The Voice of the Serpent

Why is it that the people who think their views should be tolerated, are the ones who are the least tolerant of others? Why do homosexuals think that we should tolerate their adverse behavior and allow them to call their union a marriage? Or let them adopt children? Why is it that children can learn in school about religious holidays and practices, such as the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah or Yom Kippur, along with the African-American celebration Kwanzaa, but not the celebration of Christ’s birth at Christmas or the true meaning of Easter? Most people celebrate Thanksgiving, but who are they expressing their thankfulness to? Why do we pledge our allegiance to One Nation under God, but at every turn we try to take Him out of it? Why is it ok to be pro abortion, including partial birth abortion (where the fetus is killed during birth) and to be vocal about it, but you can’t speak out against it or the sale of fetal parts? How did profanity and obscenity become an accepted part of the English language? Why is it that believers in Christ must learn to tolerate all these things, but no one seems to want to tolerate them? Why are Christians put down for wanting the world to have some shred of integrity, decency and moral fiber in it?

The new morale for the current American society is; there are no morals, no rules, nothing to guide us through life, except our own fantasies. Our own desires have become the focus and there is no right and wrong, no good or bad. The new philosophy of choice being that of secularism, which assumes that this world ”the material world” is all that we have by which and for which to live, so therefore any view of a spiritual essence or of other worldliness is by definition considered irrelevant or irrational. This form of secularization asserts that public life is to be governed by laws that are not influenced by religion, or any transcendent sacred notion. With the philosophy of pluralization all belief structures, such as religions, are held to be true, so you can believe anything you want and say that it is true. Then there is the privatization of beliefs, the socially required and legally enforced separation of our private lives and our public personas. In effect, privatization insists that issues of ultimate meaning be kept within our private spheres. If you take a close look at our society, you'll find that all those protesters from back in the sixties and seventies are now in positions of authority and who's agenda have they been pushing for?

We have let ourselves fall into the trap which was set back when time began, in the garden of long ago, when the serpent said to the woman “Did God really say you couldn't?” It has been a downward spiral for man ever since. The fall of mankind through Adam and Eve, brought sin and shame into this world and with them knowledge of what is right and wrong. They learned the lesson the hard way; they now knew the difference between right and wrong, but they had to leave their perfect home and life behind. After their exile from the garden they began what continues, even to this day, a constant battle to try to cover their shame and the guilt of sin on their own, apart from God. Each new generation putting that shame farther and farther behind them, until today we have no shame at all. We do the most heinous things without thinking; we live by our own terms, doing pretty much whatever we feel like. Then we try to remove the shame further by declaring it to be normal. As though it’s one's personal right to kill an unborn child, because a pregnant woman decides she can’t deal with the consequences of her behavior. There are circumstances such as rape or incest where pregnancy occurs, but those might be better dealt with in a more dignified manor for both the unborn child and the mother. Then some would have us believe that the sexual union of two people of the same sex is normal or that it is a natural thing for people to be attracted to others of the same sex. When we want to fulfill our desires, no matter how detestable or vile, we comfort ourselves by saying its normal and therefore ok. It’s as though we keep hearing the voice of the snake whispering in our ear, prodding us on, saying “Did God really say you couldn't? You will not surely die.” So we just keep twisting the truth to fit our desires.

The most upsetting thing is that the church has let this way of thinking filter into its very core, by accepting things as normal which are not, as though it is trying to fit into the world, when what it should be doing is putting God and Christ back where they belong, at the head and center of everything! Ravi Zacharias tells us the three moods of our current culture will do the following: secularization will hurt those we love through loss of shame, pluralization will hurt those we choose to hate through loss of reason and privatization will hurt ourselves through loss of meaning. Perhaps Christians and the church need to stop tolerating the things they know are wrong and start changing from within, putting the focus on becoming more Christ like in their dealings with the world by learning to address the needs of the individual and not to be distracted by their outward appearance or behavior. Maybe our society needs to return to its earlier morals, ethics and values and the church should lead the way!