I am a witness to the final death throes of the shift from modernity to post-modernity as it relates to the abominable acts of a love that dare not speak its name as Wilde phrased it. In The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative, Robert Bauman describes a life out of control, “It is pointless to deny the truth. I was guilty of criminal conduct…and far worse, I must accept responsibility for betraying my wife, our marriage vows, and dishonoring my family. I compromised my religious beliefs and my personal honor.”
Bauman instinctively knew that whatever force drove him, this uncleanness of spirit over which I seemed to have no control,” …was evil.. After being caught in the act with an underage boy, he sought help. Instead of healing, he was encouraged to override guilt and the natural conscience[1] of what we can’t not know, what is biblically known as the “searing of the conscience.”[2]
In his book, What We Can’t Not Know, J. Budziszewski, author of The Revenge of Conscience, calls for a return to moral sanity. We are now in a period in which things that most people know intuitively are treated with contempt. The indecent or vulgar is paraded as normal.
He states, “I believe, not just from theory but from experience, that to be confused about such fundamental things [moral truth], one must deeply want to be…” Budziszewski admits that none of us can live up to moral truth, for we are all sinners. The argument is not between sinners and innocents, but between sinners who confess the moral facts which accuse all, and sinners who deny them.
Bauman and many others, learned to “deny” that anything was wrong with their behavior, even though, at least in the beginning they could identify it as not only wrong, but unclean. Given time, the conscience is so overrun that it becomes decadent,[3] taking pleasure in immorality. As Bauman put forth the question, “How could any normal and moral human being do what I did?”
[1] Romans 2:15; Titus 1:15
[2] 1Ti 4:2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
[3] Rom 1:28 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;