1. 1984
While a great many of our Christian contemporaries are weakened by the world and assimilated into it by lukewarm decay, an insidious law recently set precedent in our courts and began its conquest by trampling over the ruins of a family. A Canadian father (C.D.) in British Columbia, whose name we cannot state due to a publication ban, stands condemned and faces possible incarceration not because of what he said, but what he refused to say.* Recently, his 14-year-old daughter, under the influence and encouragement of school officials, began to refer and believe herself to be male. The school consummated her transition by changing her name in the yearbook, referring to her with a new name and masculine pronouns, and having her use the male restrooms. Reinforcing the dystopia, under British Columbia law, all of this was done without the parent’s knowledge or permission; it was the school's secret.
Once he was aware of what was happening, C.D. was outraged. He refused to call his daughter “son” or refer to her with masculine pronouns and raise her like a boy. But the courts thought otherwise. Not only was C.D informed his opinion on the matter was irrelevant, but that he must affirm his daughter’s new gender. He was compelled to speak to and treat her as a male. When C.D. refused to obey the court’s order, he was accused of being in contempt of the court and now suffers in prison, facing a possible five-year sentence.
2. Compelled Speech
In their revolt against nature, politicians conjured a weapon that targets and assaults truth with extreme prejudice. Truth is the marriage of intellect and reality.** If a man knows and understands reality as it actually is, he has the truth. But if a man perceives reality as something that it’s not, if his understanding of reality and the reality itself are divorced, he lives in lies.
God, making us in His image and endowing humanity with a status of supremacy among the creatures and creations of the Earth, demanded our recognition and comprehension of reality be superior to our subjects. Thus, the revelation of Law was revealed to us. It’s our lamp and our guide that illuminates the mechanisms of reality and explains how to comprehend them. If we obey its decrees, and therefore adhere to a worldview that correctly interprets reality, the truth is manifest.
Now we can study the fulcrum of this legal battle. Upon the answer to this question depends our freedom from tyrannical rule: How do we articulate the truth? The courts and government already know. The answer is plain—by speech. In his masterpiece to the Romans, Paul states that “faith comes by hearing” (Romans 10:17); speech communicates truth. What we individually think and know about reality, what we believe is true, is revealed by our tongues. And while this is necessary, it leads to a grave danger:
The one who controls speech controls truth.
Controlling truth means controlling people’s understanding of reality.
The controller can make people believe what he wants them to.
But our constitutions (before they were disregarded and so foolishly cast aside) are intimidating blockades defending our homes from Ingsoc’s invasion. The intellectual and political weapons we brandish to uphold truth are protected by a powerful escort, Freedom of Speech. Sink the Speech, our armament of logic and debate will be left undefended and sunk, and the society will follow. For if speech isn’t free, if we’re muzzled, thrown in prison for sharing our beliefs and discussing our views of the world, then we’re slaves of whatever reality the ruler imagines.
Banning speech is evil enough—President Trump’s absolute censorship from Twitter and all other major social media platforms was a crude attempt to kill what the world knows is real; that Trump won the election and Biden lost. But there’s something unsettlingly insidious about compelling speech. C.D. is one of its maiden victims. Forcing us to affirm something by speaking, which eventually brainwashes us to really believe, degrades us like we're dogs. The truth is methodically twisted and contorted into a hideous perversion of itself, being reshaped and remade in the likeness and image of the ruler, until it becomes a monster.
Soon 2+2 really will equal 5. Crime is turning into justice, pedophilia will soon be called consensual love, and death is already synonymous with living. A government that legislates speech legislates a reality they want, however perverted and unnatural it might be. Terms like "right and wrong” or “good and bad” are becoming meaningless because the courts no longer defend but define truth. They have required that C.D.'s daughter be recognized as a male by everyone until her parents, classmates, teachers, friends, family, and she herself finally believes and embraces the change.
But why stop at gender? There are realms other than biology for radicals to dominate. If I am compelled by law to call my daughter a son, why should I not be forced to call Caesar my God? A national morality and ideology to which all citizens must adhere is only the beginning in this campaign to rewrite what it means to be human, until the enthusiastic chant of the new religion, “Blessed is the collective, for they devour the individual,” is cheered by every man.
3. Christ
As we come to terms with our present position, parents being sentenced to prison for refusing to call their own children what the state commands, we wonder, “Can those in high office really manipulate truth successfully? Is it perhaps true that C.D.'s daughter is actually a boy? And if that’s true, how can we be assured of anything at all? If a female can be male, if a baby in the womb isn’t human, then surely the sky can be green, and murder can be justice.”
But that’s garbage. And we know it’s wrong because of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. During the days of His life on Earth, Christ declared with authority, among many other things, “I am the truth” (John 14:6).*` His hordes of enemies reacted to these claims with such hatred that, after they failed to censor or compel His speech, they crucified Him on a cross. Indeed, if Christ remained dead, if His body is still buried in the grave, then truth is forever lost and can be subjectively controlled and abused by executive officials.
But we know that the Father and Spirit, vindicating Jesus’ life and validating His gospel, raised Him from the dead! Because He’s alive, truth has won. While the soldiers of the mighty Roman Empire quivered and quaked, we were comforted and became confident that truth is objective and everlasting, triumphing over courts and governments that act otherwise. Solzhenitsyn suffered for speaking against the USSR, and Churchill was ridiculed and alone as he warned of the Nazi regime; both men were proven right. The apostles were ordered never to preach, but this only made their testimony and Christianity stronger. So we see that, because the everlasting Christ is the objective truth, it will endure no matter the consequences. Those who champion truth might be persecuted for a little while, but the message will never die, and if they have believed in the Truth Himself, neither will they.
* All information in this article regarding C.D.'s case (including his name) can be accessed here
**This correspondence definition of truth was first explored by Aristotle, and then developed by Aquinas.
*` Christ's claim makes sense if He's God. Truth is the conformity of the mind to reality. The mind of God composed and created all reality. Therefore, His mind and reality are perfectly unified and He can be called truth itself.
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