Opus 2025-397: Speaking Truth to Denial

Have you noticed how people have a genuine fear of the truth?  This came up in a recent discussion where the person I was talking to did not want to call evil, evil.  He kept coming up with synonyms or excuses.  I finally pointed out to him that it is very common at least in the book of Proverbs, to call evil, evil, to admit that evil is evil.

Why don’t we want to call evil by its name?  Because there’s always going be someone around us who says you shouldn’t say that, it’s not kind, you’re going to drive people away.  As a result, we don’t drive them away.  They leave in boredom because we don’t have anything to attract them.  We need to speak truth.  Not truth to power, but truth to denial.

Think of all the areas where we don’t want to come right out and say that things are evil.  We don’t want to mention homosexuality as evil.  Everybody always brings up a family member or a friend who is the nicest person in the world and is homosexual.  How can it be evil?  You could ask the same question about the sociopath who has learned how to function in society.  He is still a sociopath.  He is still not to be trusted.  Good manners and smooth talk do not overcome the evil.

You can make a list: transgender, Islam, corruption in government, censorship for you own good.  Add whatever you want.

So we can at least start by not being afraid to use the word evil.  We are surrounded by it.  When we see professional medical people who are supposed to be committed to do a no evil, butchering the bodies of adolescent children because they have had some perverted adult convince them they are the wrong sex, we need to call it evil.  Why?  Because it is.

Of course, we need to be careful that what we are calling evil is evil by an absolute standard not just by our personal preference for the moment.  That again, as I’ve said many times, is something that we have to base on the witness of scripture and of the God we serve.

homo unius libri