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The 2024 Eurovision song contest this past spring was a disturbing spectacle, with a self-described non-binary "queer witch" representing Ireland in a song performance involving spells, hexes, voodoo dolls and Satanic symbols. An Israeli contestant, who was a more normal traditional singer and fan favorite, faced antisemitic vitriol. And the winner of the competition was a biological male from Switzerland in a feathered dress, who also claims to be non-binary -- not male or female and rejecting this binary delineation of gender. Reacting to the win, the Irish witch declared exultantly, "The queers are coming!"
The Swiss winner's song, "The Code," is noted to be the singer's journey of discovery. The lyrics state: "I, I went to hell and back to find myself on track / I broke the code, whoa-oh-oh / Like ammonites [primeval mollusks], I just gave it some time [in evolving] / Now I found paradise / I broke the code, whoa-oh-oh . . ."
And then the heart of the matter is revealed: "Somewhere between the O's and 1's / That's where I found my kingdom come . . ."
The person is describing a personal struggle and then learning the secret to success through evolving into non-binary gender fluidity to discover paradise and one's personal realization of "kingdom come" -- an allusion to the end-time Kingdom of God in the Bible, though that Kingdom will certainly not come in the terms laid out in "The Code."
The song is supposedly intended to be a call for everyone to "crack their own code and enter the kingdom of authenticity" ("I'm Done Playing the Game" -- Nemo Shares Their Non-Binary Journey Through 'The Code' Lyrics," wiwibloggs, May 1, 2024, emphasis added).
There's a lot to unpack here. This idea of breaking the code to find paradise is a form of gnosticism -- which includes the concept of attaining secret knowledge to reach the highest heaven and ultimate experience of spirituality. The code that's broken here is on one level that of biological reality set within one's DNA -- broken in claiming a non-binary gender identity. More broadly, the code is the key to defining existence, with people seen as able to shift their own reality along with the reality of the universe.
This wishful, magical thinking is at the root of lawlessness, false religion and the godless utopianism sought through progressive or woke ideology and outright Marxism that ends up oppressing fellow man. For it's not enough for people to live in their own reality. They must have everyone else live in it -- lest it be revealed as false.
There is no kingdom of authenticity in this. It's a kingdom of lies, being ruled by self-deception advanced through demonic deception! That won't stand in the end. For when it all comes down to it, there is no reward in denying what's real. It's the truth that sets us free.
These days, we often hear of people supposedly speaking or finding their truth -- as if they are the arbiters of truth. Yet we might ask, as Pontius Pilate famously responded to Jesus Christ, "What is truth?" (John 18:38). In simplest terms, truth is reality -- the way things actually are. And that's not up to individual determination. It's according to the determination of the Author of reality, the Creator God.
The idea that others can reshape the nature of reality into what they want it to be is false -- an egregious, destructive lie. This lie was started by the very father of lies -- Satan the devil (John 8:44). And he and his demonic minions have been using it to corrupt the world throughout man's existence -- promising freedom and a happy world by means of reframing everything to make it so.
This twisted imagining leads to statist totalitarianism, thought policing and mind control for the supposed greater good. It leads to the insanity of trying the same failed practices again and again and expecting a different result. It leads to calling and believing evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20). And now we see it used to redefine human sexuality and cater to mental derangement as part of the overall agenda of destroying the family, collapsing civilization and remaking reality.
Marxism and other forms of utopianism are all about trying to bring about the wonderful brotherhood of man and world peace and a paradise (as in the Eurovision song). Following World War II, political philosopher Eric Voegelin labeled such efforts as attempts to "immanentize the eschaton" -- to set up the Christian end-time vision of the Kingdom age in the world today. He explained this as a modern form of gnosticism, along with the idea that the disorder of the world can be transcended through special insight or knowledge (The New Science of Politics, 1952).
But such utopian movements proceed by upending any harmony that already exists, dividing society into an oppressor-oppressed dynamic in an attempt to stir conflict to collapse the system so as to bring the new reality into being out of the destruction of the old.
Moreover, we see in the history of these movements that the same governing, economic and moral principles are repeatedly forced through despite the evidence that they are unworkable. For instance, when socialism breaks down and doesn't work, progressives promoting it resort to excuses about implementation -- never admitting the failure of its fundamentals. It will work, the thinking goes, we just have to make it work -- the square peg into the round hole. The answer is to reshape reality to make it work -- by sheer force of will and pretending until the desire is manifested, all the while lying that the espoused principles are succeeding.
On the gnostic side, there is in all this a sort of magical manipulation or practice of sympathetic magic. The concept is that certain symbolic actions will compel the natural world to behave as desired -- for instance, a rain dance with certain shakings and sounds to invoke a rainstorm. It can even involve attempted conjuring -- calling forth spirits or gods to do one's bidding. We see it today in what's called the "law of attraction" -- to think the right thoughts to make things happen, to "speak it out into the universe" to have the universe act in kind. Yet no one has such power. It is in fact attempting to subdue God, which is the height of hubris and folly.
With communism, in terms of forcing through what is unworkable, the result has been catastrophic, with vastly more problems generated than solved, including the deaths of many millions of people. And many other millions have suffered in untold ways.
For Marxist regimes, it's critical that all live within the authorized version of reality, not being allowed to resist it or call it into question. The same has become true in terms of leftist indoctrination throughout Western society today, with people blacklisted and "canceled" for not advocating the sociopolitical and ideological positions being broadly advanced -- including the recent switch from transgenderism as a mental disorder to a sexual liberation to be celebrated.
But how do you get people to conform to what is patently false? It's accomplished through propaganda, reeducation, omission of facts, compulsion, gaslighting (feeding false information to get people to question their perceptions or sanity), brainwashing and silencing.
In George Orwell's famed dystopian novel 1984, the protagonist Winston is faced with the ruling Party ordering him to reject the evidence of his eyes and ears. But he determines to hold on to truisms -- the world exists, stones are hard, water is wet. And he writes in his diary: "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
Yet the totalitarian regime challenges that very point. Winston's inquisitor O'Brien tells him that reality is not external but in the human mind -- yet not individually but only according to the collective and immortal mind of the Party, which Winston must relearn to become sane. O'Brien then tortures Winston, holding up four fingers and asking how many, to which Winston says four. But if the Party says five, O'Brien asks, then how many? Winston still says four. As the torture proceeds, Winston eventually says five, but O'Brien calls this a lie, since Winston does not believe it.
"'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.'"
"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane."
Once a person's mind is broken down to question basic reality, he's willing to just accept false reality. Our educational systems and media today are not yet to this extreme, but they have become bastions of gaslighting and brainwashing.
We now even see various professors rejecting the idea of math as neutral and objective, claiming that 2+2=4 "reeks of white supremacist patriarchy" and that the methods and results of this racist, sexist, gender-normative and thus oppressive discipline should not be accepted as reality (William Dembski, "The War on 2+2=4," Evolution News, April 8, 2024).
Yet mathematics is part of the logic of the universe invented by the Creator. Thus, casting off the reality of math is a rejection of God and His designs and rules. And it's the same with gender -- of which there are two, male and female. Yet a liberal U.S. Supreme Court justice was not able in her recent confirmation hearings to define what a woman is! How far we have fallen!
Besides fundamental understanding, God's spiritual laws that regulate our behavior were given to bring blessings to our lives, keeping us and others from harm. It is in denying that reality and choosing alternate ways of living, thinking these will bring joy and fulfillment, that pain and heartache have been brought into the world.
This has all been palmed off on the world by Satan the devil. As already mentioned, he is the very father of lies (John 8:44). And He has deceived the whole world (Revelation 12:9).
His deception of humanity began when he appeared to Eve as the serpent in the Garden of Eden and told her the big lie that she was immortal and could essentially be her own god (Genesis 3:3-6). But really this was about accepting his false reality along with him as her god, and Satan has continued to blind people to reality as the god of this age (2 Corinthians 4:4). He and his demons operate as the real echelons of power in this world (see Ephesians 6:12).
Before Satan's deception of human beings, he spread his lies among the angels, those choosing to follow him becoming the demons. But his deception did not begin with them. It began with himself. We read in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 of his pride over his beauty and his decision to rebel against God. But what ultimately happened here was his own denial of reality -- rejecting the positions of God and himself with respect to one another in imagining that he could form his own reality.
Moreover, it may be that Satan even saw himself as right and God as wrong, determining this for himself. We read in 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 that Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, as his servants transform themselves into ministers of righteousness. We usually think of this as just a disguise. But in Satan's twisted reality, perhaps he has convinced himself that he is the good guy -- that he is the hero of his story, leading the liberating rebellion against the evil Authority. Those who follow him often see themselves on the right side.
The world is caught up in Satan's denial of the reality God has established to create his own reality. But that is a lie. And believing we can run counter to the Author of reality with its immutable laws brings all manner of horrible consequences. Living contrary to the Creator cannot succeed, and it can destroy all of those who pursue this route -- which has been all of us at times to varying degrees. Our need is for alignment with God's ultimate Truth, both in how we understand and how we live -- submitting to God and resisting the devil (James 4:7).
Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote a powerful essay in 1974 titled "Live Not by Lies" (a recommended read you can find online). Amid the crushing inundation of lies in society, he names "the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me! . . . Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies!" (emphasis in original). Instead, as he shows, we must stand for what we know is real and right -- to "live by the truth."
The darkest days under the devil's rule are yet ahead. His lies will lead mankind not to paradise and a kingdom of authenticity bringing fulfillment, but to vast civilization-destroying war and the brink of extinction.
But then at last a new day will dawn with the return of Jesus Christ to rule the world. He will banish the devil, whose deceptions will then cease (Revelation 20:1-3). And under the reign of Christ and His followers from this age, the world will learn the truth of God and how to live by it (verses 4-6; Isaiah 11:9).
As Jesus promised those who would accept and follow His teaching, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32).
One day lies will be no more. But the Kingdom of the God of truth will flourish forever!
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