The forward march of society towards the gates of hell

I have been mulling today over an idea whose original source I cannot recall. Namely, in the battle being fought between the forces of Satan and the kingdom of God in this world, Satan's side has developed an interesting strategy for increasing the burden of sin in our society: he has chosen to make sin appear normative, so that through the constant onslaught of words, images, and ideas young people will grow up thinking that these sins are simply part of life, and will not be righteously angered or saddened by them even if they have grown up in the church and know God's word. The acceptance of those sins in society will be one of the unquestioned elements of their culture, imbibed unthinkingly, like racism was for much of the 20th century, and a culturally normative moral standard (because, being created in the image of God, people desire some sort of standard for living by) will be built around that acceptance. I would guess, for what it's worth, that this new moral standard will value such qualities as "tolerance", "open-mindedness", "respect for others" (indifference for others and thus a lack of concern for their actions), "peace" (silencing of the truth for the sake of superficial harmonious relationships), "love" (bondage to emotions and temporary passions, at the expense of duties and responsibilities), and "authenticity" (the courage to rebel against tradition and order and to pursue what is best for oneself no matter what anyone else says). For this reason it will be difficult to stand on the side of righteousness without coming across as different, radical, intolerant, and offensive.

One area in which this is already very clear is that of divorce. It is almost hard for me to say that divorce is wrong, because there are so many different extenuating circumstances and I don't want to offend anyone - and in that reluctance to admit that it is always outside of God's ideal and almost always blatant sin, I show the effects of growing up in a culture where something that is wrong according to the Bible is common and accepted by society. If I say it is wrong for a wife to leave her husband because she doesn't feel loved and no longer enjoys his company or shares his interests, I am incriminating not a few people I know personally and many more people who are the family and friends of others whom I know personally. That isn't fun, and it isn't comfortable. When that is the case, it is far easier to keep quiet about the issue than to speak up and risk hurting, offending, or alienating the people in life. The admonition in Ephesians, to expose sin with the light of God and make it manifest in all its ugliness, is conveniently ignored. Similarly, it has become difficult to say clearly in conversation that sexual activity outside of marriage is wrong. While not quite as common or acceptable (at least within Christian circles) as divorce, it is all too rampant in society as a whole, and speaking up about it will most likely cause you to be labeled old-fashioned or patriarchal, a prude who is against women's rights (there is a good amount of anger and a fair amount of sympathy directed against a woman who argues for this position, as if she must have been brainwashed in order to be so blind to the good of free and easy sex; it is amusing to be on the receiving end of this sentiment). The social stigma - almost a sense of shame - that accompanies being a virgin past a certain age is proof that the sinfulness of the behavior has been almost completely obscured.

Unfortunately, just as virtue builds upon itself in growing towards a more complete righteousness, so also sin builds upon itself in growing towards a darker state of evil. If divorce is considered normal and happens frequently (which it does), the institution of marriage is weakened to the point of near-meaninglessness to those who see it without Christian lenses (which it is), and there is little or no firm ground on which to stand in defending it against the entrance of homosexual partnerships, which will in turn lead to the social acceptability of the sin of homosexuality. If sex outside of marriage seen as acceptable, and not only acceptable but even desirable and even a right (which it all too often is), it will lead to the acceptance of abortion because the second sin is needed to manage the consequences of the first one. Accepting one sin leads to accepting another, not because all those who divorce have homosexual inclinations (far from it!), or because all those who have illicit sex intend to kill their offspring, but because it changes the moral boundary line recognized by society so that the second sin is no longer so far removed from what is considered normal. The road to hell is traveled by the small and almost imperceptible steps a society takes as it shakes off the obfuscating web of Christian tradition and moral norms, and the challenge for those of us who still adhere to those norms is to keep our eyes from being blinded and our light from being dimmed by acceptance of the standards of the culture around us.