Blurred Distinctions
We live in a day where right is wrong, and wrong is right; feelings overrule facts; delusion distorts reality; debauchery is celebrated; and truth is relative.
Franklin Graham (Decision, 2/26)
In his book “The Rational Bible,” educator and essayist Dennis Prager emphasizes that the moral order of a Godly nation, as advocated in the Torah, is dependent on certain clear-cut distinctions – namely: between God and man, good and evil, human and animal, man and woman, holy and profane, and parent and child. These distinctions establish basic pillars of Biblical truth, which is why socialism, humanism, and other anti-God “isms” have worked so diligently over the last many decades to blur, distort, destroy, or even reverse them, resulting in moral chaos. And since these “isms” take root and grow best and fastest amid chaos, chaos itself becomes a calculated goal.
Basically, after God first made physical order out of chaos (Genesis 1), He founded His moral order primarily on the above distinctions. But now, the world is drifting (again) into moral chaos by rejecting or ignoring God and His truths.
Take the distinction between God and man, which socialists and progressives know must be demolished first. The Bible states clearly that God created man – and throughout the Old Testament, God affirms the distinction between Himself and man by statements like “I am the Lord” – with the clear implication that “you are not.” In the New Testament, Jesus reinforces that fact by His miracles, His pronouncements, His conferring of various powers on the apostles, and ultimately His resurrection.
However, schools and colleges over the last many years have dismissed God and indoctrinated students with the notion that after a spontaneous (uncaused) explosion and expansion of ultra-dense matter (the big bang), the universe was formed, and today’s modern evolutionary man developed over eons from a primordial soup. (Hey, that guy used to be an ameba, and now he writes computer code.) Everything else on the planet – oceans, trees, elephants, goats, gnats, etc. – presumably arose and evolved from the same primordial soup.
All of which may call to mind the late George Carlin’s quip: “If man evolved from monkeys and apes, then why do we still have monkeys and apes?” A good follow-up question would be: “And where are all the transitional creatures?” Chaos.
In the Darwinian narrative, early man began to worship a variety of natural objects out of fear, and it wasn’t long before some men observed that objects of worship helped keep order – i.e., fear of an imagined power in nature or in carved idols resulted in a shaky communal unity that kept the great unwashed in line and helped early “elites” gain control. In Old Testament times, the God of Israel was considered by pagans to be just another imagined power in the mix. In other words, as academics like to say, man created God (or gods), and not the other way around.
Today, in some anti-God governments certain men may consider themselves gods – like Kim Jong Un in North Korea – or in the case of collective nations like China, the state is god. Then, there’s the religion of environmentalism, in which Gaia (from Greek mythology) is the deity. Overall, we can conclude that these and other anti-God groups are taking hold in many societies or communities because they have succeeded in blurring the distinction between God and man – and even eliminating God in some places.
What do these people say about Jesus? And about the Bible? In the academic world, Jesus admittedly existed, but impressionable young minds are told that His divinity and resurrection are myths that the masses (that’s us) ignorantly embrace. And the Bible, which documents Jesus’s many miracles and His death, burial, and resurrection, is nothing more than an old storybook. But they conveniently leave out key historical facts – e.g., Jesus’s disciples and many others were eyewitnesses of these events, and they not only gave themselves to spreading the Gospel throughout the known world but were willing to die for Him – and many of them did. Centuries later, when a great many people had access to the Bible, the followers of Jesus (including many people of science) grew and flourished throughout the wider world.
Undoubtedly, blurring the distinction between God and man makes it easier to blur or even reverse the distinction between good and evil. The fact is, this reversal has been ongoing since Old Testament days (e.g., Isaiah 5:20). And today, moral relativism has replaced Biblical truth for most people, leading many of them to call good evil and evil good. If doing something traditionally evil feels good, it must be good. In general, when one is steeped in moral relativism, the self becomes a god – and most religions, especially Christianity, become oppressive evils.
A well-publicized example of modernists calling evil good and good evil is the assertion that casual sex of any kind is pleasurable and is therefore good, while Biblical constraints on sexual activity are oppressive and evil. Even in secular terms, what has for centuries been considered abnormal or perverse (like pederasty) has become a new normal in many places, as exemplified by public celebrations such as “pride” parades.
A major offshoot of these movements is the left’s attempts to blur and eventually eliminate the distinction between man and woman. For example, many media personalities now refer to “birthing persons” instead of pregnant women, and many “scientists” are going along. Also, the American Academy of Pediatrics embraces the term “chestfeeding,” and the AMA supports removing the designation of sex from birth certificates. As one AMA delegate (a California MD) put it: “We need to recognize gender is not binary but a spectrum.” Chaos.
In addition, some governments, institutions, and corporations have mandated “overt acceptance” of these abnormalities – like the required use of a person’s preferred pronouns and name throughout Canada and in some US schools. All this, of course is a rejection of Genesis 1:27 (“God created man in His own image…male and female He created them.”). Indeed, even biologist and renowned atheist Richard Dawkins says, “there are two sexes – period.”
Experiment: Ask someone who supports these ideas what medical and/or psychiatric breakthrough has caused the scientific community to stop classifying discomfort with one’s biological sex as a treatable mental illness (gender dysphoria) and suddenly declare it a “normal state.” The fact that no rational scientific answer would be forthcoming would confirm the fact that the shift was virtually 100% ideological and not medical. The goal of this great lie is not compassion but more chaos.
Chaos indeed. I used to check on how many genders are being promoted by the left in this country. I don’t do social media, but I occasionally see that information in other sources – and the last time I saw a figure, it was something like 50 genders. It’s interesting that dogs and cats still have two genders, as do birds, elephants, cattle, sheep, fish, mosquitos, and most likely any other creature you can name – but no longer us.
Speaking of the animal world, some progressives even want to blur the distinction between humans and animals. God, of course, populated the earth with animals primarily for man’s benefit. But, for example, in recent years there has been an aggressive movement, mostly by people on the left, to establish “animal standing” in the courts – i.e., the recognition of animals as legal persons with rights that include suing their owners and eventually abolishing human ownership completely. We don’t hear as much about it now, but the movement still exists.
I once pondered how far the absurdity of legal personhood for animals could go. On a fall afternoon a few years ago, I witnessed a fox jumping up and down trying to get at a hen turkey perched on a tree limb that was just out of reach. Undoubtedly, the turkey was frozen there by fear. Could the turkey sue the fox for harassment, I wondered? I was the only witness, so I’d have to initiate the lawsuit and find her a lawyer (lots of turkeys to pick from). And the fox, of course, would need a defense. Besides the obvious farce, it would just be more chaos.
Ironically, many of these animal activists are among the people who deny personhood to babies in utero, even though the baby has complete (and unique) human DNA at the moment of conception. In fact, about 5 years ago, a survey of 5,577 biologists that was part of a University of Chicago PhD project found that 96% of the respondents affirmed the fact that human life begins at fertilization.
Another anti-God “strategy” that first flared up in the mid-1960s is distorting the distinction between holy and profane. Art was one of the first major casualties, as exemplified by government and other grants awarded back then to a few “artists” who painted works that mocked Jesus or depicted Him in a vulgar manner. Music has also suffered – instead of tunes and lyrics that are pleasing or at least inoffensive, we have today’s cacophony of hip-hop and rap, with all their obscenities. Speech has deteriorated as well, with Jesus’s name now taken in vain publicly, along with a plethora of four-letter words, including by women and even young girls.
Finally, we come to the important distinction between parent and child. The left knows that if this distinction can be heavily blurred or even eliminated, then the nuclear family would be destroyed, and children could become wards of the state even before they reach school age. Parents would still be required to provide food, clothing, shelter, and other care while the children are at home, but they would have little educational or social control over them. Parents would become mere innkeepers for the state’s children.
We’ve seen this before, with the Hitler Youth, the Young Communist League, etc., and it’s happening again. In some areas, schools are prohibiting parents from having a voice in the content of their children’s “education.” Also, some courts have issued rulings that allow abortions for minors without informing parents. And in some school districts, elementary schools have introduced explicit and even perverted materials to young children as “sex education.” Other districts have encouraged and helped further transgenderism and other deviations without parental knowledge.
Recently, however, a $2 million court verdict in New York went against those who advised and carried out irreversible transgender surgery on a young woman who was 16 at the time and who later regretted it – so we may be seeing the fading of at least the irreversible malpractice potential of the transgender fad. Still, enough of the “declared identity aspect” may remain to cause confusion and chaos, as in women’s sports, locker rooms, and other private places.
Fortunately, many parents have organized locally for strong pushback on some of these issues. Too many pulpits, however, are relatively silent on nearly all of them, and pulpits are where resistance to evil needs to start, with Scripture as the basis for Godly corrective action and activism. But be aware – Scripture can also be a comfortable hiding place. As we’ve been warned: “…be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22).
by Norbert J. Kuk