When I read a fiction book, I either want to enjoy the writing style of the author, be interested by the story being told, or I want to get encouragement to go out and do something more with my life. I like to learn and escape into another world for a bit as long it sends me back into the real world a better person, one who is looking to do more. Being a teacher, I tell my students that they have to read a lot of old classics which means that I get to read a lot of old classics with them. The glorious thing about classic stories is that there are many layers to them. The amount of ink that has been spilled by graduate students about them proves my point. People keep reading them to see and learn new things. Moby Dick by Herman Melville recently came up on my class’s reading list. I am quite thankful that not a single of my students asked me if we were really reading a book just about a guy hunting a whale. While that is the scene that is set, there is plenty more in this book than what is simply on the surface. There was plenty of talk about the struggles and interactions between God and man, man and nature, and man and man. These are some of the big themes in the book that are just below the skin. Somewhere in the blubber, if you will. While I have read this book before, a different thing really stuck out to me this time. Melville wrote this book a few years before the Civil War when America was really in its toddler years of existence. It is early American literature, yet it speaks to America today. The book is over 600 pages long, taking one on a journey around the world, watching one man being given over to the lust of his flesh to his destruction. Warnings are given to the man, yet he fights them all. He ignores all reason, threatens his friends with violence, and eventually kills all those who are closest to him. If nothing else, Captain Ahab is a warning to American today to turn from what she wants most in order to do what is right.
America is still a young country, a mere 247 years old. It has never been perfect. It has always had its sins. At the beginning, the sin that people protected was slavery. There is a slavery that is in the Bible that is protected. A better name for it would be indentured servitude. One works to pay off a debt that he owns. Once it is paid off, he is free. This is not the type of slavery that was in America at its founding. The slavery in America at the time was called chattel slavery, where a person is actually owned by another person. This type of slavery was not a new problem. It has been in the world for as long as there has been war. A conquered people were kept alive to live out their lives in slavery. This was not a uniquely American problem, but it was still a problem. A problem that took over 100 years to start to fix in America.
Now, across the pond, there was a man who was already fighting the slavery battle in England, William Wilberforce. He saw the evil of the slave trade and worked his whole life to abolish it in the British Empire, which still covered most of the world. While I don’t have proof in his writing, from my own judgement about what I know about his life from the biographies that I have read and listened to, I would say that he saw the evils of the slave trade for what they truly were.
Looking back to Plato and Aristotle, chattel slaver wasn’t a “problem” because slaves weren’t real people. Barbarians may have had the shape of man, but because they did not act like “civilized” man with building cities, having education systems, or communicating outside of their tribe, they were seen as higher animals. It was a good to them to enslave them because it stopped their senseless killing. This is how they were seen in ancient times, and this view was carried through history.
It wasn’t until a Christian made the connection that just because a man is different and has a different culture and upbringing, it does not make his less of a man. All men are created in the image of God. They have the Imago Dei. Because of this, all men have inherent value and are worthy of a level of respect that is vastly above the animals. All men have a life that is worth protecting. They have rights because they are made in the Imago Dei. No other religion or worldview has a reason behind why all men are created equal. This is a uniquely Christian belief and it led to the ending of slavery in the majority of the world today.
There is a new shift in the world that stems from the same problem. This problem of identity, of people not seeing themselves as the image of God, has seeped back into our nation. It has just changed forms. We are no longer enslaving grown men or woman in this country, at least the majority of the time (the sex slave trade is very much alive in parts of the world). America is now full steam ahead with a new sin.
The killing of babies and calling it healthcare is one outlet for this new sin. The other side of it is the LGBTQ movement. Both stem from not seeing men as an image of God but rather seeing man as the god. The only way that it makes sense to kill a baby, and it is not murder is if babies are not human, just like how the world used to think of the African people. It is the same logic. It is all evil. It should be stopped. It should have never started. The idea that a woman has a choice over her body is fine. The problem is that once she is pregnant, there is now another body inside of her that is not her own. She has no right to kill another human.
So, how do I conflate the LBGTQ movement with abortion? Don’t worry, it an even worst problem. The idea of abortion is a lack of understanding about the value of a person. It is murder and a terrible sin, but it is a problem that has plagued men through all of history. Seeing someone else as less than themselves comes back to pride. It is thinking that you are more important than those around you. A woman is more important than her baby, so she can choose to end its life. The problem with the LGBTQ movement is that a person sees themselves as less than they are. They no longer see themselves as images of God but as animals. They aren’t putting other people down but themselves. They could be so much more than they are. They are killing the blessing of what it means to be human. The blessing of a man being created in the image of God is that he gets to lead and sacrifice his life as Christ led and sacrificed for the church. A man should grow up into fatherhood where he leads a family into generational blessing through his efforts. A woman created in the image of God is blessed with fruitfulness. She is the glory of her husband and is saved through her childbearing. She is the only means of bring in more souls and life into the world. She is the flower that bears the fruit of mankind. It is the greatest thing to protect.
Men and woman giving up these blessed roles for the sake of momentary pleasure, making themselves like the animals that man is to rule is the greatest of confusions of our generations and leads to terrible sin. It is the creature forsaking the purpose of his creation as he runs from his Creator. The only way to get to this level of confusion is through complete blindness of what one is made for.
To step up this problem, the people who believe these two great lies are fighting to keep them. They are like Ahad when his first mate Starbuck confront him. Starbuck tells Ahad that he is wrong and if he keeps going, the crew is going to mutiny. Instead of listening, Ahad pulls a pistol on Starbuck, threatening to kill him. This level of belief and devotion to evil is rampant in our country. It is prophetic how the sins of Ahad have come back to America.
The question and the prophecy come. Will America be like Ahab and ignore all reason and calls back to morality? Will it stop the killing of babies because it sees that they are made in the image of God and are worth of protecting? Will the people see that they are making themselves into animals as they ignore the reason that they are created as they seek their own pleasure? Or will the country continue on the path that it is on, going after the thing it loves to hate, to the detriment and death of all those around it? The path of sin only leads to death. There is no other option.
There is only one answer to the sickness that has the American Left fighting to protect these two great sins, and that is repentance. Repent of the killing of children. Repent of the LGBTQ agenda and all that it entails. Come back to the caring of children. Come back to the nuclear family. Come back to the God that saves. Only then will our nation have hope again. Only then can we be saved from these things that are worthy of hate.