WOEFUL INVERSION

 WOEFUL INVERSION

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! 21 Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!

-Isaiah 5:20-21 KJV

… That is, in essence, the nature of fallen humanity—to believe lies, to overturn right and wrong, and to replace God’s holy standard with a flawed and feeble one of its own design. 

- Dr. John MacArthur

Christian writer Erik Jones remarkably observes: “As we look at society today, we see a cultural landscape that has veered further and further from any semblance of biblically based morality. The slide into secularism—the idea that humanity can define morality apart from any divine spiritual guidance—has accelerated rapidly in the last two decades.”

Reversing God's standards of right and wrong characterizes the times we live in.   The irrepressible advance of an inverted culture better describes  post modern society. The Prophet Isaiah already condemned this woeful inversion during his time. The German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche  perhaps inspired the appearance of this phenomenon in his philosophical theory of transvaluation of values, wherein new values would be created and recreated by the new types of “superior thinkers”.   It presents  the  deceptive picture of the "modern morality" promoting values derived from godless assumptions, rationalization, and cultural evolution, giving it the appearance of rightness, and social acceptability. 

The moral relativists" of the modern day redefine moral standards, as they teach the ungodly idea that  right is now called wrong, and wrong is now called right. The goal of an inverted culture is to make right the very things the Bible calls sin.  It's a culture that makes true the very things we know are a lie.  It's a culture that insidiously pushes the agenda of worldly values and man centered world view as opposed to God’s standard of truth.  

…Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” ( John 8:12) 

But many will be offended by the truth. “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:20).

Cultural relativism persuades us that there is no right or wrong, good or evil. Truth is based on one’s own opinions and preferences, and it can be adapted according to certain situations. 

So we hear the lying politician justify his lies by saying it was only a misappreciation of facts.  The dishonest manager putting an excuse for his embezzlement by saying it was a moment of personal weakness. The tyrant who orders genocide and extrajudicial killings saying the ends justifies the means. The man who flaunts his illicit relationship as an act between two consenting adults.

Calling good “evil” and evil “good” is a sure sign of spiritual wickedness at work: “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

The great Evangelist Dr. Billy Graham expressed it well, “Honesty was once the hallmark of character. But it has been set aside with an “It’s all right as long as you don’t get caught” philosophy. How do we get our values so mixed up?…

“In one of novelist John Steinbeck’s books, he has a character saying: ‘If it succeeds, they will be thought not crooked but clever.’ In our desire to achieve success quickly, it is easy to get our values mixed up and call evil good and good evil.

“Another way to call evil good is to say that morals are relative. Someone has said: “As the occasion, so the behavior.” We have changed our moral code to fit our behavior instead of changing our behavior to harmonize with our moral code. Nothing is firm today. We are not on solid ground. Young people are shifting from one side to the other. Morally, they are drifting aimlessly without compass or guide”.

The wave of inversion is slowly gaining ground, in the way our society redefines the time honored Christian principles  pertaining to marriage, marital relationships,  family relations, sex,  value of human life, godly child rearing, accountability of freedom of choice, and the objective reality of sin. 

We see the influence of the creeping inverted culture characterized by the irrational denial of the physical reality in favor of every conceivable human imagination; rejection of natural law for experiential approach to morality; twisting Biblical truth to mean its opposite.

Such an inversion of God's principles elevates cultural norms as standard of behavior, thoughts and beliefs. Without the divine standards of God, a good thing can be reinterpreted as something evil, while an immoral act  can be twisted into something that actually appears to be good. Without an absolute standard of divine justice, false human reasoning and uncontrolled passion can rationalize and justify almost any act, as in the case of Hitler’s Nazi Germany which came up with a deluded  “moral imperative “for mass murder. 

Much of the crime and immorality that afflicts modern society goes right back to similar personal and societal redefinitions of right and wrong.