The radical lie feeding today's despair

Headline about young people's mental state ‒ February 25, 2022  

The way of thinking that has taken hold in societies around the world is clearly entrapping people in a swamp of despair and anxiety. By whatever yardstick you might choose, people generally, and the younger generations more so, are confused and lost on their journey through life. 

The definition of human happiness as it's being contended over today is how human beings can find fulfillment, how they can find happiness. However, it's very clear that lots of people, despite all the talk about it, aren't finding happiness, the happiness that really matters.

The faulty logic that runs through the accepted mentality of this age, throwing people off the side of the road that leads to happiness, goes like this:

This is what I feel, and this is what I'm  hearing in my heart, and my heart is my feelings, and my feelings are my truth. In order for me to be integrated and healthy and on the road to my own personal happiness I have to be able to be faithful to my inner feelings. 

“[That] is a radical deception; it's a radical  mistake”, says Peter Herbeck, a public intellectual who reminds people of the spiritual nature of human existence, and the fact that the devil – who so many get involved with in “playing “ with the occult – wants to destroy their eternal well-being, starting now.

The reality is, rather than "I can do no wrong, and I'd be happy if only other people got out of my way", that “the human heart is deeply corrupted, the Fall is real, Original Sin is real, spiritual deception is real”. 

Herbeck, first, draws attention to what humankind has learnt about its predicament. For instance, the Ancients, secular and religious, expressed their recognition that the human heart on its own cannot be trusted, and world religions have seen their purpose as combatting evil. In the revelation that is the Judeo-Christian heritage for humankind the picture is completed with the knowledge that the devil, “the father of lies”, is real and active.

The devil is devious, Herbeck says:

The devil is contending against human beings, but he'll act in their favor, you might say, to give them all the pleasures of the world, to give them happiness – what looks like happiness in  the world, how the world defines happiness – what I possess, my popularity, am I rich? am I good looking? you name it.

All these different things that the world keeps reinforcing: this will make you happy, this will give you popularity and people will recognize you and  reinforce you, and, therefore, you will be happy.

All deception, all that’s easy – that comes from the source of all evil. “

Seeking happiness in all the wrong places

This whole idea, which has got a  demonic origin to it, that if I submit to anybody else about who I am, I'm no longer free, I'm not radically autonomous, so I'm not living authentically and I can't be happy, and submission is also kind of  humiliating, it's controlling, and I don't want that, I reject that from my life because I can't  find happiness and I have a right to happiness.

But let’s explore where that mentality leads us. Herbeck draws powerful insight from the word of God in the Bible and from the teaching of Jesus, who is God with us: 

God wants health for your body nourishment for your bones. He wants wholeness for you. He wants absolute happiness for you now. It’s important  for us to see the consequences of believing in the deception that I'm the source  of my own reality, I'm the source of my own truth. I set the norm of truth for my life.

The consequences are completely opposite of the flourishing that the Lord is talking  about. [An outcome] might lead to temporary pleasure. It might lead to people celebrating you. It might happen that you find pleasure, but at  the end of the day it's not going to lead to life. 

Step back for a minute and look at where the big fights are happening in the culture today when people are insisting on  their own way and their own autonomy and their own absolute authority over themselves.

Number one of the big questions is when does life begin and when does it end.

People say “You can't  take away from me my right and my power to be able to determine for myself what's growing inside  me, defining whether it's a human being or not. I can't  be happy in this world unless I can determine whether this child or whatever you want to call it in the womb, right up to the first breath… unless I determine whether it can live or not. That  power belongs to me and if it doesn't belong to me I can't be free, and you're stealing my happiness, you're stealing my freedom and my autonomy, you're  not respecting who I am.”

That's a great deception from the enemy involving the beginning of life but it involves the end of life as well.  

To say “If I don't have power over when I die, how I die, how I define death, then I'm not free, I'm not in control of my life and I can't be happy, and  you have no right to take that away from me.” 

However, if we don’t use informed discernment in assessing our deepest feelings it’s easy for the deception of the devil to manipulate those feelings to build in us the fear of death. Herbeck observes:

And the only way to think we can get control apart from the light of God is to determine when death happens, how it happens. I'm the master of my own destiny, right? So that's the devil’s deception.

A second fundamental deception is over the reality of the human binary, as it occurs in nature generally. Herbeck:

God made men and women male and female for reproductive purposes – right for life and for families. Now, all of a sudden, in this contemporary culture, the binary is bad. It's a  social construct that's set to control people, and it's hateful, and it rejects other people, and we all should be slightly embarrassed about it.

To see it as just sort of insignificant in its importance instead of accepting the binary state of affairs for what it is, here again we can discern that this mentality leads to rejecting something that is so fundamental, so undeniably true, and everybody has to pretend that the binary is a problem now, again rejecting God's creative order.  

Population decline show world’s despair

The third deception surrounds the question of wanting to reproduce at all. Herbeck quotes from the book How Civilizations Die. He says: "It's a great study. I recommend it to you. […] It relates exactly to what we're saying." David P Goldman, the author, writes this: 

Population  decline is the elephant in the world's living room. For the first time in history the birth rate  of the whole developed world is well below replacement and a significant part of it has passed the demographic point of no return. People don't want to reproduce for the first time and there are consequences to it. Mortality now stalks most of the peoples of the world, not  this year or next but within the horizon of human reckoning. A good deal of the world seems to have  lost its taste for life. The repudiation of life among advanced countries living in prosperity  and peace has no historical precedent. Today's cultures are dying of apathy not by the swords of their enemies. There's no historical precedent. Something absolutely unique is happening here and it's dark. Why is it happening? 

Why do human beings not want to reproduce because reproduction is totally natural but the willingness to reproduce comes from those who live freely out of the commands of God.  

Herbeck highlights a key point:

The truth is that humankind cannot survive without faith, specifically faith that our lives  have meaning beyond the mere sphere of our years. Civilizations that lose their faith also  lose their desire to continue and they fail to reproduce themselves. 

The reason people  aren't having children is they're drifting  away from a Biblical worldview, belief in God,  and the world gets smaller and smaller, and so does my horizon and my time on earth, and now  I have to have massive control in my life. All kinds of people are saying “Look, if I have a child, is this a real value-add in my  life? I only have so much time. I want autonomy. I want freedom. I want happiness. I want to live my  adventure. Children are a high cost and…”  

It's all down to feelings: "Not having children is what's going to make me happy and the whole  point of living is to make me happy.” On the other hand, those who have embraced having children within a family rejoice over the way parenting stretches them on many levels. They find they have grown through the discipline of self-sacrifice. 

The shrinking world of the self-centered

Herbeck reflects:

When you step outside of God's truth and God's revelation, you step into a dark world and it's the only world you're observing and then you try to define  happiness in that light on your own acting as if you truly are authentically free and totally free of any kind of imposition in your life because you got all  those commandments and rules and other things out of the way and now you're absolutely free.

But this is the deception broadcast by the devil. It’s simply not true:

It’s not true because there's only two kingdoms. There's only two realities. There's no third way. You're going  to step right into the kingdom of darkness. That is a fact. [… Goldman] really does put his finger on it when he says individuals trapped in a  dying culture live in a twilight world. They embrace death through infertility, concupiscence  and war. 

Look at what's happening in our culture. The radical kind of release of concupiscence — that’s the fallen flesh in us, the fleshly desires, the seeking of pleasure alone — it's obsessive, it's out of control and it's not just believers who say that. I mean secular studies of all  kinds.

Why is that happening? It’s an expression of the emptiness that's in the human heart. We're trying to fill the human heart with the constant pursuit of  pleasure. If you don't have the pleasure of God, the knowledge of God, the love of God, the joy that comes from God, you're going to try to fill it with something else, and that's what's  going on there.

Then Goldman says very clearly …"they embrace death through infertility… the fear  of reproducing… the fear of even being married”.

We notice, too, the false justice movement that's out there. It’s trying to say, “Well, no, you're actually a hero” to try to give you a sense that by not having children you're saving the planet on some level. That’s the unreality of the whole  thing.  

The source of true happiness

How do you find the good news for your life? How do you find good news that's eternal, that never changes? It is from all time, and it comes from the heart of God. It begins with fearing God, which is just disposing ourselves before God.

[This is] a profound awareness in our heart that we get through the gift of  the Holy Spirit. The thing we grasp with the help of the Holy Spirit is to see the awesomeness  of God and an understanding that God is our creator. God is our father. God loves us, and made us, and he gives us our identity. It comes from him.

Colossians talks about how the Father created all things through Jesus Christ his Son. You and me were made for him, were made by him, were made through him, and we’re fearfully and wonderfully made. This is the awareness and the place where human beings find security and identity and peace and ultimately happiness.  

I love this passage from Proverbs chapter 3. It says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart”. This is important. It doesn't say, “trust your heart first”. It says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart”. So our trust should be directed to God and not first to me and to my feelings.

The verse in Proverbs goes on: “In all your ways acknowledge the Lord, and he will make your paths straight”. This is how we find happiness, recognized long ago, as in Augustine of Hippo’s words: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” There lies the greater source of personal authenticity than my inner feelings. It's a source that defines me in my highest possible state, a source that deploys transcendent truth to protect me against the deception of the devil. What more splendid adventure in life than to know I am living as God made me to live! 

Identity found only in an image of God

Paul writes in his letter to the Romans of people claiming to be wise who become fools because they  worship the creature rather than the Creator. 

In this age we have those drunk with the new self-centered mentality and antihuman ideologies claiming to be wise while condemning children to lifelong infertility, women to non-existence, and pitting one racial group against another, to take three absurdities thrust upon us by academics and media elites competing for supremacy in virtue-signalling. Herbeck notes:

“Look what we've done! Look who I am!” Claiming to  be wise we become fools. That's where it ends. It's a fool's errand to say, “My feelings  are the ultimate determiner. They're the norm. They determine what's true, and this is my  truth, and I demand that everybody acknowledge my truth and live according to it so that  I can be absolutely free, and I can be happy.”  

It's the right motive to be free, to live in  freedom, but it's the wrong road, it's the wrong way. Human beings simply cannot find it without God.

I  just want to end here with a passage I love from Cardinal Ratzinger—later Pope Benedict XVI. He said Christian identity  is composed in restraint from seeking oneself by oneself.

This is the absolute opposite  of what the world today calls the only way to happiness: I must seek myself for myself and reject looking anywhere else outside me. That person is trying to tell  me who I am and what I should be doing. This law is limiting my freedom and imposing submission.

[With this way of thinking] even God becomes my adversary. He stands in the way of my being able to be free.

Instead, the reality is we receive ourselves from Christ and we give ourselves to Christ. It's no longer I who live but Christ who lives  in me. The life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God. Our Creator tells us  who we are and where the road to happiness is, and no one can replace him.  

Nothing we raise as our own absolute, our own idol… “should pollute our spiritual universe, or else, instead of enjoying the freedom God gives us to use well we will “relapse into a  humiliating form of slavery” that is of our own making under the influence of the devil.

“This is exactly what's happening, friends. Nothing, no one can  replace God. Nobody else can give us what we need. No one else will lead us to what Proverbs chapter 3 is  promising: health for my body and bones in eternal happiness and total fulfillment and integration as to who we are.  

I don't care how happy you say you are apart from God … because the devil can deceive you. Remember how he tempted Jesus in the desert. He said, “ Look at all the kingdoms of the earth. I own them. I can give them to you. You can be  the most popular, the richest , you can have it all, just so you bow down and obey me”.

The saints  have told us that when you're moving in this direction, away from God, the devil is gonna grease those skids and just keep you going on that pathway.  

The deception, the lie, large sections of the world have fallen for, wants to tell you about where to find freedom and happiness. But it is so far off the mark that people go about creating their own forms of slavery, and those seeming wise show themselves as fools in the eyes of most ordinary people who continue to adhere to common sense. 

The consequence is that pride takes over in the "wise", and greater degrees of despair, anxiety and distress ensue as they promulgate new rules that bind rather than free. The good news is available, however, and a joy-filled life awaits those with the countercultural courage to trust God in the direction of their life.

Ω See also Bishop Robert Barron's The Parasite of Evil 

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