Death brings an end to our lives. Generations come and go. History books are updated. Our trophies end up in the trash. Our diplomas turn to dust. Our publications go out of print. We must not live for things that have no eternal value. Instead, we must put God at the center of our story, and live for Him, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21).      

If someone observed your life for a week, for what would they conclude you are living? Would they observe that you oppress others for power? Would they witness you being envious, foolish, a workaholic, or greedy? Would they say you pursue rugged individualism, or isolate yourself to gain power, position or prestige? The Preacher of Ecclesiastes observes these things in the people around him, and brings them to our attention in order to reveal for what we should be living (Ecc. 4:1-16).
When the Preacher saw “the tears of the oppressed” with “no one to comfort them” he concluded that it would be better for them to be dead than alive, and even better to have never been born (Ecc. 4:1-3). In a broken world oppression is a sad but true reality for many people. But the Lord sees the affliction of His people, hears their cry, and knows their sufferings. He demonstrated this when He delivered the oppressed Israelites out of the land of Egypt (Ex. 3:7-10). But He most fully demonstrated this when He sent His Son into the world “to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18). Ironically, our liberty came at the cost of His oppression. But it was through the cross that God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them” (Col. 2:15). Thankfully, there is coming a day when oppression will be no more. In the new Jerusalem, “God himself will be with [His people] as their God” and “will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 21:3-4). In the meantime, we live in the midst of a fallen world where we will witness oppression. Therefore, the church needs to do everything she can to comfort and help the victims in the name of Jesus Christ.
If power drives the oppressor, then envy drives the workaholic (Ecc. 4:4). But gaining in toil and skill motivated by envy of one’s neighbor gets one nowhere in the end. “Bitter jealousy and selfish ambition” is “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” and leads to “disorder and every vile practice” (Jas. 3:14-16).
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When we hear a phrase like “God wrote the Bible,” we immediately want to include a dozen or more asterisks behind it to try and prove that we’re not ignorant, uneducated, and anti-intellectual. We want to sound sophisticated and enlightened, having moved beyond the simplistic statements we were taught as children. We want to signal to others that we’re not like those Christians who just accept everything on blind faith.

Last month, The Wall Street Journal ran an article where they asked college students who sympathize with Palestinians in the Israel/Hamas war whether they knew which river and which sea were being referred to in the popular chant “from the river to the sea.” Only 47% of students could name the river (Jordan) and the sea (Mediterranean). Once they were shown the river and the sea on a map and informed that “from the river to the sea” meant the annihilation of Israel, 67.8% of the students changed their minds and no longer supported the chant.
It might not be wise to wade into a hot-button issue to prove a different but related point, but the fact that close to 70% of students in a pro-Palestine rally were unknowingly calling for the extermination of Israel because they chanted a slogan that was catchy to say and sounded supportive shows how easy it is to be captivated—literally taken captive—by the sound of words when they play to the desires of our hearts. Having compassion and concern for the innocent Palestinians who are caught up in this tragic conflict is good and noble. Unknowingly chanting for the annihilation of a different people group—one that has a history of being the victims of genocide—a position you don’t even hold is not good and noble; it’s ignorant and dangerous.
My point here is not to talk about the Israel/Palestine conflict. I would be way in over my head. I simply want to point out how easily we are swayed by words and rhetoric more than arguments. I’m currently reading Augustine’s Confessions and this is a something that he discusses. Having doubts about his Manichean beliefs, he was excited that a prominent Manichean teacher, Faustus, was coming to speak in Carthage, where he lived.
After hearing Faustus speak, he was impressed by the way he spoke but disappointed by the content of his speech. Yet Faustus’ reputation for being a Manichean teacher was great, and Augustine’s peers said all he needed was to wait for Faustus to come, and all his doubts would be relieved. That failed to be the case.
Augustine wrote about this experience,
Those who had given me such assurances about him must have been poor judges. They thought him wise and thoughtful simply because they were charmed by his manner of speech.
…
You [God] had already taught me that a statement is not necessarily true because it is wrapped in fine language or false because it is awkwardly expressed.
…
You [God] had already taught me this lesson and the converse truth, that an assertion is not necessarily true because it is badly expressed or false because it is finely spoken.
I had learned that wisdom and folly are like different kinds of food. Some are wholesome and others are not, but both can be serveed equally well on the finest china dish or the meanest earthenware. In the same way, wisdom and folly can be clothed alike in plain words or the finest flowers of speech.
tldr: The way something is said has no bearing on the truth of the thing.
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Obergefell was supposed to tame homosexuality, but it has precip­itated a regime of more radical queerness. From “Marriage is a human right” to “Marriage is deeply flawed and fundamentally violent”: The sexual left’s long-running dispute about the nature of marriage and its relation to gayness seems to be getting resolved in the direction of the marriage skeptics.

In November 2022, the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice came out against gay marriage. “I find it disappointing how much time and resources went into fighting for inclusion in the deeply flawed and fundamentally violent institution of civil marriage,” Chase Strangio wrote on Instagram. Two months later, Taylor Silverman, a female skateboarder who gained prominence after objecting to the inclusion of biological males in women’s athletic competitions, criticized gay marriage from the opposite direction: “I used to think gay marriage was ok until all of the things that conservatives warned us would happen next actually happened. Now it seems it really was the beginning of the dangerous slippery slope.” With the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, the legal status of same-sex marriage has never been more secure. Public opinion is strongly in its favor, even as, not so long ago, it was overwhelmingly opposed. Yet the ideological case for same-sex marriage seems strangely fragile, subject to challenge on both the left and the right.
It has been eight years since the White House was lit with rainbow colors in celebration of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Hailed as the enshrinement of a new consensus, the national recognition of same-sex marriage can also be understood as an event that accelerated polarization—leading some on the left to press for ever more changes, and some on the right to doubt the very possibility of liberal governance.
Not all of the effects of gay marriage are obvious, or were anticipated. In the runup to the national recognition of gay marriage, much attention was paid on both sides to such questions as whether children raised in same-sex households could thrive as did those raised by a mother and father. Important as they were, these discussions distracted from another way in which gay marriage would affect national life. Its recognition changed the makeup of the American elite by causing more conservative and religious actors to lose standing while left-wing activists gained power and prestige. For thoroughgoing progressives, there is nothing to lament in these developments. But for figures on the center-left, gay marriage has had an ambiguous legacy.
Gay marriage was the first great triumph of cancel culture. Sasha Issenberg, a historian of gay marriage, has observed that by deploying the novel weapons of “shaming and shunning,” activists “changed the economic terrain on which cultural conflict was waged.” One of the early breakthroughs occurred when eightmaps.com appeared online. The site used information gathered under financial disclosure laws to list the names and locations of people who had donated to California’s Proposition 8, a referendum that stated marriage could take place only between a man and a woman. Suddenly American citizens came under pressure for their political views—not just from their friends and families, but potentially from anyone with an internet connection. Some reported receiving envelopes with powder and death threats.
Donors to Proposition 8 were ­also targeted through their employers. Scott Eckern, the artistic director of the California Musical Theatre in Sacramento, was forced to resign after his colleagues learned that he had backed the referendum. ­Brendan Eich was forced to step down as the CEO of Mozilla in 2014, when his past support of Proposition 8 was publicized.
Those who denounce cancel culture often speak as though it was hatched by radical activists and intolerant students, and see the contest as pitting liberal tolerance against illiberal denunciation. But as the history of gay marriage shows, the reality is more complicated. Cancel culture was pioneered in part by veteran political activists such as the lifelong Republican Fred Karger, who organized demonstrations outside commercial properties owned by backers of Proposition 8. And it arose in alliance with corporate power, as seen when corporations declared “capital strikes” by threatening to pull out of states that guaranteed religious freedom to those who rejected gay marriage.
In recent years, figures such as ­Andrew Sullivan have emerged as brave and eloquent critics of wokeness. They have opposed its particular injustices while exploring its deep origins. They have tied wokeness to the flowering of “illiberalism” on the left and the right. But they have failed to examine how these forms of illiberalism were encouraged by the campaign for a policy they support.
Gay marriage changed the character of important institutions in ways that its moderate supporters have not yet recognized. Through the operation of cancel culture, high-profile opponents of same-sex marriage were silenced, fired, or forced out of important institutions. In 2011, Paul Clement, the distinguished appellate lawyer and former solicitor general, was compelled to leave his law firm in order to continue his legal work on behalf of the Defense of Marriage Act, a case that his firm had been pressured to drop by the Human Rights Campaign. In 2015, Kelvin Cochran, the chief of the Atlanta fire department, was fired after writing a book that expressed opposition to homosexuality. In 2023, Jacob Kersey, a police officer in Georgia, was placed on leave after writing on Facebook: “God designed marriage. Marriage refers to Christ and the church. That’s why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage.”
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