In 2017 I encountered a video series on YouTube called “The War on Truth” by the Fuel Project which noticed a pattern within Western Society in the recent couple hundred years.
During the Early and Middle Medieval periods the Roman Catholic church controlled all knowledge and what was thought of by the people. But as more people gained understanding of the Bible and it was made into their own language the corruption and deceit of the Roman Catholic Church became well known. Thus society began to pursue truth and knowledge believing that if it was a lack of these things that got them into the mess then a fulfillment of these would prevent them from happening again.
But as the 1950’s drew to a close and the 1960’s opened up a new counter culture movement had begun. This generation saw the increased power of the atomic bombs and learned from first hand accounts of what it was like to serve in the Second World War. This generation only wanted a peace that would last and believed it would come from the embracing of love since they perceived the last war to have been caused by too many truth claims. And thus a lot more of a “live and let live” mindset was developed. In addition to the new mindset a rebellion against the old ways was spreading and the “free love” movement also grew in popularity. Everything then came to a tipping point in 1967’s “Summer of Love” where the ideas where rapidly spread and popularized.
Mark, who created the Fuel Project, began researching this topic in 2013 when after speaking at a conference about two types of virtues that God exhibits. Hard virtues and Soft virtues which are gauged by how easy or difficult they are to deal with in our own lives. Since then he has expounded on this subject by producing more serieses dedicated to the culture war. In one of those series he describes our current cultural landscape as a “Post-Truth Society” where objective truth is so often discarded in favor of not offending anyone or causing emotional discomfort.
One prominent example of how far our society has drifted away from truth is Bill H.R.5 of the 117th United States Congress (2021-2022). This bill was labeled the “Equality Act” but when I read through it I discovered that it would redefine the legal protections against discrimination against sex to include Gender Identity.
This means a man can claim he identifies as a woman and walk into a woman’s bathroom, changing room, women’s only section of a spa such as the sauna, participate in female sports, and the owners of these facilities or orchestrators of these events are legally forbidden from stopping this. Among the legislation is that it would ban what was labeled as “Conversion Therapy” or as some people mockingly call it “pray the gay away.” The “Conversion Therapy” I hold would be better defined as “Encounter Therapy” for it is a place and time where people seek God to overcome this attraction, confusion, or even underlying trauma that has messed with their mental state. There are testimonies of people who’ve gone through times of suffering and internal emotional struggles. Mark Fairly, of the Fuel Project, has made several videos where he points out an interesting correlation between emotional trauma in the developmental years and 10 well known celebrities calling this simply The Trauma Theory. Because there is an increased focus on the feelings of people they are being denied the truth that can prevent harm. We know it is impossible to change gender and thus these people who believe these things are delusional if they believe it or lying if they don’t. And whatever the case is, the end result is harm for healthy body parts will be removed by the self-proclaimed Sex-Change Surgeries.
(Author’s Note: When I first did this podcast episode in the beginning of 2022 Jonathan Cahn’s book “Return of the Gods” hadn’t come out yet. When I read the book in 2023 I learned that one of the old demonic forces in the ancient world Ishtar was believed to be able to blur the boundaries of sex; removing it from the boundaries of marriage between one man and one woman, causing same sex attraction, having the power to change people to the opposite sex, and being violently hostile to any who would resist her. As I convert the old audio podcast to written format I find it necessary to include this new information because I believe he is right in saying the old demonic forces are still at play and making a reappearance. I also believe this is why they tried and failed to ban the existence of places where people can freely come and seek deliverance by the hand of God through the blood of Jesus Christ.)
With all of this in mind there is a significant pressure for us to conform and give up on truth. And this is not possible for us as Christians to do because when we proclaim ourselves to be servants of Christ who proclaims himself to be the way, truth, and life in John 14:6 to deny truth would be to deny Him. One thing that I learned after publishing Welcome to the Armory is that the Roman military belt, the Belta or Cingdulom Militaire(in Latin the letter C make the hard K sound when at the beginning of a word). And it’s that soldiers were required to wear it even when off duty because it was a display of their position and enabled others to recognize them. When Paul in Ephesians 6:13 ties truth to the Belta he is saying truth has to be part of our identity as Christians and that we must walk this way of life.
The image I drew for today’s post is a majestic crown contrasted by a crazy man in a straight jacket and that’s because of what answer we must give to the question of who Jesus is. In his book “Mere Christianity” S.C. Lewis provides us the three conclusions that we are left to draw on the question of who Jesus was or is. Either he was telling the truth and thus he is Lord the ruler of all for he is God. A liar who was saying things just to draw a crowd to himself as there have been many such figures in history. Or he was a lunatic who was lying but believed that his lies were the truth and thus had the confidence to say and do as he was saying and doing. When Jesus told people their sins were forgiven he acted as if their actions against other people were actions against him personally and we will think that as strange. But if he were the Jewish God who cared about each individual personally then it would make sense why he identified as the person who was harmed because a harm to another one of his beloved humans is a harm to him. We all have things in our lives that are precious to us and to have them receive some type of damage or harm becomes personal to us. It is the same for him the way he was acting.
The reason why saying “Jesus was a good person” or a “good moral teacher” falls apart is because the act of forgiving other people their sins in the Jewish Hebrew culture was paramount to proclaiming yourself as the I AM that revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush and led the people by day as cloud and night as fire. A good moral teacher must be the example of his morals. If he was saying these things falsely he’d be a hypocrite not worth following. But since he never repented of those statements; the logic of him being a “good moral teacher” brings one to the place where you must say he is telling the truth or he is lying and then the statement of Jesus being a “good moral teacher” is false and everything he said should be rejected. If his teachings are good and moral then why are they good and moral?
In order to maintain internal logic and consistency about his moral adherence we are left with the conclusion that He is exactly what he said he is.
To wrap the two seemingly disconnected parts of this article up I quote the words of James and of Paul in his letter to the church in Rome.
“Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.”
James 1:16-18 (NIV)
“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”
Romans 1:25 (NIV)
The purpose of Mark’s whole series was to identify the problems which come when we reject only half of who God is. When we embrace one set of virtues at the expense of the other. In Mark’s list he has Love, Grace, Kindness, Mercy, and Forgiveness as the Soft Virtues while the Hard Virtues are Truth, Justice, Righteousness, and Holiness. When we have a god in our mind that only embodies one set of virtues we get a created thing like Paul describes and that is not a complete picture.
People will gravitate to a distorted image of God that best embodies the type of “god” that they want in their lives. If they want a “god” that will not do anything against them then a “god” who mostly embodies the Soft Virtues but if they want a “god” who needs everyone to be perfect and provides a way to earn salvation then the Hard Virtues will become the popular ones. It also applies to how you want to treat others.
When people reject the God of the Bible, YH-WH, they will make their own by mixing and matching these virtue elements to create something that appeals to them. For the personal lives of others lacking truth will cause questions to emerge and if they don’t find answers that are grounded in truth it leaves a lot of uncertainty. This uncertainty will lead to anxiousness and I speak from my own experience when I say that.
If you’ve read Welcome to the Armory then you will know that peace follows truth because it is the result of being grounded in the truth and that is why peace is tied to the military boots of the Romans. Boots that were meant to provide a soldier with a good grip on the ground beneath them. And this applies even to a national level. If sources of information cannot be trusted then the stability of that nation will falter and the order will begin to fade. The only way in which order will be restored is by the reemergence of truth as the dominant force. And this only can be done when trust is formed again through hard work.