Two bluejeaned girls sat beside their huge back packs stormily discussing their philosophy of life. Words flowed out on clouds of cigarette smoke, twisting and turning in the minds of the listeners. “The whole trouble with the world is men. Men are all wicked. Men have caused all the problems that exist. Men are horrible. Women should never love men. Women should love only women. Women should love women physically and in every other way. A relationship between two women is what can be really beautiful. If you had only women loving women, the world would be all right.”
This “solution” would indeed change the world. Empty of a new generation, empty of both boy and girl babies, civilization could grind to a halt. Exaggerated? An extreme position, yes, but one actually held by radical lesbian women’s lib advocates who are twisting and filling with fog the minds of other young women. First the exaggerated emphasis on equality of men and women, then shifting ideas turning to unisex, then superiority of women, and suddenly a cry for the pushing aside of men altogether. A maze of twisting turning paths leads to this barren solution.
Isaiah 5:20 and 21 give warning: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight.” This is a description of reversing truth with falsehood, of putting an individual human being’s wisdom in the center, of accepting the darkness of Satan’s twisting lies in the place of the light of God’s truth. Eve and then Adam fell for this twisting of God’s truth. The results of putting human wisdom against God’s truth are devastating at every level.
Isaiah goes on to picture vividly the result of living on the basis of calling evil good, and good evil, of putting darkness for light and light for darkness, of putting bitterness for sweetness and sweetness for bitterness. “Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel” (Isa. 5:24). The picture is of plants whose roots have rotted so that the plant withers, and of flowers that dry up, and then of a fire that finishes off the fruitfulness by destroying even the stubble. A desert remains.
Building a “new world” on a twisted base where all God’s laws are turned backwards will result in only barrenness of every sort. The very things being screamed for the loudest will die like plants with no roots. “Be not wise in your own conceits” we are told in Romans 12:13.
But, we may say, “I am not twisted in my views on men and women. I do believe God has made the two to be one in an amazing way physically, spiritually and intellectually, with the wonder of fruitfulness and new life as a result. I have no barren reform in mind for the world’s ills. I’m fitting into the real world. I have no strange or twisted changes to set forth. I do realize that men and women are different, and that God created the differences in the first place, so that trying to wipe them out is starting out in the wrong direction.”
Well, what is the danger of putting bitter for sweet and calling evil good in spiritual areas? There are subtle areas where people are being twisted and turned with even more dangerous “propaganda” than that concerning male-female relationships. Satan never stops his attempts to put salt in the sugar bowl and sugar in the salt shaker. If he can succeed in making people feel that they have some exciting and “sweet” relationship that feels “spiritual” without involving Jesus Christ, then he continues to blow a stream of confusing “smoke” into people’s “eyes of understanding.”
This is an age of confusion, and there is a plan behind the confusion. Satan’s drive is to wipe out truth with scribbles of lies reversing everything. Paul warns in Second Timothy 3:5 and 7 about “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away … ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of truth.” We are not with a “form of godliness” that is a false form of the true godliness. The only true godliness comes through being one with the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. There is no source of being filled with the Holy Spirit other than oneness with Christ through accepting his death on the cross as the death of the Second Person of the Trinity in our place. There is no other name, no other person, by whom we can be saved, nor by whom we can have spiritual life and true spiritual fruit. We are to be a part of his body, as Ephesians 5:30 tells us.
People who are “ever learning” yet “never able to come to the knowledge of truth” may be those who study and study and continue to get further from the truth of the Bible all the time, or those who search for spiritual feeling and try out various possibilities, all the while getting further and further from the “true Bridegroom” and into more and more barren spiritual relationships.
If we are to have the true fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; if we are to know something of the power of the Spirit as we read the Word of God and pray; then we must be in the place of the faithful bride. There cannot be a mixture of the bitter in the sweet water of life. Light does not mix with darkness. There is danger surrounding us spiritually, even as there is danger surrounding persons who discuss the possible ways of reforming evil by setting forth reversed values.
Who is included in the marvelous wedding preparations? “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.” What a wonderful moment that will be! We are a part of that “bride,” and we have “now” to make ourselves ready, not by getting on to the bandwagon of some false reform that pays more attention to the “bride” than to the Bridegroom, or that aims more at providing spiritual excitement or a kind of peace for the bride than at pleasing the Bridegroom now. “Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 9:9).
We must not get mixed up in the wrong “reform group” or we will not only sadden the Bridegroom but will also be specifically neglecting a tremendous task he has given us—and only us—to do, with the help of the Spirit.
