“The square on the hypotenuse has not gone moldy by continuing to equal the sum of the squares on the other two sides.” — C.S. Lewis
The rule of rust and decay does not apply to inexorable truths. They do not get stale. They do not turn green when left in the back of the fridge. They are fresh every morning, just like God's mercies. They are lively and spry and ready for the day. The goodness of God does not grow mold.
"Think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Imagine a world where eternal truths were subject to entropy. In other words, imagine if there were no eternal truths. John Lennon once dared us to dream as much.
"Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky"
— "Imagine"
People who are bad at math find it easy to imagine a world where two and two can be whatever you want it to be. People who are bad in general find it easy to imagine a world where right and wrong are whatever you want them to be. But that is not the world we live in. You can reject reality, but you cannot make it go away.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." — Philip K. Dick
Eternal truth isn't going anywhere. It would be there whether we were ever born or not. Its existence is indifferent to ours. We can leave the Law of God in the basement, but it doesn't decay down there. It doesn't rust or mold or atrophy. It does no harm to the truth if and when we abandon it, but it does harm us.
“Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.” — G.K. Chesterton
We decay when we forget the eternal things. They do not fade, we do. We rust and mold and go bad at the back of the fridge when we abandon the unending freshness of God's infinite truths. We are corrupted when we trust in our own conceits.
Isaiah 5:20-21
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!
Woes are pronounced upon those too easily impressed by their own imaginations. Those who flip the scripts by flipping off their Father in Heaven are not budding with fresh insights. They are falling for the oldest trick in the book.
"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy." — George Orwell, 1984
The devil's first gambit was trying to convince Eve that the world was not as God said it was. You could eat forbidden food without being eaten alive. You can deny the law of God without being denied access to the life of God. These were the lies he told and this was the philosophy Eve was deceived into believing.
"For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?” — George Orwell, 1984
These are the kind of subtle questions serpents not only entertain, but are foolish enough to adopt. Honest questions can be answered, but questions that do not allow for certain answers, or questions that have the answer already embedded in the question, are not helpful when it comes to contemplating the never ending wisdom of God.
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” — George Orwell, 1984
The truth shall set you free. Two and two make four. Always have. Always will. There is freedom in believing that and even more in being able to say that out loud for some are so willfully ignorant as to pass legislation to make it a crime to point out what is obvious to everyone.
"Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer." — G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Reality is the final battleground. What is a man? What is a woman? What is right? What is wrong? And by what standard? These are the things over which wars are fought. This is the natural outcome of the enmity God Himself inserted into our story back in Genesis 3:15 by pitting the seed of the serpent against the seed of the woman. You can try to deny the antithesis, but that just makes you a son of a serpent. Denying reality is a strategy only employed by the devils.
"You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end." — G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Those who seek to redefine reality break the things they wish to free. They break these boys and girls by setting them free from their God-given sexes. They break these babies by setting them free from their less-than-ideal futures by slaughtering them in the womb. They break the bank by setting it free from any kind of standard to back it. They break the backs of the oppressed by setting them free from the responsibility and dignity of standing up straight.
All of this to say, the grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of our God will stand forever. The true bread from Heaven never molds and living water never gets stale.
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