The Christian stands upon a revelation that cannot be revised because it comes from a God who cannot lie. We do not need the consensus of the culture to declare that God made mankind male and female, that Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, that truth is objective, that sin destroys civilizations, and that the fear of the Lord is the very beginning of knowledge.

There was a time, not so long ago, in fact, when men still believed that reality had good and hard edges. That the world was not a happy accident but designed with an infinitely intelligent designer. A time when men knew that “whatever is” was the product of “God has spoken”, and His speaking had consequences you ought not run afoul of.

The sun rose in the east because the Almighty commanded it to. Marriage meant a man and a woman because the Almighty established it so. Children belonged to families because the Almighty designed them to. Truth was objective because YHWH had opened His mouth and said so. And when God opens His mouth, the matter is settled.

The world, in that older and saner age, was not understood to be soft. It was understood to be solid, which is precisely why it could be loved. It was creation. Ordered. Structured. Governed. Defined. Spoken by God, sustained by God, owned by God, and the man who tried to edit such a world was not a genius but a trespasser with a pencil.

But then modernity came shuffling in, blinking against the light, and decided it preferred scissors to submission.

And so the modern age has become one long act of vandalism against reality itself. A centuries-long tantrum carried out by a species that mistook the rules of the world they were placed in. And the more our enlightened betters hack and slash against the obvious, the more the electrons line up to laugh at them. And ultimately, the reason they will chuckle, is because we believed the absurd, that we can know better than God. That we can interpret reality with an open textbook instead of with a closed canon.

The Religion of “Openness”

The modern world is positively drunk on the word “open.” Open minded. Open morality. Open identity. Open and affirming. Open gender. Open truth. Open borders. Open marriage. Open everything, all the time, in every direction, until the very concept of a wall is considered a hate crime and the very idea of a door an act of fascism.

But there is a reason that every civilization which opened everything eventually lost everything.

A nation without fixed borders lies unprotected against every invader. And a people without fixed truth lies unprotected against every lie. Strip the walls from a country and the barbarians walk in. Strip the walls from a worldview and the barbarians walk in with pocket protectors, holding clipboards, and virtue signaling pronouns. The result is a madhouse where tenured professors with three degrees and a federal grant argue that a boy can become a girl with three surgeons ready to turn an “outie” into an “innie.” Forgive me for using very technical doctor speak just there. It won’t happen again.

This is not the progress the progressives kept promising us. This is drinking motor oil and waiting for your joints to feel better.

Scripture, ever the older and wiser, saw this coming a few thousand years away. Agur, the lesser known proverbialist, writes like a man who has seen too many fools bumble over the guardrail and down the cliff.

“Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you and you be found a liar.”

Notice what hides beneath the warning. The whole architecture of reality is assumed in a single line. God has spoken. And that speaking was total, utterly true, and wholly sufficient. The canon is closed because God does not change his opinion every 10 years like the nutritionists who recommended seed oils. The Word of the Lord requires no updates from sociologists, no corrections from activists, no refinements from gender theorists, and certainly no moral adjustments from blowhards in Hollywood who still think most people care what they think.

God has spoken. And because He has spoken, man’s duty is submission, not revision. Not editorial commentary. Not a peer review. Not a strongly worded letter to the management of the universe. Submission.

But modernity despises submission because modernity worships autonomy. The ancient serpent hissed you will be like God, and humanity has been trying to edit creation ever since, armed with red pens, scalpels, and a confidence that grows in inverse proportion to its competence.

That is the true spirit of the modern age. Modern man no longer wishes to discover reality. He wishes to author it. He no longer receives identity. He manufactures it like a ten dollar gucci bag you bought in the alleyway. He no longer submits to meaning. He invents it. He no longer believes truth lies outside himself.. He believes truth is what is how he feels within “his authentic self.”

The Self Cannibalizing Comedy of Progress

Because of all this, modernity has trapped itself in an endless loop of self consuming absurdity, like a snake eating its own tail and then scheduling a TED talk to explain why it tasted funny.

One decade tells us masculinity is toxic. The next decade complains there are no real men left when a “pastrix” pins up the “sparkle creed” on your church bulletin board.

One generation murders marriage in the public square and then publishes elegant think offering guesses at why everyone is so terribly lonely.

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