My oldest son recently decided on the college he will attend in the fall.
Interesting fact: the college he will be going to is on a list of worst colleges!
Should I be disappointed in him for choosing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a college deemed evil by a nationally-recognized organization?
The list that negatively reviews his college is from Campus Pride. They rank colleges on treatment of LGBTQ+ students. They have a “shame list for the purpose of calling out the harmful and shameful acts of religion-based prejudice and bigotry” (campuspride.org).
Since these supposed “hate crimes” are predominantly because these colleges have received Title IX exemptions to operate on Christian convictions, most schools on the list are religious. It includes the Christian colleges that haven’t compromised by giving up Biblical standards regarding marriage/gender.
We witness regularly (especially every June) not just moral confusion, but the moral world being turned completely upside down. How did we get to the place where good is shamed as evil and immorality is celebrated as virtuous?
First, as a society, we rejected the revealed morality given by God and tried to determine right/wrong apart from Him. In other words, we kicked God out of schools and the Ten Commandments out of courts. God’s moral law had been a unifying point in America since its founding, even by those who didn’t see it as supernatural.
With no universal moral standard uniting and providing a foundation for society, we are left with the moral instability and chaos that now surrounds us.
Another cause of the moral insanity of our culture is seen in how Progressives further their cause. They don’t argue using logic; instead, they resort to deflections (red herrings), name-calling (ad hominems) and other fallacies.
But their favored tactic to turn morality on its head is to label opponents with “phobias.” The phobias related to moral issues in our society are too familiar. Have you noticed they all refer to Christian positions? We hear about homophobes, transphobes, and Islamophobes– not babyphobes or freemarketphobes?
That’s because Christians/conservatives tend to use logic and facts to present a moral argument. This flows from the Biblical worldview that truth is persuasive. But labeling conservatives as phobic makes their criticism of Progressive positions seem illegitimate and irrational.
Combine that with pressures on society to recognize people who engage in various kinds of immorality as special victim groups and then principled beliefs will appear to be a result of bigotry and hate, and opposition to Progressivism is shutdown without rational arguments from the Left. This inevitably leads to calling good evil.
We must stand against this kind of labeling for the sake of truth and human flourishing; people suffer under Progressive ideologies.
As I reflect on my son’s choice; I’m grateful that in the moral chaos he has grown up in, he has chosen – by God’s grace – to continue his education in a place that made the bad list in our culture.
Because right now that means that it is good.
Scott Kamps writes a bi-weekly column for The Graham Star. He can be reached via email, thestableguy@frontier.com.