Save Yourself From This Wicked Generation

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In the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter gives a sermon which
converts three thousand people. In that sermon, he says something that I haven't heard
in any sermon, namely, save yourself from this wicked generation. St. Peter's words
were true then and they're true now.

But we don't like to think of this generation, this culture, these people as wicked. It
strikes us as too negative, too regressive. We would much rather like to believe that
really, things are on the up and up.

The world really is friendable. We would like to believe that as the title of a recent article
from the Atlantic put it, the world really is getting better. We keep quoting Fulton Sheen,
there aren't a hundred people who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who
hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.

Maybe that was true in the fifties. Call me a pessimist, I do not think that is true
anymore. St. Paul tells us that, quote, though they know God's righteous decree, that
those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval
to those who practice them.

Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of sexual morality. One of the ways our
enemies, and we indeed have enemies, give approval to these evil deeds is through the
abuse of speech. Masturbation is not self-abuse, they say, it's self-care.

People don't fornicate, whatever that old word means, they sleep together or hook up.
Adultery is called cheating, as if this were a game. Surgeons don't perform genital
mutilation, they offer gender-affirming care.

Think of this, the facade. The sin of sodomy was and is so disgusting that we had to
drape it in a rainbow flag and call it a name that used to mean happy. And abortion, they
call that essential women's health care instead of what it actually is, child sacrifice to
Moloch.

Rather than participating in our culture's bastardizing of language, we should continue to

use ugly words for ugly behaviors. As the prophet Isaiah wrote, woe to those who call
evil good and good evil. This generation has become increasingly godless, or rather, has
replaced the true God for other gods who are of course no gods at all.

And if at this point you think I'm being rather too pessimistic or that I'm out of step with
Scripture, St John says, quote, we know that we are from God and that the whole world
lies in the power of the evil one. The loss of God leads inevitably to the loss of man. What
do I mean? I mean what the Second Vatican Council meant when it said, when God is
forgotten, the creature itself grows unintelligible.

All of us, atheist, Christian, male, female, young and old, find ourselves within this story
of life. But without God's revelation to ground and guide us, we begin to seek for a
different narrative or lens to try to make sense of things. But to quote Aristotle from the
De Celo, the least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

Modern man does not know what he is or what he is for. And if you meet a man who
does not know what he is or what he is for, it can truly be said of him that he is lost. The
reason our life does not make sense is because we have not yet understood what it is.

Or if we have, we keep forgetting. The story in which we find ourselves is not the
incoherent ramblings of a postmodernist where the journey is the destination. Nor is it an
episode of Survivor where the point is to outlive our acquaintances.

Nor is it a hedonistic, debauchous romp like Sex in the City, a poorly written sitcom for
post-menopausal feminists who are, on account of their feminism, often husbandless,
childless and brimming with impotent rage. Told you this would be funny. Stop.

So what is this life in which we find ourselves? How do we make sense of the pain and
the wounding we've received, of our desires and our fears? I would submit to you what
the Scripture does. It is a brutal spiritual war. Your adversary the devil, says St. Peter,
prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

The battle we are engaged in, whether we wish to be or not, is against the rulers, against
the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the
spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And unless you understand this and accept
it, your life will not make sense. The same is true for Christianity.

Trying to explain Christianity without reference to spiritual warfare and the demonic is
like trying to explain the Lord of the Rings without reference to Sauron. How would you
do that? You know, there was this ring and it was the worst and it wasn't conducive to
the flourishing of Hobbiton and so these different races from Middle-earth got rid of it
and then things were better. Well, that is what happened but that is a woefully
insufficient way of describing the Lord of the Rings and we kind of do something with
Christianity.

We often say things like, well, God loves us and he sent his son to die for us so that we
can be reconciled with him and in so doing find eternal life, which is a great explanation
for an elevator ride but it leaves out a lot, namely the spiritual war. We are at war, as
Aragorn Theoden says, open war is upon you whether you would risk it or not. So we are
at war and we have two options.

We can fight or we can go to hell and just so we're clear, the enemies we are called to
fight are not principally those human beings who hate the church and want to destroy it.
As St. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 10 3, though we live in the world, we do not wage war
as the world does. Christians ought to desire the conversion of the godless for their
salvation whereas the godless very much want your conversion for your damnation.

Our battle is with the world, the flesh and the devil. I think that serious Christians have a
moderately good idea of the devil, an acceptance of the devil, that is a real personal
enemy, a fallen angel who the Bible identifies as the father of lies, who with his fellow
demons of hell labors in relentless malice to twist us away from salvation. And again, I
think that serious Christians have a basic understanding of what we mean when we say
we have to battle the flesh, that is our obvious tendencies to gluttony, sexual immorality
and corrupt inclinations, disordered passions which blind us and make us stupid and lay
us open to greater sins.

But this world thing, this idea that we have to battle the world, I think seems rather
murky to most Christians. What is it that that means? The term world is used, I think, like
three different senses in Scripture. So we have the created world, in the beginning, God
created the heavens and the earth, that's good.

The world can be used to mean humanity, as in, for God so loved the world. And then it
can mean what? What does it mean to say, as St. James does, that anyone who chooses
to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God? Think of just how serious that
statement is. Or when St. John says, do not love the world or anything in the world.

When we talk about the world as an enemy and object of battle, we mean indifference
and opposition to God's design, the embracing of empty passing values. And that is why
St. Paul says, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the
renewal of your mind. Easy to say, difficult to do.

I heard one preacher describe the world this way. He said, it's like you're in an elevator
with a bunch of people and everybody else has a cold. And it's very difficult not to catch
that cold.

Likewise, it's very difficult to know whether or not we are giving in to the pressures of
the world. Here's another way to summarize these three sources of sin. Deceitful ideas,
you might say, come from the demonic, that play to disordered desires, the flesh, that
are then normalized by a sinful society, the world.

So the world normalizes and even celebrates deceitful ideas that play to disordered
desires, all right? They celebrate it, they normalize it, which is why they hate good men
like Cardinal Pell, pray for us. Take the example of a man who wants to commit adultery.
He may come to believe that monogamy is unnatural, which plays into his disordered
desires for sexual pleasure, which is normalized by a sinful society that says, you only
live once and deserve to be happy or something.
Here's what Thomas Merton said of those Christians in the third century who were
fleeing the world to go and live in the desert. In those days, again, the third century, so
before YouTube and TikTok and television and whatever else, men had become keenly
conscious of the strictly individual character of salvation. Society, which meant pagan
society, limited by the horizons and prospects of life in this world, was regarded by them
as a shipwreck from which each single individual man had to swim for his life.

If this was true in the third century, why are we so opposed to the idea that it could be
true now? What must we do? How do we survive the shipwreck? We have to go contra
mundum, that is, against the world. I'm going to suggest seven small things that I think I
need to do in order to follow Christ with my whole heart and to hate the world like
Scripture commands me, and if you agree with them, then you should apply them to
your own life as well. Number one, read the Scriptures more than you consume news
media.

That would be good. You won't do it, but it would be good. But you should do it, and so
should I. Number two, find a small community of other Christians you can live in
relationship to.

We often mock little groups of Christians by calling it a bubble. Find a fricking bubble
immediately, because you know what another word for a bubble is? A community, and
that's what human beings have been doing forever. An isolated Christian in the modern
world is almost always a soon-to-be apostate.

Third, recover leisure time from the totalitarian work state of mind. Leisure, not
dissociation, not scrolling, but re-creation leads to wonder, and wonder leads to the
recovery of innocence, which is that childlikeness without which no man will enter
heaven. Next, stop rationalizing and justifying your cowardice and sin.

As one spiritual father once said to me, Matthew, you have to—he was American—you
have to go to war with your ego. Yes, father, he was right. Stop justifying it.

This is my fear, hey? Like, here's a fear I have about me. St. Paul says, don't let there be
a hint of impurity among you, and there's something in me that likes that when it's
general, but doesn't like it when it's specific, and I think many Christians today are like
that. Don't tell me I can't watch that show.

Don't tell me that this is too immodest. We get very defensive. I think this is the flu
we've caught from the world.

I would rather bend towards Scripture than towards the world. I hope I would rather that.
Jason spoke about this beautifully.

We should repent manfully or wonder womanly, whatever, of your sin. Repent. This is
nice.
Here's a lovely quote from St. Claude de la Columniere, who was the spiritual director of
St. Margaret Mary Alarcock, and I share this to you, my beautiful brothers and sisters,
especially those of you whose heart is weighed down. For those of you who feel, oh man,
who feel like you're fractured at the core and that no amount of anything will heal you,
that healing is available for others but not you, that you're different. I glorify you, says
St. Claude de la Columniere, in making known how good you are towards sinners and
that your mercy prevails over all malice, that nothing can destroy it, that no matter how
many times or how shamefully we fall or how criminally, a sinner need never be driven
to despair of your pardon.

It is in vain that your enemy in mind sets new traps for me daily. He will make me lose
everything else before the hope I have in your mercy. Brothers and sisters, here's the
next thing.

Have patience with yourself. You and I have been born into the aftermath, the rubble,
the apocalypse that followed the stupid sexual revolution. Many of us have been sexually
abused or exposed to pornography at a young age, which is a form of sexual abuse, and
we've been raised on like high levels of bullcrap.

I was raised on that TV show Friends, which was funny but despicable. It would have
been a much healthier show if they had demonized fornication the way they demonized
cigarette smoking, but our parents just put us in front of it. And all the magazines, this is
like religious propaganda from the enemy, and we've been raised on it and we find
ourselves with disordered passions, having justified our sin, rationalized it.

Maybe you find yourself very threatened by the harsh language I'm using now, and
maybe that's because it's inappropriately harsh. It could be my fault, but maybe it's your
fault. Maybe it's that you feel very defensive when you know that something true is
being said and you don't want to accept it.

But we have to have patience with ourself. Saint Francis de Sales said this, have
patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in
considering your own imperfections, but instead set about remedying them every day,
begin the task anew.

Final point, brothers and sisters, if we are to remain Christian in this toxic age, we have
to remember the personal love that God has for you. Sometimes I think it's not that
Christianity is too hard to believe, sometimes I think it's that Christianity is too good to
believe. Everything else in my life that has said they will give me this or that and has let
me down, how do I know that this will really do what it says? Because I don't love me a
lot of the time.

How can you possibly love what I find unlovable? I think Christianity is the long story of
God disagreeing with us when we tell him we're crap and unworthy of his love. It's like,
yeah, well, stiff pickies, I actually love you. You're like, well, you're an idiot.

No, I'm not, and you can repent of that when you learn more. Get away from me, Lord,
I'm a sinful man. That's what it is, that's what we should say, but he keeps coming.

He keeps coming, like in Song of Songs, chapter two, he just keeps coming. He's very
good and he's very kind. He's kinder than I am.

You know that, but maybe you don't, maybe you don't, because if you pulled me aside
and told me you'd committed some heinous thing, I'd know you were sorry and I'd agree
with you that what you did was shameful, but I'd love you, and yet we think that
somehow Christ is different to us, that he's some, this one who is infinite in mercy
couldn't possibly, yeah? So why don't we close with this beautiful quote? This comes
from an excellent book called I Believe in Love, and I'd highly recommend you getting it,
especially if you're somebody who struggles with scrupulosity. I Believe in Love, I'm not
going to say his name because it's French and I can't do it, but it's a retreat based on the
teachings of Thérèse of Lisieux. Here we go, listen, listen.

We think about examining ourselves, you know, nightly examine before you go to
confession, good, yet we do not think before the examination, during the examination,
and after the examination to plunge ourselves with all our miseries into the consuming
and transforming furnace of his heart, which is open to us through a humble act of
confidence. I am not telling you, you believe too much in your own wretchedness. No, we
are far more wretched than we ever realize, but I am telling you, you do not believe
enough in merciful love.

We must have confidence, not in spite of our miseries, but because of them, since it is
misery which attracts mercy, and ultimately only in trusting and submitting ourselves to
the love and mercy of God will we have any hope of saving ourselves from this wicked
generation. Amen. Thank you.

you

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