Chaos and turmoil seem to be the disorder of the day, every day. From gender to terror, confusion envelopes every issue. Press and pundits cannot discern between male and female, nor victim and terrorist. Once staid institutions and nations are now buffeted by vicious, contrary winds bemoaning everything as bigoted, racist ,or just unfair. So they are unable to navigate any conflict or disagreement, because the compass has been thrown overboard. In all this nonsense and uncertainty, the predictable and purposeful casualty is truth.

Truth is binary. There is only right and wrong, good and evil. Truth requires accuracy and exactness, so there is no middle, no gray. Truth is unforgiving to those that ignore it, twist it, or try to straddle truth and falsehood, but that’s exactly where the world tries to operate. The truth demands accountability, so the world intrinsically shuns the truth in favor of a million selfish variations to placate every fetish and idol and mask the axioms of the universe.

Satan’s greatest deception is to make the world believe he doesn’t exist, and his runner-up is to make the world believe there is no truth. The practical effect is there is no evil, and good is whatever we want it to be. The consequences of this cynical ruse have been devastating for civilization and humans in general. Unfortunately, it’s fairly easy for the devil to succeed. He doesn’t have to disprove or destroy the truth. He simply must cast a shadow of doubt or just establish a sliver of falsehood as acceptable or plausible. Man will do the rest.

America has been a nation of Christians since our inception, but that seems long lost on most modern college campuses. The most egregious and poignant example is the fall of Harvard University. Founded to protect orthodox Puritan theology and educate future ministers, Harvard was once a venerable pillar of American higher education and Christian morality for centuries, but in recent decades, it has increasingly entertained non-Christian concepts in the pursuit of enlightenment, until eventually endorsing wholly un-Christian ideas in the name of diversity.

Like most American colleges sadly saturated with antisemitism, Harvard students have endorsed the barbaric, grisly terrorism of Hamas. They refuse to recognize the raw, vile evil of raping and slaughtering innocent women and children. Despite its Christian roots, Harvard has devolved from advancing truth to not just accepting falsehoods but to recklessly spurning the sacred, moving right past the secular to embracing the profane.

The world was somewhat shocked to learn during King Charles III's coronation that Great Britain is, or was, a Christian kingdom steeped in deep Christian principles and traditions. However, the protector of the Christian realms has been overrun by non-Christian migration and subverted by progressive agnosticism. Armistice Day has been a most revered holiday in England for over a century, commemorating the end of WWI—a terrible war with staggering casualties—but this years’ holiday was overcome by some 300,000 pro-Hamas protesters in the streets of London. Armistice Day was lost, but worse, the British authorities arrested the 80 counter-protesters standing for truth, not the masses advocating for terror.

Perhaps more tragic, religion has not been immune from this steady dilution of truth. The Methodist Church is being torn asunder by liberal clergy, abandoning the Bible for progressive inclusion of LGBTQ+ idolatry. The pretenders claim to accept perversion out of love, but they fail to recognize that any sin is a tyrannical master. Like any destructive addiction, the depraved notions of the LGBTQ+ agenda are nothing more than surrendering to sin. These lost souls are simply slaves to sin, but the churches that should be trying to liberate them from sin are just making them more comfortable in their shackles. Thankfully, many Methodist churches are choosing to separate from this gross apostasy.

Sadly, the Vatican is also dismantling the commandments of God in a continuing campaign to curry favor with the world. The apostate pope has recently decreed that transgender persons can be baptized and serve as God Parents. Certainly, all are sinners and fall short of the glory of God, but to be baptized is to relinquish your sinful nature, not embrace it. Catholic God Parents are charged with being good role models to help guide their God Children in communion with God, but how can they if they are living in open, unrepentant sin?

The epitome of the American heartland, Ohio, is a state of hard-working average folks with traditional values, but they just voted to enshrine the right to infanticide in their state Constitution. Most Ohioans will still deny they support the killing of babies, so why would they codify the right to murder unborn infants right up until birth?! Because they, like the rest of the country, allowed the gruesome act of abortion to disguise itself as “reproductive rights,” an incredibly cynical, grotesque euphemism for the right to murder inconvenient lives. Abortion was supposed to be “rare,” for cases of incest and rape, and only when the life of the mother is in danger, but now bloodthirsty leftists demand it as careless, callous birth control.

None of these examples of deviation from good started with a wholesale rejection of truth. They all started with meager incremental seeds of doubt like tiny weeds taking root until they crack the foundation. Satan does not need our allegiance; he simply needs a grain of hesitation or uncertainty to turn us away from God.

The multitudes are wondering how the world has turned so awful and filled with such sorrow and just plain evil. We didn’t choose it, but we did leave the door open. We allowed foolish academics and leaders to add a little leaven, so now we are seeing the loaf split and spoil. We as a people are suffering the consequences, but the truth remains immutable. We only need turn back to God and once again embrace His truth. God will hear our prayers and heal our land.

“This false teaching is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough!” (Galatians 5:9).

Pete Riehm is a conservative activist and columnist in south Alabama. Email him at peteriehm@bellsouth.net or read all his columns at http://www.renewamerica.com/.