Last year, the FDA approved the first nonprescription daily oral contraceptive. Now the Biden administration is proposing a rule that would make over-the-counter birth control and condoms free for the first time.
In 1960, the FDA approved the first birth control pill, enabling women to have sex with less fear of an unwanted pregnancy. This was an early step in the so-called “sexual revolution.” Others followed:
- In 1962, Helen Gurley Brown’s book Sex and the Single Girl encouraged single women to be sexually active.
- Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique (1963) argued that women should find identity and meaning in their lives apart from their husbands and children.
- The legalization of abortion in 1973 further enabled women to have sex without having to raise unwanted children.
- Abortion pills are now widely available as well and are used in more than 60 percent of all abortions.
The first sexual revolution separated sex from marriage. The second sexual revolution is now separating sex from people. The plague of pornography and virtual reality porn is making it easier than ever for people to divorce sex from a physical relationship with others.
As we noted yesterday, medical and technological innovations continue to lower barriers to immorality that have existed for generations. We could try to erect new barriers, such as enacting laws that limit the availability of abortion and installing pornography blockers on our devices. These would be helpful, of course, but human efforts cannot truly change human hearts.
Rick Warren was right: “I want to change my circumstances. God wants to change me.”
How?
“The first godless culture in human history”
English writer Paul Kingsnorth recently published a brilliant analysis explaining how “modernity has descended into a spiritual void.” After charting the path that led us here, he writes that we now “live in a culture without faith.” He explains:
We believe in nothing. Most significantly, we are now even ceasing to believe in the ideas which arose to replace all the religions in the age of “Enlightenment.” Reason, progress, liberalism, freedom of speech, democracy, the enlightened rational individual, the scientific process as a means of determining truth: everywhere, these “secular” beliefs which were supposed to replace religion worldwide are either under fire or have already fallen too.
Accordingly, he notes, “We are perhaps the first godless culture in human history.” He adds, “Religious cosmologies have differed vastly across time and space, but no society has ever existed without one.”
Nonetheless, Kingsnorth offers hope:
Despite it all, we should be of good cheer. For the Void is, by its nature, a time-limited phenomenon. Precisely because it is empty, it cannot last. The Void is a phase; it is the place you come to after the end of a culture, and after the end of a theology. The challenge now is not to mourn, to cling or to look back. We are not in charge of this thing, after all. The challenge is for us to think about what comes next—and how to live in, through, and with it.
I agree that our “post-truth” culture cannot sustain itself. It is contradictory at its core: to claim there is no such thing as absolute truth is to make an absolute truth claim. And humans cannot live without truth and truths. We need speed limits and laws against murder and encouragement to treasure children and the aged. We need a compass to navigate by; the darker the storm, the more urgent the guidance.
“God will change us because he loves us”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. claimed, “Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.” He was right: humans are both frail and finite. “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more” (Psalm 103:15–16)
It is therefore only logical to submit to God’s divine authority in every dimension of life:
- If God is our Creator, we must be his creatures, subject to his lordship.
- If he is omnipotent and we are not, his power must exceed ours.
- If he is omniscient and we are not, his wisdom must exceed ours.
- If he is omnibenevolent and we are not, his love and compassion must exceed ours.
As a result, the “inner spiritual transformation” we require is found not in anything we can do but in the living Lord Jesus who alone can save our souls and transform our lives. Tullian Tchividjian observed, “Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because he loves us.”
When we submit our lives to the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and spend meaningful time in worship, prayer, Bible study, solitude, meditation, and other spiritual disciplines, we position ourselves to meet Jesus. He then changes us to be like himself (Romans 8:29) and we bear “much fruit” (John 15:5) as he works in us as his body in the world (1 Corinthians 12:27). (For more on God’s transforming and empowering grace, please see my new website article, “Why the Boston Celtics are under ‘zero pressure’ to repeat.”)
“To love God and live for him is heaven”
Paul testified: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). If we make his choice, we can have his experience. And when Jesus is living in us as fully as he lived in his earthly body, we experience his presence in ways that transform our lives and our world.
Frederick Buechner wrote:
“You do not love God and live for him so that you will go to heaven. Whichever side of the grave you happen to be talking about, to love God and live for him is heaven.”
Will you be in “heaven” today?
Wednesday news to know:
*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.
Quote for the day:
“Without absolutes revealed from without by God himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about matters, justice, and right and wrong, issued from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers.” —John Owen
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