Demoralization of a Culture

 There will not be time to outlay this significantly right now. The night is too far spent, too much grief already, and even joys. 

Many times recently, the Lord brings to mind the passage/s about folks crying out for rocks to hide them. In the midst of sore judgment, rather than cry out to God for mercy and aid, the hardness of hearts and the depraved excesses of pride yield over to crying out for the inert to shield against the infinite, sovereign, majestic, Omniscient One. Such blatant delusion. Such absolute dereliction of duty, moreover--rather than the worship the One we were created to worship, there's a hardening all the more against Him. 

Spitting in His face, again and again, moreover. And the more He presses the issue, the further the driving of one's heels into the ground in defiance--asking even nearly for death to hide one from His sharp focus and heavy hand. Rather than submit to God. 

He will not be mocked. Though for a time, things may seem otherwise, and lasciviousness and lewd speech and all manner of evil and lawlessness reigns--every bit as much in speech, then so as effected in heart and thought...depravity unto depravity, spewing forth madness unto damnation. Despising all good, defiling all which is pure, and degrading the most sanctified of all matters...as an outworking of absolute malice toward the One who reigns, untouched by all. 

We cannot unseat Him. We cannot throw off His chains of right order and morality, no matter that we turn our courses solely to evil and think only what is defiling and detrimental and destructive unto ourselves and all others, having so set our faces as flint to attempt to degrade Him and denude His status. 

We cannot undo what is. Rather, all we do is destroy ourselves--incrementally, perhaps invisibly at first--but then as unto disorder and discord and devastation and degradation of all of creation. Marred almost beyond recognition of what our created order was, except that He in His longsuffering kindness preserves a remnant as representation each-to-each, and also of a portion secured entirely for Himself, through Christ. 

His blood has cleansed us, whom He has bought wholesale by His own righteous life and willing self-sacrifice under the weight of our utterly-deserved wrath. His wrath is truly righteous. 

We defile and destroy the most innocent. We rip limb-from-limb the most vulnerable--even in that sacred space of growth and formation--that space most holy, for the nurturance of new life, to be kept preserved and secure. Even that space is no longer kept sacred. 

All has been defiled. Desecration upon desecration. 

Largely without remorse. 

I hear the mocking, the derision, and the wholesale dereliction of all sanctity, and hear my own voice, afore. knowing that had Christ not intervened, I would remain solely in darkness. Rather than grieving the lapses there are and have been, and grieving that there is not a fuller conformity to absolute goodness. 

He is indeed worthy. And purity is joy, to walk before Him in holiness. The beauty of holiness. His holiness, moreover. What delight!

But this world is not so. This world defies all logic, actively suppressing truth in unrighteousness in choosing a lie over reality. We demoralize ourselves by refusing to submit to God. We demoralize one another, by upholding that treachery and grand treason. We abjectly destroy all which is good in the world by exalting lies above truth, exalting self above God, exalting evil above good, exalting what is degrading above what is sanctifying. We would destroy that which is good, rather than submit to that which is not according to "our will," even as "our will" thus exalted defiles us to our utter core. 

We are depraved in our minds and actions. And none cares. No one cares. Evil runs amok. The world is ablaze with horrors and travesties--the powerful are behind closed doors committing acts which cannot be mentioned in good conscience. Delighting in the defilement and destruction of all innocence, feasting on death. 

And we who are the masses lap up the dregs, intent upon following suit into our own kingdoms of degradation and defilement if we may but grasp for ourselves a key to a castle--not earned, but stolen. Never earned. 

So all defile one another, and clamber for more. Even seeking knowledge turns in upon itself to feast only on darkness, further and further, unto abject depravity and dissolution. Light is despised. Light is abhorred. 

Nothing would hold us back from consuming as many in our path as can be managed, to sate a never-ending, never-satisfied lust for self-gratification at all costs. Our own destruction, moreover, and yet we careen madly down that cavernous path in our mindless trek to cavort into that gulf of eternal perdition. We would rather fly headlong into that wrath than humble ourselves for a moment, beneath the weight of the truth of our depravity and the righteous damnation which awaits. 

Yet, God in His mercy, though we have hated Him with every ounce of our being--patting one another on the back, even, and chortling to congratulate one another on greater defiance...though we have hated His reign and His being with all our own, He set out to satisfy justice in His own flesh, that mercy would be manifest for some. 

We all ought to have been let go full-throttle into hell. We all ought to have been utterly destroyed under the weight of the reality of what is our wretchedness and treachery to have acted and even thought against perfect good and love, merely for one instance (so great is He, even that moment is too dire a reality to be borne by existence for such injustice as it constitutes!). We should have been utterly consumed by the weight of due wrath in the very first moment of defying all which is right and good. 

Yet He has forestalled. And has made a way that salvation and redemption and deliverance be manifest. None deserve it. Not one, not remotely. We are so defiled we have no conception of our own wretchedness and would instead justify ourselves to condemn Him--perish the horrid evil, such a thought!..and yet, who among us has been nearly innocent of so doing!--every single one of us has justified our own actions, even sinning once. Having ceased from what was right even once. 

Jesus Christ paid our debt. And yet who will even repent, and honor Him? Who will even turn to God and receive mercy, dealing righteously for once? None, except God intervene and change our hearts to do so. We are wicked to our core, unless He intervene. 

Pray that He do so. We deserve His judgment, daily all the more. Every day our global society stores up more and more wrath for the day of judgment. Every day. 

And every day that we refuse to honor Him as God, He allows us to have what we would want instead: suppression of truth in unrighteousness, as we desire. So we forsake truth, and we choose lies. And He lets us have them, as we desire them. To defile ourselves. With a depraved mind. Ultimately, destroying ourselves and rushing into death. So, each to each--we want security apart from God?: we have had it in droves for the past year and some. We want peace apart from God, and love apart from Him?: We have had the institutionalization of these things, in the last year and a half, unto the ribald mockery of those who stand out, increasingly. Forced conformity, and love is social gratification and conformity, even as we had individually pursued before. Yet still, on all levels so. 

We want truth apart from God?: We will see the very pits of hell laid bare before us, and yet never come to a knowledge of truth that would liberate us from that spell. We want freedom apart from God?: We are free at the cost of our own lives, forsaken at the end of an implement which alters our very physiology. 

We have chosen to demoralize ourselves. We continue to dig our heels in against God, and so our demoralization will be unto slavery all the more. We refuse His bonds?: bonds of righteousness and justice and peace and love unto Him, which then is unto all?: we will be in bondage all the more, even as we have been in measure the past year and some: spiritually, mentally, psychologically, economically, and so on. 

Were it not for His longsuffering patience, we would all have been utterly destroyed already. May these mercies yield His fruits, and unto the salvation of many. He will not be mocked. And it is indeed a terrible thing to fall into the hands of a living God. 

I fear and weep for those who so deny and defy Him. His peace, alone, is solace.