrightly, resolutely, and without compromise. Positively, to deal with the loss of faith in any transcendent order, the gospel and the evidence for it must be preached with a power and integrity we have not seen since we Christians, along with many of our own institutions and leaders, started to be compromised by having one foot (at least) on that stairway.
Can this happen? No—not if it depends on human beings. But if God has mercy and sends revival, there is hope. For that, we must work and pray with a desperation we have not yet shown.
Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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more from the online archives
19.4—May 2006
The Culture War Is Between Religious Believers on Both Sides by Howard P. Kainz
18.2—March 2005
On Conservatism as Vexation, Vanity & Near Impossibility by Graeme Hunter
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