BLUF (Bottom Line, Up Front): Where there is no transcendent anchor, power/ruthlessness becomes the transcendent. 

Since my high school days, I have been a voracious reader, especially of the classics of literature, history, and theology. One of the most-referenced quotes in the best of literature comes from one of Dostoyevsky’s masterpieces, The Brothers Karamazov: “If there is no God, all is permissible.”

There is more wisdom in that sentence than in many entire volumes of theology and philosophy. True to Dostoyevsky’s nature, he saw to the heart of the matter. If the God of the Bible is not the way, truth, and the life, then there is no transcendent holy eternal anchor, and all things are permissible. 

Connection: This is why you see a world that is fascinated with the behavior of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, and his ilk. The curtains are being pulled back on depravity, and the train of wickedness is long, long, long. People begin looking at one another with doubt. “Are you going to talk? If so, then I will, too.” And so it goes. Non-disclosure agreements, hush money, racketeering, trafficking, etc. The list goes on and on. Why? It goes right back to what I penned above: Where there is no transcendent anchor, power/ruthlessness becomes the transcendent. If the one true and living God and his law are jettisoned, then don’t be surprised when wickedness reigns. 

Takeaway: Theology is unavoidable, folks. Every person is a theologian, whether he is aware of it or not. We all have a “God of the system.” The “god of the system” for Combs and his ilk is self. If people do not worship the only true and living God, then you have idolatry. And paganism or any ism is insufficient to deal with man’s sin. Only Christianity conquers man’s sin. The question is: What will it take for that truth to break through to the hard hearts of men? You are witnessing the results of rejecting the true and living God moment by moment. There has to be an anchor, something that roots morality. And when you have a person and culture suppress, reject, and deny the one and only true and living anchor (Christ), you have chaos, and what you see is pagans worshiping their god.