Division is the devil’s game.
Divide and conquer has too often proven to be a winning strategy. And on the cultural battlefield, division is easily found in the form of defamatory accusation.
Two stories broke this last week, serving as reminders that allowing division by defamation is how we are beaten.
Italian female boxer Angela Carini was forced to fight a biological male, who failed a gender test barely a year ago, at the Olympic games in Paris. That we have gender tests at all is an issue unto itself. If not so cringingly gross, it would be the stuff of comedy.
Yet the outcome was more Greek tragedy than comedy. Carini was encouraged by many not to fight, but a fighter is what she is, so with high hopes, wearing her country’s flag, she entered the ring. Forty-six seconds and several dynamic blows to the head later, she threw up her hands and dropped to her knees, crying in frustration and saying, “This is unjust!” The fight was over.
But the broader fight had just begun. The effort to divide began in earnest.
Let’s be clear, this is an awful affront to women in general. We should all be sick over that young lady’s stolen dreams. The Olympic Committee should be ashamed. But division is the devil’s game.
Apologists in the liberal media jumped into action. Accusers accused. Malignment was the order of the day. Among the worst, Vox ran a headline reading, “Discrimination against trans Olympians has roots in Nazi Germany.” Did you catch that? Division by defamation.
Dare to take issue with someone’s personal suspension of disbelief, allowing them to inflict pain, discomfort, and insecurity on others so that they can ignore actual science and live out their truth … well, then we are just like the Nazis!
This is division. Division is the devil’s game. It’s what the devil does. Recognizing it is the first defense.
The word devil is actually derived from the Greek word “diabolos,” which means one who falsely accuses and divides people; an accuser or slanderer. Sound familiar?
Suddenly, false and defamatory accusations fly, and those too weak to know better back off because they can’t stand in the face of slanderous accusations. We allow ourselves to be cowed into division. Division is the devil’s game.
A second story was buried among all the political, cultural and warlike headlines. Alabama’s lone Democrat in D.C., Rep. Terri Sewell (AL-07) was excited to announce that Alabama was awarded $383 million in federal funds! “For what?” you may ask.
Racial reparations.
Unbeknownst to many, the Biden-Harris spendapalooza known as the Inflation Reduction Act contains over $2 billion in set-asides to compensate black farmers for past injustices. Minority farmers who feel that they have ever been treated badly, or the descendants of those minority farmers who believe they were treated badly, or the folks who inherited debt on loans from former minority farmers who believe that they were treated badly can apply for what USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack describes as compensation to serve as “acknowledgment” of past injustices – money from today’s taxpayers who had nothing to do with the ills of the past so that division can be foisted on society in the name of acknowledgment.
This is division. The devil’s game.
Racism is wrong. It exists, and until Jesus comes back it will continue to pop up. I also know that the sins of the past were real with racism — not only allowable but legal.
But the days of sanctioned racism are over in the U.S. Bad things happen now because of occasional bad people; yet as a nation, we have officially repented and made every effort to repeal, replace and redeem that which was ignorantly and wrongfully done in the name of racial disparity.
But it’s not enough. There must be division. Because division is the devil’s game.
Virtue-signaling omnibus legislation with buried line-items designed to use the tax dollars of innocent, modern-day citizens to pay for the acknowledgement of past failings from prior generations is division. Reparations paid to slander the present on the sins of the past serves not to right a wrong. It serves to create division by implying that old guilt should be worn by the new. If you object, then brace yourselves, as accusations of racism will soon be slung your way by the great dividers.
But truth serves as the ultimate defense in any defamation. Don’t buy it. Don’t kowtow or acquiesce. Don’t let them tell you that you’re something you’re not.
If you don’t believe that men should be allowed to punch women in the face, then say so. If you don’t believe that you should have your tax dollars used to pay for things you never did or would ever sanction, then say so. And when they attempt to accuse, you just answer their accusations with calm questions:
”When did I say that?”
“Why are you lumping me into someone else’s problems?”
“Why should I pay for what I didn’t do?”
“What proof do you have?”
As Christian conservatives, we stand for the ideals of liberty, self-determination, freedom, and democracy wonderfully mixed with the eternal hope that forgiveness and grace come from a real and loving God. THOSE are our messages. THAT is who we are. No amount of devilishly false accusation and behavior meant to insultingly divide should ever change that.
Division is the devil’s game. It’s what he does. It’s who he is.
We are not that.
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