ab-normalization

As I was reading from Isaiah 5 recently, I came to one of those verses that reflects painfully on one of the worst human conditions.

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!
– Isaiah 5:20

We see this all throughout our culture today – and this human condition has varied in prominence throughout history relative to some factors I believe are clear if we’ll look for them. In the context of this passage, we see a people consumed with greed and self-indulgence.

The more self-absorbed any society becomes, the more injustice and corruption spread. Rather than addressing the root of this demise, innumerable efforts arise to fix, avoid, or prevent various symptoms. And as the root cause itself is avoided and ignored, the souls of the masses become continually more callous and blind… and yet continually more frustrated with the symptoms that persist and increase.

Ultimately, disillusionment spirals into delusion as people strive even more for some way to fulfill and assuage and satiate the cravings of their empty selves. Loving the pleasures of self will always oppose truth… the Truth in Whom alone can anyone be set free… the Truth Who alone can remedy the root cause of the delusion (John 14:6).

Apart from the Truth, the delusion of calling evil good and good evil will only persist and spread and pollute and infect everything… calling light dark and dark light… calling bitter sweet and sweet bitter… calling male female and female male… calling vengeance good and forgiveness weak… calling morality prudish and immorality fun… calling an unborn baby anything but a human life if the mother doesn’t want it – but, of course, if the mother wants it… then it is a baby.

The metastasization of the cancer of these delusions will continue beyond any constraint or control – for delusion is the judgment of God (2 Thessalonians 2:11). Indeed, apart from the mercy of God, delusion is axiomatically all that there can be in the rejection of the God Who is the Truth.

If we would see a return from all the ab-normalization of delusion, we must turn in godly sorrow to authentic repentance that confesses the selfish roots of our sin (2 Corinthians 7:10; James 4:1-10).