It is easy for the modern Christian to feel like the world has turned upside down. What is wrong is seen as right, and what is right is seen as wrong.

Indeed, it can seem like scriptural prophecies are being fulfilled right in front of our eyes. Isaiah 5: 20-21 says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (ESV).

The evil of our modern world has been grafted into the language we speak and the words we use.

Those who advocate for abortion are heralded as fighters for “reproductive justice.” Abortion itself, which is the gruesome killing of a preborn child, is sterilized and referred to as “the termination of a pregnancy.”

Others argue that there is an unknowable number of genders. Gender theory activists propose that whatever number of genders there are, it is certainly more than two.

According to one “youth health education program,” called Teen Talk, “There are more than two genders… There are many different gender identities, including male, female, transgender, gender neutral, non-binary, agender, pangender, genderqueer, two-spirit, third gender, and all, none or a combination of these.”

Of course, Teen Talk then must provide the caveat, “There are many more gender identities then we’ve listed.”

The controversy over these two particularly hot button issues we encounter in our culture today can leave Christians scratching our heads, thinking that either our world has gone crazy, or we have.

But Christians should take courage. The truth is on our side.

Life begins at conception. Real “reproductive justice,” would be the enactment of laws that protect the preborn. You’re not crazy for believing so.

There are only two genders. And a real “health education program” would teach exactly that. You’re not crazy for believing so.

Sometimes, as Alexis de Tocqueville showed, it takes an outsider or an immigrant to recognize the virtues and failings of our nation.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian novelist and Soviet dissident who spent eight years in a Soviet gulag, criticized the West in his 1978 Harvard commencement address, “A World Split Apart.” He especially singled out our material decadence and moral corruption.

“Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask… Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space,” he said. “Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence.”

Solzhenitsyn then addressed the main consequences of the moral stupor Western society has been lulled into.

Speaking of the paradoxical benefits the Soviet people experienced because of their suffering, and comparing it to the ease of living in the United States, he said, “After the suffering of many years of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.”

“The forces of evil have begun their offensive; you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses.”

Between the virtue won through hardship endured in the Soviet Union, and the moral decay brought about by easy living in the United States, Solzhenitsyn said he would choose the former.

It’s not hard to see the chaos that abounds in our country. Turn on any news channel, and you’ll see it right in front of you.

But in a world marred by sin and suffering, the Christian is grateful that no matter what the current cultural trend believes, or says we must believe, truth is found in somewhere, in someone, else.

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6 ESV).

You can follow this author on Parler @ZacharyMettler

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