The January 2024 issue of the respected magazine, First Things, has a piece called “the Desecration of Man,” by Carl Trueman. A reference to the famous book by C.S. Lewis “The Abolition of Man.” Our modern culture does not value life, the unborn, and for that matter, the living. Everything is disposable. The sheer disregard for human life and human dignity is breathtaking. In today’s press there is a lot of chatter about the three university presidents who recently appeared before Congress and failed to acknowledge that the genocide against the Jewish people is against their university rules of behavior. Shocking as this may be, it reflects the general populace. Trueman quotes from C.S. Lewis’ book, The Abolition of Man: “Speaking to an audience at the height of the Second World War, Lewis identified the central problem of the modern age: The world was losing its sense of what it meant to be human.”
The desecration of what it is to be human is not new but seems to increase by the day. Abortion is one example of the desecration of man. After the overturning of Roe v Wade last summer, the “day of rage” started. State, by state the revenge has had some fruits. Ohio and California voted to enshrine abortion up to and including birth into their state constitution. On October 7, 2023, we witnessed the desecration and brutal murder of Israeli citizens sleeping in their bed. A barbaric act for the ages. A testament to man’s inhumanity to man. In the United States, and the world we see clueless people celebrating these murderous monsters. How did we get here? When a baby in womb, and even outside the womb is only human if the mother wants it, if not, the baby can be killed legally. We’ve lost a sense of what it means to be human.
On TV we have programs like “The Bachelorette” where young women compete for the attention of a man. Now we have the older version, The Golden Bachelor, where a dozen older women compete for one man. We call this dignity of the human person? People are just “issue.” In my last piece I referred to California Penal Code 187 which states that if a pregnant woman is murdered, the child counts as a human, but an abortion is excluded. What insanity is this? You’re only human if you say you are but not if you deny it? Today, a man can claim to be a woman and is celebrated as “woman of the year.” In November 2023, transgender woman, Geena Rocero was named “woman of the year” by Glamour Magazine. This is what the abolition of man looks like.
The church has not escaped this desecration of man. The leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis is famous for giving constant mixed messages and contradictions, such as when he first said that we cannot bless sin, referring to homosexuality, and later saying that same sex marriages could be blessed based on the individual priest’s preference. This is speaking with a forked tongue – moral relativism. This week I attended a funereal at a Lutheran Church. I noticed that the bathrooms were marked “all gender.” The church has now surrendered to the culture. Truth is relative. The president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, in the recent Congressional hearing made the statement “my truth.” So, truth is now relative: you have your truth and I have mine: “In an interview with the Harvard Crimson student newspaper published Friday, Gay apologized for her remarks and said in part: “I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures.” “I failed to convey what is my truth,” she said.” Insanity reigns at the academy. Pontius Pilate famously asked Jesus “what is truth?” A mockery of Jesus. Jesus said that He is the truth. With a secular culture of today, this is a puzzle to most and a hindrance to others. With the absence of God, as G. K. Chesterton said: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
The Trueman article makes this quote: “The abolition of man as Lewis describes it takes place against the background of two aspects of modernity: its disenchantment and its accelerating liquidity. Yet I want to suggest that we need to add a third category, that of desecration. Man is made in God’s image. That means that the abolition of man is a theological act with theological consequences. Neither disenchantment nor liquidity by itself adequately expresses this aspect of the problem. Desecration, a theological concept, does so.”
Man is made is God’s image. We have forgotten that, no, we have chosen to ignore it. We are the determiners of who we are. A few years ago I read a good book about Scientology called “Going Clear” by Lawrence Wright. Scientology claims it’s a religion, but as a Scientologist, you can manage your life with their instructions, not God; you’re in control. The desecration of man follows from this view. It follows, also that the disregard for the humanity of the unborn leads from such a view.
Pro-Life, Pro-Logic 
Wonderfully written and full of truth.
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