Highway to Hell

I've said it before. We are not where we are on a short term jaunt. We've worked hard to get where we are.

"Stop it, Stan, and make sense."

Okay, I'll try. Bible-believing Christians (and most rational people) understand that marriage is defined as the lifelong union of one man and one woman for the purpose of procreation (family) and mutual support. (I included "most rational people" in that because it has been the definition for all of history until the 21st century. It's not just "a Bible thing".) We have arrived, now, at a different place, where marriage is defined as ... well ... an arbitrary relationship between an arbitrary number (two) of arbitrarily-gendered people. (All others -- animal, vegetable, or mineral -- need not apply.) How did we get here? Contrary to popular theory, it is not due to some "gay agenda" that fomented revolt over the past 20 years or so. No, we worked a long time for this. We dismantled every piece, decade by decade, until nothing was left. We discarded "for the purpose of procreation" with legalized and celebrated birth control. We jettisoned "for life" with "no fault divorce" (a complete oxymoron). We threw aside "family" and "special relationship" by embracing "cohabitation". And that leaves us with ... well, nothing at all -- what we have today. We worked hard for what is called "marriage" today, and we earned it, but it wasn't "the gays". No, we did this together.

As a result, fewer people are marrying. Why? It means nothing. More people are divorcing. Why not? It means nothing. More kids are born out of wedlock. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, some 41% of babies born in America are born to unwed mothers. (Among Blacks, that number is at 72%.) That's up from less than 10% in 1965. More single-parent kids are suffering the negative outcomes of missing a parent. Why? We built that. We drove down this road and we've arrived. Marriage, family, stability, parenthood, all these and more have been dashed aside so we can have ... what we have now.

It's not just "marriage", either. Look at how far women have come. From those miserable days when unkind, overbearing men oppressed women, we've moved through the "suffragettes" and the Feminist Movement up to today. The difference is day and night. And it has been a long struggle. They've gone from the often-abused gender to the ascendant gender where many rules in society actually give them priority rather than mere equality. Sure, not in all aspects, but in many. There are companies owned by women for the purpose of getting lucrative contracts with various organizations that prefer "minority-owned" status including women and excluding men, especially white men. There are women as doctors and lawyers and engineers and other fields they never were allowed in. There are women in politics, women as CEOs, women as ambassadors, women in most all areas of life. In some circles the mere presence of men is considered "sexist".

And, yet, here we are, dissatisfied. Now men can become women. Women can become men. We've pushed this cart so far up the hill that we've arrived at "gender dysphoria" -- delusions of gender that makes gender impossible to test and impossible to define. It was once good and right for men to give way to women ("Ladies first") and now it's an insult. If we can no longer define sex, how can we have sexism? We know now that gender is a social construct and men and women are only different by means of stereotypes, not objective reality. It can only be the archaic types that would take umbrage at a Donald Trump speaking and acting rudely toward women as he does because we've demolished all that "women are different" and "women deserve respect" stuff, right? Well, no, of course not. Because we've arrived, in this long battle for "female equality" -- at a schizophrenic position that says women do not need your help, they are not different, they deserve no additional respect or support, and ... if you fail to offer help, fail to see them as different, fail to respect them and support them, you're an evil sexist pig. Considerate, thinking men now have a conundrum at the door: "Will she slap me for opening it for her or for failing to do so?" One never knows.

Just a couple of examples. We've worked hard getting to where we are today. Maybe "work" isn't the right word. For the most part it has been more of a train ride than a march. Just some careful track switches here and there and we went with the flow. Unfortunately we've arrived somewhere that doesn't make much sense and no one is really happy with and we're all pointing fingers at each other because our current stop looks more like a prison camp than a resort and we're not going to like this.

But, don't worry. If you campaign for better politicians and urge better laws and, perhaps most importantly, impeach the current president, things will get better. Pay no attention to the long set of tracks that brought us where we are or the human condition called sin that got us here. As it has always been,

Although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up to ... (Rom 1:21-24)

There is a way back. It's not a short trip. Nor is it accomplished by self-help and hard work. The biblical term is "repentance" (Matt 3:8; Luke 5:32; 2 Cor 7:10). Given the twisted thinking of today's world where "marriage" doesn't mean "marriage", gender is not real, and the definition of life is whatever you want, repentance is going to have to be the work of God in the human heart (Acts 16:14; 2 Tim 2:24-25).