Think of a history professor trying to explain to the students, “I know this seems unbelievable, but women in the twenty-first century demanded that they should be allowed to murder their own babies and sell the body parts — and if anyone tried to get in the way of this, they were accused of being tyrannical abusers.”

“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”

So goes the ancient pagan proverb in a flash of what could almost be Solomonic wisdom.

Think of the destructive insanity of the demon-possessed boy in Mark 9. He is writhing on the ground, foaming at the mouth, and perpetually throwing himself into the fire. Everyone in that story, from the father to the apostles to the crowds, knew that something was fundamentally wrong with the situation. It’s not a tricky diagnosis — ordinary, healthy people don’t behave in that way.

Ephesians tells us that “no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it” (Ephesians 5:29). The insanity and brutality of the demon manifests by subverting all natural categories and causing the “self” to be attacked as if it’s an enemy. And of course, while in the grip of this demon, the boy actually is his own worst enemy.

Any sane person would instinctively fight to keep himself out of the fire or to save himself from drowning. This isn’t an indication of virtue. It’s simply the behavior of a normal human. But on the other side, the unnatural state that boy was in could only be caused by a massive spiritual problem — in this case, a demon so ferocious that not even the disciples could cast it out. Christ tells them later, “this kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:29).

How Will Teachers Explain Us?

This sort of madness which demands self-destruction can happen not just to individuals, but to societies as well. And we are right in the midst of watching it happen. The frenzy of self-annihilation that our nation is currently undergoing holds all the same inexplicable confusion of basic categories as the boy throwing himself into the fire.

Imagine what perspective a future generation might have as they look back at us. What possible explanation could we offer for our actions? Think of a history professor trying to explain to the students, “I know this seems unbelievable, but women in the twenty-first century demanded that they should be allowed to murder their own babies and sell the body parts — and if anyone tried to get in the way of this, they were accused of being tyrannical abusers.”

What? Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

Applauding Madness

In any ordinary and natural society, a woman who had her baby murdered would actually be the one we would feel sorry for. Right? Even in the animal kingdom, we know this to be fundamentally true. If we were watching a nature documentary and a mother panda lost her baby in some violent attack, we would all understand that we had just witnessed a tragedy. We’d even feel sorry for a mother snail who had her baby snail eaten by a bird.

But meanwhile, in another corner of the animal kingdom . . . a man tears apart a woman’s child, inside her womb, and all the other women applaud. In any normal world — not even a virtuous world, just a normal world — how would the other women respond to that situation? Obviously, we would weep for her. Grieve for her. Demand justice for her.

Instead, the women of America band together, wear pink hats, and demand that they be allowed to pay the man to do it again to someone else. Further, they insist that everyone be required to chip in and pay for him to do it to millions of other women.

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