Do You Validate?

There's a shopping center there and you need to run in and pick something up. The parking, however, is regulated. You could end up paying for parking. But that's okay. As long as you visit a business there, the parking is free. You will likely ask the person behind the counter of the store you go to, "Do you validate?" That's because validating a parking ticket means you won't have to pay.

There was a time when people wanted absolution. The conversation in the confessional at the Catholic church begins with, "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned" and ends with "Ego te absolvo"--I absolve you. Christians offer "forgiveness of sins" in getting right with God. And the standard mantra is "To err is human." That was then. This is now. It is no longer about forgiveness or absolution. It's about validation.

Validation is the process of establishing the legitimacy of something. It is a sanctioning of something. It is the opposite of absolution. Absolution says, "That was wrong, but we'll make it right." Validation says, "It's right and anyone who disagrees is wrong." It is the process that begins with the assumption that not everyone agrees this is valid and then sets out to demonstrate that it is.

People are, for the large part, no longer seeking absolution. They're seeking validation. If you love someone, you will validate them. That means you will assure them that everything questionable about their lives--their feelings, their ideas, their morals, their penchants, their foibles, their dreams and desires--are all good, at least with you. This version of validation is "non-judgmentalism". It seeks to only speak positively. It says, "You are not bad or wrong or crazy."

That appears to be the point with the push for redefining marriage to include couples of the same sex. Estimates put the marriage rate of homosexuals in Massachusetts after it became legal at under 17%. In the Netherlands, where it has been legal for a long time, the rates are somewhere between 2-6%. Nowhere near the 51% of adults (which is a marked decline from, say, 1920 when it was 92.3% or 1960 when it was 72%). This drive to overthrow traditional marriage (and it doesn't matter if you agree with me about the definition of the term, "marriage"--everyone recognizes that it is a change to "traditional marriage") in favor of this newer version appears not to be about getting married. It appears to be more about validation. "We'll call what we do 'marriage' and that will tell everyone that our lifestyle is valid--good, acceptable, valued."

It is the point of the whole new definition of "tolerance". Once it was allowing to continue that with which you disagreed. Now it is the demand to embrace that with which you disagree. It's not wrong; it's good. We need to validate what we deemed wrong. (Oddly enough, no one is allowed to validate Christianity for disagreeing with others on moral issues.)

I think the motivation for validation is the same as the drive for absolution. We know there's something wrong. One version says, "Okay, it's wrong. How do I make it right?" The other version says, "Declare it right and I won't have to think it's wrong." It is the latter that is growing in popularity. And the former is being called "hate speech". Sad that God's Word would be classified as "hate speech", sometimes by those who classify themselves as God's followers.