"Therefore, everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on rock. Rain came down, floods rose, gales blew and hurled themselves against that house, and it did not fall: it was founded on rock. But everyone who listens to these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a stupid man who built his house on sand. Rain came down, floods rose, gales blew and struck that house, and it fell; and what a fall it had!'" (Matthew 7: 24-27)
Jesus' teaching in the book of Matthew inspired the crowds that day even more than their own scribes, because "He taught them with authority." (Matthew 7: 29)
I imagine what spoke to them was the Truth of God, "sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." ( Hebrew 4:12)
We seem to be living in a post-truth world today, and the implications are enormous. Western civilization, unmoored from the Christian roots that formed it, is steadily becoming debased. Truth is in short supply, and the bulwark of Christianity that once stood against the waves of vice pounding our shores is diminishing like a tide that may never return. We can see the results in the social decay all around us.
In spite of this, we are being pressured by the loudest voices in society to pass up Truth for ideas that appear to be more intellectually stimulating. Today's truth is not based on moral absolutes, revealed through faith and reason, but is determined through personal experience, public opinion and social coercion. Participation in society is requiring conformity to disordered beliefs in order to be on " the right side of history." The key to this earthy kingdom is acceptance of modernism with all its errors, only to gain entry into the cult of inclusivity.
Many of these modernist ideas are disordered and evidence not of how far we've progressed as a society, but of how far we've fallen from grace. The seeds of decay have been growing for decades and as St. Thomas Aquinas remarked, "a little error in the beginning leads to a great one in the end.' How exactly then, do we measure 'progress' from 'social decay'? The truth is, in a relativistic society, where reality is subjective, we can't.
"Wisdom will not abide in a person that is in debt to sin." (Wis. 1:4)
And yet, we can know the Truth. Not the wobbly version the world offers, but the unchanging Truth revealed to us through Scripture, Sacred Tradition and a properly formed conscience conformed to the Will of God.
We must measure our progress not on how successful we are at digesting and regurgitating the slogans of the New World Order, but on how well we listen to and act on the words and teachings of Christ.
As Jesus illustrated in His parable, in order to survive the destructive storms that have already begun, ones that are threatening the very building blocks of society; our identity as children of God as well as marriage and the family - we need to build our lives on the unchanging foundation of His Truth, a truth that does not enslave us, but sets us free.
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