The Unconscionable Life

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Elijah woke from his slumber, his morning alarm ringing in his ears. It was Wednesday morning, and the man briefly contemplated the cost of calling off work today before deciding to rise out of bed. His family needed him, after all. Elijah reached out to the nightstand and turned the alarm off on his iPhone. It was an older-generation smartphone, one that he needed for work, but he couldn’t help from feeling a sense of disappointment as he touched the device. Last year, the company that created his phone announced a new line of watches celebrating the perversion of marriage.1https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/05/apple-unveils-new-apple-watch-pride-edition-bands/ Even though he had bought the phone years ago, he still felt regret at having contributed to it.

Elijah started his morning as he did every morning: reading a chapter of the Bible and praying. It was often difficult to read more than one chapter. His young children would often wake around the same time, requesting a drink of water as soon they opened their eyes. This day was different, however, and Elijah was able to read multiple chapters of the book of Acts and finish his prayer uninterrupted. Having completed his morning devotion, it was time to prepare for work.

After getting dressed, Elijah started making some coffee and breakfast. He did not have the nutritional knowledge to plan the perfect meal. Still, he had recently seen something about the adverse effects of processed foods and wanted to do better.2https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-freedom-depends-more-than-ever-on-our-health-and-fitness_4832419.html Healthier food was not cheap and sometimes proved to be a challenge to find, but Elijah and his wife believed the extra challenge was worth it. After all, gluttony was a sin. After his coffee and small breakfast, Elijah was ready for work. He kissed his wife, said goodbye to his small children, and walked out the door.

Elijah saw his neighbor outside his house, offering a single wave and a slight nod as a friendly gesture. Elijah was happy to return the half-hearted wave, although he couldn’t help but feel frustrated with his next-door acquaintance. The neighbor was an older man with an opinionated and abrasive personality. Elijah had talked to him a few times, each conversation devolving into a politically-charged discussion of why the president was terrible, why taxes and bills were so high, or why insurance was so insufferably difficult to navigate. And even in these brief conversations, it seemed as if his neighbor could always find a way to mention his son: a man that has not visited his father in over 20 years. Elijah knew his neighbor was living with many regrets. He had briefly shared the gospel one day, but the old man rejected it, downplaying the importance of religion and relegating it to “activities of youth.” Elijah may have been wrong, but it seemed that his neighbor preferred a life of misery and remorse. Elijah knew first-hand the power of the gospel, yet every day before work, he saw a man destined for hell: a man the gospel couldn’t reach. With these thoughts darting through his head, Elijah stepped into his car and started his drive to work.

The Drive

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

G.K. Chesterton

Until a few months ago, Elijah had been listening to the radio during his commute. This habit changed one day when the Holy Spirit convicted Elijah to turn off the radio’s raunchy morning talk show. From then on, he decided to listen to more encouraging and godly things during his commute, choosing a classical music CD instead. While the music was undoubtedly more heartening, Elijah still had many dispiriting sights on his drive. One of the first sights was the local library. It was a plain brick building a block away from the courthouse. The library had recently put up a few small posters inviting children to transvestite story hour. Elijah knew that the library was quite liberal with selecting books, but he still didn’t expect drag queens to show up in his hometown so quickly. He knew it was necessary to combat this at the local level, but with his current schedule, finding the time would be tricky.

Elijah continued his drive, trying to stay positive despite his daily reminders of the current state of the world. An adult toy store had placed a large billboard on the side of the highway, and disappointment was again stirred in his heart. The advertisement was obnoxious and suggestive. A heavily edited photo of a woman in revealing attire was difficult not to notice, but Elijah tried to ignore it every day anyway. From what he had learned, removing the advertisement was more difficult than a single phone call.3https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-30336251.html

Finally, on the last leg of his drive, Elijah drove past one of the few positive influences in his entire trip – a medium-sized poster in the window of a hobby store. “Choose Life” was the message, accompanied by a heartbeat graphic and a phone number. Elijah knew it was the number to a pro-life clinic nearby, a small facility he had once volunteered at. It was difficult to restrain his rage, knowing that a woman could so greatly desire evil that she would murder her infant child. It was just as difficult to imagine the depraved clinic workers that enabled abortion, masquerading as health care providers only to butcher the innocent instead of healing the sick. But the greatest difficulty was learning to endure a world where this legal evil was being normalized, a society that constantly tells its people to ignore their natural sensibilities and compels them to find pleasure in death.4https://www.worldometers.info/abortions/

Elijah’s thoughts stopped suddenly as he pulled into his parking space.

“No time for that now,” he thought.

A Full Day of Work

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

Friedrich Nietzche

Elijah was an accountant. He worked at a mid-sized company and spent most of his day crunching numbers, looking over forms, and drinking coffee. Elijah’s direct supervisor was a plain-looking middle-aged woman who had only recently been transferred to that position. The office was pretty laid back, but not in a way that would put your mind at ease. In fact, the mellow atmosphere almost served as a social tension, where the employees talked very little and simply performed their work in silence. While the new female manager had no apparent failures in her position, Elijah sometimes questioned her skills as a leader. Her demeanor and communication style seemed more suited to that of a librarian: quiet, tentative, meticulous, and mostly passive. In any other situation, he would never look to her for guidance or inherently value her advice.

In general, Elijah always tried to work hard as to the Lord (Colossians 3:23), but there were times when it was difficult to fully commit himself to his work. Every year, for example, the company celebrated “pride month” by placing a poster in the break room to show their support for the LGBT+ lifestyle. Elijah knew at least two people in the office had homosexual relationships, but it wasn’t clear how much they valued the poster and corporate emails of support. Regardless of how they felt, Elijah knew that bringing up the company’s involvement in supporting sodomy was a tiring and unproductive road. He was the one who had volunteered to move the pride poster to the break room, citing a “distraction-free environment,” but his boss made clear that the poster would not be removed.5https://www.eeoc.gov/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity-sogi-discrimination When he brought it up, his boss had no idea why a homosexual lifestyle would be incompatible with Elijah’s faith. She stated that she knew a former employee who was also a lesbian and a Christian and that the decision was ultimately out of her control. Elijah knew interacting with corporate was impossible, receiving nothing but canned messages and cold feet. Conveniently, after his last email, the entire office was assigned some online diversity training.

It was an hour of training, done online, with a small quiz. Lacking any real substance, the entire video course was full of liberal talking points under the banner of “diversity, tolerance, and inclusion.” The training used examples of racial minorities, non-American ethnicities, and sexually perverse lifestyles as things to be valued and included. However, suspiciously absent from the training examples was any label that defined Elijah: White, Christian, American, Husband to a single wife, and Father. It was almost as if the company was doing everything possible to make him feel left out without ever giving him the courtesy of knowing they hated him.

Everyone in the office seemed nice enough, although he couldn’t point to a single person he considered his friend. Of all the people he talked to, an unmarried man about his age was the only co-worker he consistently conversed with. As a single guy living with a girlfriend, most of his conversation revolved around waking up from a hangover, TV shows Elijah had never seen, and telling politically incorrect jokes. Sometimes, Elijah wondered if that alone was the reason he found any enjoyment in his company. A man willing to risk offending someone in order to share something he finds humorous indicates that he is unafraid to be himself. In an environment like this, the honesty was refreshing.

Ending The Day

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

After putting in his hours at the office, it was time for Elijah to head home. It was a mostly uneventful day, and Elijah had been glad to be able to focus on the work. It was common for him to drive home in silence, allowing his mind to wander. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, his ride home was a time to think and eventually relax.

Elijah was greeted at the door by his children. Dinner was almost ready, and the entire house smelled like bread. After dinner, Elijah led a short devotion with his family, played basketball with his son, replaced the batteries in the R/C car, and read some books before helping his wife put them to bed. Weekday evenings were always a blur.

It seemed as if inside his home was the only place Elijah could truly be himself. He had spent many hours ensuring that his house was thoroughly Christian, that his wife would build her house (Proverbs 14:1), and that his children would grow to love the Lord. Outside his house, society’s agenda couldn’t be more obvious. The loud call for secularism clearly precluded any Christian label. Feminists had control of the media, encouraging women to tear down their own homes. Children were told to hate the Lord and their bodies, to ignore everything that made them male or female, and to engage in perversions at the earliest possible age. Oftentimes, engaging with society was no longer a matter of difficulty. It was unconscionable.

Some may choose to run from this society rather than attempt to live in it. After all, a life that must constantly mediate between the moral discrepancies of home and community is not an easy one. It was as if every Christian was expected to “put away” the most central part of their identity every time they stepped into the public square. But the most troubling thing about this life was not the anti-Christian bias of a godless society but the lack of support from within his own camp.

Inside his church, some fellow members could see the anti-Christian bias of society but had no idea how to change it. Others said society’s hatred of Christianity was normal and impossible to rectify. And then there were a few people that pretended it didn’t exist or attempted to frame the problem as partisan political issues where every issue has “two sides” to it. Elijah knew that everyone would have differing perspectives, but it seemed as if there was almost an intentional ignorance of society’s ills. Instead of acknowledging the unreasonable nature of the societal contract, it seemed as if fellow Christians would rather pretend that life was normal.

No, this is not normal.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

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