Incurring God's Wrath
When a people have been given truth and they fail to obey that truth, or in Paul's word, hold the "truth in unrighteousness," they incur the wrath of God.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness... (Romans 1: 18)
When we think of God's wrath, we tend to think of a God who, out of anger, shoots thunderbolts from the sky to punish the wicked. This is not accurate. This is because to incur God's wrath is to have God remove himself from us. In the scriptures, God's removal of his presence is referred to as his spirit ceasing to strive with us.
I, the Lord, am angry with the wicked; I am holding my Spirit from the inhabitants of the earth. (D&C 63: 32)
The Forces of Good and Evil
In this world, there are two, and only two, competing forces vying for our attention. There is the force of good and the force of evil. Each of these forces is in a tug-o-war for us. They attract our attention by enticing us to choose their "side."
And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter. Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other. (2 Nephi 15 - 16))
As spirits created from light, we are receptors of light. God deeply desires for us to heed his voice through the light he has given to us -- which is communicated to our conscience. As we obey our conscience, we receive greater light. This light grows brighter and brighter until the perfect day.
As we heed the light, we are rewarded. We receive blessings, are filled incrementally with God's love, and God prospers our way. But heeding the light requires effort and diligence. After all, growth and progression is inherently more difficult to achieve than withering and regression. To see this in action, compare what it takes to gain muscle compared to gaining fat.
And trust me, I know this fact from firsthand experience, as I went from being able to lift a tire to gaining a spare-tire through a not-so moderated diet of pita chips and sour cream and cheddar ruffles during the initial lock-down stags of the COVID pandemic. Noteworthy about my transition from Thor to the Pillsbury doughboy was the amount of effort and time it took me to reach the physical fitness pre-pandemic -- which required four years of dieting and a rigorous workout regimen -- to becoming languid. But I digress.
It is this tension between growth and withering that Satan exploits. Satan's strategy is to convince us that there is a different path to achieving our desires. He convinces us that this "different" path is easier and that it doesn't require the effort our conscience (and by consequence God) demands of us.
And with this lie he hooks us, causing us to reject the truth.
Consequence of Rejecting Truth
When we reject the truth, we grow "vain in our imaginations." We erroneously believe that there is an easier way to achieve our desires. Our misguided thoughts and imaginations govern our world, reinforcing our false beliefs. As we regress from the light, we institute and rework systems to reinforce our falsehood and perpetuate it onto others.
The result is that our heart becomes darkened by the steady assimilation of falsehoods.
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools... (Romans 1: 21 -22)
These systems, which are merely a reflection of our vanity and foolishness, become the god we worship, or in other words, the "gods" which we honor and elevate.
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. (Romans 1:23)
As these systems become further entrenched within society, falsehoods become more prevalent and accepted. This weakens our ability to discern truth, resulting in more falsehoods being accepted and disseminated.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 1: 24 -25)
As this continues, our hearts calcify and become an impenetrable stone to the light God sends to us. Like a seed that can't take root to grow, God's light is prevented from taking "root" in the fertile soil of our heart and mind.
In this condition, truth becomes offensive to us. As a result, we are unteachable.
Having cut ourselves off from God and unwilling to receive correction, God turns us over to our wicked desires.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient... (Romans 1: 26 - 28)
Our World Today
Understanding this principle explains why we are witnessing the stupefying and hollowing out of any moral core in our society. It is why...
- Public schools are comfortable hosting "drag-queen story hour" for elementary to high school students and are complicit in normalizing sexual deviancy among the youth.
- School teachers have become less purveyors of knowledge and more promoters of gender and racial ideology, buttressed by their own agenda.
- Hundreds of teenage girls, with the encouragement of parents, educators, and medical professionals, are undergoing irreversible gender-assignment procedures, which leave them maimed and disfigured, and permanently infertile.
- A large subset of people were unwilling to condemn violence that ripped apart cities during the racial-reckoning riots of summer 2020, leading to billions of dollars in damages and +20 deaths.
- Aggression between both sides of the ideological spectrum have become more hostile towards each other, and racially motivated killings have occurred, and will continue to occur -- across both divides.
- 97% of the content of pornographic videos, "targets of violence and/or aggression were women", according to the findings of one study [1]
- Entertainment in all its forms has become more overtly sexual, darker, and violent over the years.
- Sex-trafficking is a problem and will continue to worsen.
- A subset of people, even ostensibly religious people, are comfortable with enfranchising biological women to kill the unborn on the specious grounds of bodily autonomy. It is also why many support, and some states have enacted, laws permitting abortion up to the birth of the baby -- which is noting short of infanticide, despite the euphemism.
- Christ has been re-characterized as middle east political revolutionary, concerned with liberating the marginalized from systemic institutions of power. A man who is more concerned about the elimination of "oppressive" institutions than the personal behavior of his followers.
- A select group of global elites and their army of activist are content with plunging billions of people into starvation in order to promote green and sustainable growth.
In short, it is the reason for the regression and degradation of our society. Our society is like unto a ship without a rudder that is tossed along the waves of temptation and deception. We have rejected the truth God has sent to us have been turned over to our desires, while reaping the consequences.
The Battle of Spirits
As Paul taught, the real battle we wage is not one against the flesh, but against the spirit world. What we are witnessing in our mortal condition are merely the effects of causes from the spirit world. God's Spirit can keep these forces relatively at bay. But when a society enshrines falsehoods into its beings and conduct, then God's Spirit can no longer dwell.
To ensure God's Spirit dwells with us, we need to return...
- love for hate;
- patience for anger;
- peace for war;
- humility for envy;
- compassion for judgment;
- truth for error.
[1] Archives of Sexual Behavior, A Descriptive Analysis of the Types, Targets, and Relative Frequency of Aggression in Mainstream Pornography July 13, 2020