An article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal got me thinking about the perils faced by the Church these days. Tony Woodlief, founder of IntentionalFathering.com, makes a compelling argument for the ironic cause of today’s cancel culture: an absolutism embedded, unfortunately, in the origins of the kind of freedom of speech that held to the notion that since any point of view must be permitted in public discourse, therefore even bad ideas should forever be equally permitted a voice no matter how many times they have been refuted. From this the idea arises the notion that all points of view are not only equally permissible, but equally valid. Freedom of speech as ensconced in the U.S. Constitution says nothing to support this, which is in essence the view that all things are relative, that what’s true for you is not necessarily true for me, etc. What happened to our culture, into which this seedling of a twist on the right of free speech began to sprout, is that when it grew, it finally came to its own logical outgrowth, that if all points of view are equally valid, then it is a kind of heresy to argue otherwise. And hence you must not only be opposed but removed, cancelled.

When no dogma can finally be put to rest, it becomes easier—almost obligatory—to do whatever we like. Ideas are evaluated, not based on their reasonableness or coherence, but by how much they tickle the ears of the in-crowd. Harder truths become offensive. The only intolerable citizen, in such a regime, is the one whose belief in truth compels him to attack beliefs he believes to be false even if his attacks disturb the equanimity of the establishment. His criticism becomes too hurtful—even a form of “violence.” For the safety of the community, he must be cast out.

And so freedom of speech morphed into its very antithesis: anti-free speech.

What this means for the Church is that we may expect persecution, not merely because we hold to a Christian confession, but simply because we insist that there is such a thing as truth. We must brace ourselves against the onslaught of this culture against all forms of confession or declaration of absolute truth.

It’s absurd, of course, and simple logic can demonstrate this: if you say that all points of view are equally valid, you are here making an absolute statement, and by your own judgment you must be condemned, and taken in your own net.

But this will not matter to the cancel culture, which has adopted the mind of the mobs they have incited. And that mind cannot be reasoned with. They are gone mad, quite literally.

The only remedy, if there is one, would be the Word of God which we confess, the Word in which the power of God rests. The trouble is that if in their wild apostasy they have sinned against the Holy Ghost, whose only entrance into restless hearts is through the Word, there is no hope for them. We can pray that is not the case.