I am reading a book that is accumulating a lot of underlining. One such passage is this one:

Turbulent times call for people of courage and conviction who understand the issues at stake and are willing to engage the fight. Underlying the culture war is a great spiritual struggle. On one side are those who believe in universal moral principles, confirmed in Scripture, which should inform and govern our thinking, our speech and our behavior. On the other side are those who prefer to believe that everything is relative, subjective, and merely a matter of personal choice. Although the culture war is often fought in public, the primary battleground is the human heart, and what we see manifested in our society and culture today is merely the visible expression of a titanic struggle between good and evil being waged in the spiritual realm.[1]

I tend to mark up my books. I read with a pencil in hand. I make notes in the margins. I ask questions of the text. I jot down references that occur to me from prior reading and reflection. When I read the above passage I made this diagram:

Universal vs. Relative

Objective vs. Subjective

Rooted vs. Displaced

Fixed vs. Overthrown

Scripture vs. Human opinion

Biblical Theism vs. Atheism/Secularism

Few things are as important as clarity. Illustrating Breshears’ ideas via a “this vs. that” model clarifies the alternatives.

I don’t know many people who don’t sense that the West is undergoing a sea change, a “fundamental transformation,” if you will.

One side wants to conserve; the other wants to transform.

One side wants to recognize that marriage was created and designed to be between one man and one woman; the other side repudiates that and says it (the secular left) has ‘progressed’ and knows better.

One side recognizes God exists, and that men and women are created in His image; the other side sees men and women as autonomous beings in a godless universe wherein gender is now fluid and constructed.

Per Facebook wisdom, for example, its users can select from 71 gender options. Um, folks, this is a new world. One might go so far as to call it quite plainly what it is: stupid.

Some thinkers have written that we are undergoing a second Civil War. But this civil war is about which values we will hold to and base our identity upon.

Will we recognize God; special revelation (Scripture); objective moral values; marriage as the sacred union between one man and one woman; that boys are boys and that girls are girls; that perhaps “fundamentally transforming” the West is veiled language that means destroying Western Civilization and reshaping it into forms with no objective standards but the preferences of the powerful?

There is a ghastly price to be paid for mocking heaven. I know that we are living in a time when the Bible is mocked. It’s somehow “below” many people today. That’s okay. The Bible has been mocked before. Mocking is the default position of the fool. You know how we know that? Brace yourself: It is in the Bible:

Why do the nations rage

and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves,

and the rulers take counsel together,

against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,

Let us burst their bonds apart

And cast away their cords from us.”

He who sits in the heavens laughs;

the Lord holds them in derision.[2]

You see, it is not courageous to spit in the wind; it is folly. It is not brave to shake your fist at God and curse heaven; it is folly. God laughs at folly. It does not wound God to mock Him. He is the uncreated Creator, the Maker of heaven and earth, who needs nothing. He is not lacking anything. He is perfect and He is wholly good and holy, holy, holy. So there is no wisdom in being rebels in a foolish cause.

But you see, God is also loving, and He knows what is best for us. Shall He not do what is right, what is “just” (Genesis 18:25)? Yes, He does and He will. He is the Author of Life (Acts 3:15). He is the potter and we are the clay (Isaiah 64:8).

Again, it is a question of clarity. Breshears has it. His book details it with excellence. It is a clarity that demands we be honest, that we count the costs, that we realize the consequences of our ideas. Read his book. Better still, read the Book. Though neglected and mocked by the fools, it abides still and remains what it has always proven to be: the Word of God.

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[1] Breshears, Jefrey D. American Crisis: Cultural Marxism and the Culture War: A Christian Response. [Centre Pointe Publishing, 2020], VIII.

[2] Psalm 2:1-3, ESV.