Britain votes for death

Why is idolatry bad for us? Because every idol demands blood. Only if we worship the true and living God does the self-sacrifice required of all true worship – which no human being can escape – make sense, and result not in something rent asunder, but newly made whole: because only in Christ can the death we die to ourselves, in the purest act of worship that he demands of us, be sanctified by the life that God gives to all who truly trust in him. But our idols can only destroy; they can only bring chaos, death, bloodshed, disarray. And that is what we have seen today. 

The idol of our age is autonomy: the naked, faceless spontaneity of our broken wills. We think we have escaped the idolatry of old – the cult prostitutes, the child sacrifice, the self-flagellation. But this modern idol demands no less blood. It requires the silent sacrifice of millions of infants, never allowed to see so much as a glimmer of light. It tears apart communities, families, and national cultures; it corrupts our soils and rapes our land. It forces hundreds of thousands of young women to expose themselves under the harsh, voyeuristic light and lustful eyes of pornography. And now this treasured idol is exhibiting that voracity which all false gods extend to their worshippers: that quest for dominion, that deeply-wrought libido dominandi that all who falsely put themselves in the place of God become slaves to. Faced with the challenge of death, ‘the last enemy’ who intrudes upon the solipsistic cave we have clawed out for ourselves, the idol of our wills has found another sacrificial victim. Now, to keep the altar-flames of autonomy burning bright, we have sent to the pyre our most treasured belief: that all life, no matter how vulnerable, no matter how apparently worthless even to those who possess it, is of inestimable value – so much so that it belongs only to the living God from whom flows life itself. And with it we send countless vulnerable and sorrowed lives, consigned to hopelessness and the cold embrace of death.

We are entering a new dark age: one where suicide has become not only legal, but celebrated as compassionate; where the hard-earned money of diligent citizens will be used to purchase the cocktail of pills that will snuff out the life of the elderly and the infirm, administered by the hand that ought to save. One where the selfless and infirm will feel, in the midst of misplaced compassion, the bitter call of death and self-murder – and none of us will be able to stop them. One where the divine light in the soul of man is extinguished by the awful arrogance of our own self-exaltation.

We are now gods! And who can stop us? God is giving to this culture the very worst thing he could possibly give: the satisfaction of our own desires. We are reaping the rewards of our folly. This is the Lord’s judgement: but how the vulnerable will suffer, how the darkness that pervades so much of life will seem to win, how the gospel light of Christ will seem to grow so dim! 

And yet it does not grow dim. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” There is grace in the midst of agony, forgiveness in the face of sin, and one day the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. But woe to those by whom this evil has come! For we shall all give an account to the Lord, and he shall render unto each one according to his works.

“Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”

The Fourth Discourseman