Written by Jeffery J. Ventrella |
Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Man is a worshipper who either worships the Creator-God, or Man worships what is not God, that which Paul characterizes as creation. And, when worship is false, that is, is directed toward the creation — idolatry results. The truth is exchanged for the lie. That false theology, according to Paul, correlates with unrighteous ethical conduct, what Paul calls unrighteous practices. Idols aren’t idle.

Well, it’s election season.  The first Presidential “Debate” occurs this week – pass the popcorn!  The 24/7 news cycle continues to be cluttered with reports, rumors, and rhetoric – all of which is largely poisonously partisan and unedifying.  Yet, for the faithful Christian, pietism and indifference – cultural withdrawal – do not reflect a mature Christian approach to the public square – a venue that the Lord desires the faithful to engage – to actually intercede – “when truth stumbles” there:
Justice is turned back,
and righteousness stands far away;
for truth has stumbled in the public squares,
and uprightness cannot enter.
Truth is lacking,
and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.
The LORD saw it, and it displeased him
that there was no justice.
He saw that there was no man,
and wondered that there was no one to intercede;
then his own arm brought him salvation,
and his righteousness upheld him.[1]
We need to think in totals, not bits, as Francis Schaffer put it[2] – in other words, we need to situate our thinking in God’s world as it is:  Creation, Fall, and Redemption – avoiding the idols that result when the Creation, instead of the Creator, is worshiped.[3]  Politics is no exception – it too can be idolatrous. Before we consider candidates[4] and culture, we need to understand Cosmology – to see in totals, not bits.  Only then can we properly choose between Christ, and two attractive and popular, though idolatrous, imposters:  Caesar, or Self.  Let’s get to the gist.
Introduction
Ask folks to identify the source of authority informing the public square, and their answers will vary. However, they often reduce in various ways to two basic oppositional poles: the individual, or the collective; the Self, or the State.  Both can be idolatrous.
The public square manifests this point in several forms:  Philosophers ponder the One and the Many; political pundits debate libertarianism and progressivism; the media pit freedom against security; authors craft fictitious dystopias featuring both Big Brother as well as pleasurable feelies for the individual;[5]businesses wrestle with regulations that affect providing various services: baking wedding cakes,[6] photographing weddings,[7]and printing T-shirts.[8] And, sexual libertines bolstered by SOGI (“Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity”) laws, confront and restrict religious liberty.[9]  
Frequently, these debates crystallize around expressions of sexuality and sexual practice interfacing with the public square. The remarks of Stamp Corbin are typical.  Mr. Corbin, formerly Co-Chair of the Obama National Leadership Council and San Diego City Commissioner of Citizens’ Equal Opportunity Commission, pleaded:
[T]he most insidious word that is constantly used in our movement is tolerance. . .  I do not want to be tolerated.
What I want, and I hope the [LGBTQ] community at large wants, is acceptance. That’s right, approval and respect of my sexual orientation.[10]
Plainly, Mr. Corbin wants the State to approve, enforce, and impose on others his Self’s sexual desires. So, which is ultimate and ultimately authoritative:  Is it the One, the Individual, or the Many, the Collective? Why this recurrent public vacillation? Mr. Stamp seems to say “both:” Approve and enforce what I desire.  This pendulum appears arbitrary.  
One bishop described this phenomenon, noting that it expresses itself politically and legally, but never actually resolves things: 
“[T]he culture has lurched between deregulation in all areas of life — money, sex, and power, to put it crudely — and what you might call reregulation. Deregulationhappened because people wanted to do their own thing, to be (as it were) true to themselves and see what happened… The problem is that introducing new regulations doesn’t get to the heart of the problem.  Doing your own thing isn’t good enough, but rules by themselves won’t solve the problem.”[11]
What explains, if anything, this swerving between seemingly polar opposite options like a drunk driver?  Calls for unfettered liberty and simultaneous calls for regulation and uniformity.  Is there an explanation, a rationale for what is occurring? Is there grounding for understanding, and thereby avoiding both the Scylla of radical autonomy and the Charybdis of Statist coercion?
The apostle Paul provides such an analysis. His optics best describe where we are and why we are there. And, knowing this analysis provides a way forward culturally and politically.
The Apostle Paul’s Perspective:  Cosmology As a Key Cultural Optic
It is of course both arrogant and unfeasible to bring to bear all that this marvelous thinker contributes to this topic here. Accordingly, the focus of this analysis will spring primarily from one of St. Paul’s culturally foundational arguments as set forth in Romans 1:18-32.
There, Paul claims that “real reality” — expressed cosmologically — reduces to two starkly different and mutually exclusive options:  either there exists a Creator and a creation (created order); or there only exists a single metaphysical reality, some expression of monism – a paganism expressed is diverse ways.
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Many more pleasant, but false words seep into our culture.  One way to be inoculated against them is to focus on what’s true, good, and beautiful.  Or, as the author of Hebrews put it: But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.[25] The call here requires us to practice regularly learning to discern.  A key way for doing this relies on knowing the Truth.  

“[O]ne must be wary of indifference masquerading as humility.”[1]
“One does not abolish slavery by doing nothing more than helping individual slaves.”[2]
“Hell is nothing more than the truth known too late.[3]”
“Never defeat an opponent when an opponent can be counted upon to defeat himself.”[4] So counseled the luminous Christian conservative William F. Buckley, Jr.  If your debate opponent self-neutralizes, no need exists to engage or rebut him.
Just as noisy rage is not a strategy, so too self-sidelining is not a strategy.  One cannot impact the game unless one is in the game.   And opposing paganism is no game.  Far too often, otherwise pious Christians, believe lies and half-truths that effectively sideline them and thereby blunt their witness for Christ.  They capitulate instead of conquer.[5]  One reason this occurs stems from having our ears tickled by pleasant words, words that contain worldview poison.  Let’s get to the gist.
The Pagan Operational Ethos:  Words as Weapons
It’s been said that “Satan doesn’t serve spinach”.  The idea is that the Evil One advances his agenda in attractive ways.  He began undermining the Truth in this way,[6] and because it works upon those lacking discernment, he and his minions continue doing it.[7]  Today, we see the same tactics deployed culturally – there is no need to serve spinach when the targets will willingly swallow good tasting poison.
Many of the clashes with paganism occur over language, as language crafts moral imagination and plausibility structures[8]. Vocabulary impacts thinking and thinking impacts action.   And abusing language precipitates the abuse of power.[9]  Accordingly, we should expect language to be weaponized as a means for advancing paganism.
Consider the LGBTQ activists and their allies.  They speak – by design – in glowing language invoking euphonic “who could disagree” terms and slogans like “love wins,” “marital equality,” “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” “choice,” “visibility,” “marrying the person you love,” “minor attracted persons,” “reproductive justice,” being “gay,” “open relationships,” “sexual orientation,” “gender fluidity,” “assigned at birth,” and the standard default “go to” for any claim: “equality.”  The problem arises because while many people generally use these terms – which is precisely why the activists invoke them – the activists use a different dictionary.
Accordingly, the invocation of “loaded language” becomes the first arena – the initial battle lines – for exposing where the Truth has been exchanged for the Lie.  Why?  If we buy the term, we buy the premise; if we buy the premise, we buy the conclusion. Consequently, because God redeems us fully, that redemption should include – where necessary – a renovated and disciplined vocabulary.  Nothing pleases the enemy of our souls more than having God’s people use the serpent’s language:  the salt losing its saltiness.
Another aspect exists to this:  believing lies or half-truths embedded in slogans.  Here, the pagan tactic seeks to get God’s people to embrace notions that subvert or sideline them.  These lies or half-truths in some way detract from or defy God’s narrative:  Creation, Fall, and Redemption and these lies thereby paralyze God’s people.
Lies that Paralyze[10]
“The World is Evil”
Affirming that evils exists in the world is not equivalent to saying the world itself is evil.  Pardon the pun, but there is a world of difference between these two positions.  One is Christian and the other is Gnostic.  How so?
God created everything that is not God, described in this shorthand, “the heavens and the earth.”[11]  And God, who cannot lie,[12] called it “good.”[13]  The “stuff” of the cosmos is good.  And, as Jesus taught, it’s not the stuff we consume that makes us evil, but evil emanates from our own fallen hearts:
And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”[14]
And, the crucial and non-negotiable doctrine of the Incarnation is that the “the Word became flesh.”[15]
Gnosticism attacked this Incarnation precisely because the Gnostics despised the material and the physical.  In rejecting this heresy, the apostle did not mince words:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.[16]
Accordingly, then:  the world is not evil; evil is evil and the world’s redemption pivots on God taking on flesh and blood.
“Just Focus on Heaven and Spiritual Stuff”
No orthodox Christian would crassly deny Jesus’ Incarnation.[17] Yet, Christians can be functional Gnostics.  How so?  Christians do this by claiming that “this world” matters less than the next and therefore, Christians should focus on “higher” “heavenly,” “spiritual” matters.
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Paul in Romans 1 makes plain that the theological and worshipexchanges he describes result in unrighteous ethical conduct, particularly regarding sexuality that “breaks the bonds” of the Creator.[16]  This leads to societal and cultural chaos,[17] as Jonathan Burnside explains: “[I]n biblical thought, sexual relationships can be used either to create community or to destroy community.   . . . Sexual order helps to create relational order and sexual disorderleads to relational disorder.”[18]

[Cue the orchestra]: What is a man? What has he got? If not himself, then he is naught. To say the things he truly feels, and not the words of one who kneels. The record shows, I took the blows . . . and did it MY WAY!

“That song is the National Anthem . . . of Hell” as philosopher Peter Kreeft quipped (paraphrased).[2]  We might call the worldview expressed therein “My Wayism.”  My Wayism encapsulates the idea that the Self is the measure of all things, the determiner of all action and attitude as well as the moral compass for both.  My Wayism is not confined to Las Vegas crooners, however.[3]  Consider Disney’s wildly famous animated hit, Frozen.  The heroine’s signature song expresses the same sentiment:

“It’s time to see what I can do,To test the limits and break through,No right, no wrong, no rules for me.  I’m free – Let it go, let it go!”[4]

What’s going on here?  What links these lyrics?  The connection lies in what they assume about the human person – and what they assume is largely lies and half-truths stemming from the residual effects of the Truth being exchanged for the Lie.  This residue produces “lies that live.” In this instance, the lie consists of radical ethical autonomy, meaning that a person’s real essence supposedly consists in being “the master of my fate, . . . the captain of my soul.”[5]
Because Christians are filled with the Spirit of Truth[6] and are called to speak the truth,[7] and not to be those “depraved in mind and deprived of truth,”[8] we are to be “sanctified in truth.”[9]  And, all this means unearthing and jettisoning those lies – contra to truth – that remain embedded in our “operating systems.”
First, let’s acknowledge that My Way in fact asks the right question: “What is a man?”  The problem arises because when the Truth is exchanged for the Lie, we often answer good questions badly. Put differently, sin distorts several aspects of human anthropology impacting:  Man’s moral compass (My Wayism for example), Man’s composition (Gnostic dualism for example), Man’s community or social dimension (radical individualism for example), to name a few. [10]   People begin to live by these lies.  These lies need to be exposed, opposed, and foreclosed as much as feasible.  Let’s explore some of these implications. Let’s get to the gist.
Man’s Moral Compass – The Rise of the Sexual Super Self
Long before Elsa rejoiced in having “no right, no wrong, no rules,” so that she could “test the limits and break through,” King David understood the bent of fallen mankind:

Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set
themselves, and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his
Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us .”

Many Christians acknowledge that sin remains.  Here, however, we see how remaining sin plays out:  mankind takes a stand against the LORD by rebelling against His righteous design and constraints, particularly, as Paul explains in Romans, limits and design regarding sexuality.
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