Nomia Phobia in an Age of Iniquity

Nomia Phobia in an Age of Iniquity

(The watered-down version)

On my route home from work, there’s a section of road where the posted speed limit slows within about a half-mile from 60 MPH to 35 MPH. I have traveled this road daily for over five years, and I can say without a doubt that the speed limit signs on that stretch of road are the most flouted I have ever seen. People drive through there with a high-handed disregard for the law in a way that would make hardened criminals blush. It’s not uncommon to see people hit that 35 MPH marker at over 65 MPH.

Each day when I witness this spectacle, I think of the times we are living. Has there ever been an era when people flouted man’s laws like today? Has there ever been a time when people flouted God’s law like today? Like the people who hit that 35 MPH speed limit sign at 65 MPH, they have normalized doing the outrageous, until they feel no pain of conscience. They don’t even bother to look for speed traps (as it were).

Trending Iniquity

Instead of cracking-down and enforcing laws, the new trend is non-inforcement followed by recension or removal of the unpopular laws altogether. Add to that a full-blown attack on every form of law enforcement and you discover the modern answer to law-breaking of nearly all kinds. This process is typically labeled “progressiveness” or some other noble-sounding phrase. All the while our streets are getting increasingly unsafe as lawlessness is normalized and so-called progressives celebrate the moral regressions we undergo daily. At this trajectory, it’s only a matter of time until all kinds of hard drugs are legalized including heroine. New and more potent drugs will be developed to cash-in on the new market. People will walk the streets like the zombies they love to watch in popular television programming.

As this diabolical outlook has spilled into the churches, God’s word is changed, preachers of righteousness are now “judging” people, and so-called progressive churches are embracing everything from alcoholism to homosexuality. With each passing day another church falls to the meeting styles that are virtually indistinguishable from the blacked-out and light-lit night clubs of the 1980s and 1990s. Liquor is making it’s way in to many of these churches too. I tremble to think it, but at the present trajectory, inside of ten-years “pastors and pot-parties” will have trended into the new church norm and a generation of young people will look bewildered at preachers like me and ask, “what’s wrong with it?” Well, simply put, it will take your soul to a devil’s hell while leaving you believing you’re saved.

 

We Don’t Have to Repent

“Don’t judge” became the basis upon which an entire generation of youth pastors justified and continued in their sin while training their students to be twice the child of hell that they are. This is why this generation has the attitude they do towards sin. Any challenge of their behavior is “judging them.” Parents wondered what these kids were being taught in the blacked-out youth building next door or down the hall? Now you know. I raised my voice about it 15 years ago when I was a youth pastor and was maligned and marginalized. I warned about these imposters. Now here we are. We have a generation that’s almost unreachable.

The Biblical term for this behavior is the Greek word anomia (ἀνομίαν anomian) and is generally translated iniquity or lawlessness. It is the negative “a” form of nomia that means law. Literally, without law. Consider a few examples of this word as used by Jesus:

Returning for a moment to my original analogy, speed limits exist for a reason. They are rules designed to minimize accidents on the roadways. There are few places in life where there are no rules. Rules in the shools, rules in the workplace, rules in Government, even sports have rules. The problem is that people typically hate rules and do everything in their power to not comply. As with speed limits, God’s laws (rules) exist to help us minimize accidents on our life’s roadways.

When rules are disregarded, flouted, broken, minimized, or villainized, life ceases to have meaning. By way of analogy, who wants to participate in a sport where the officials allowed the athletes to flout the rules? The baseball player gets an extra strike or two or the football team gets an occasional extra down. When rules are flouted in sports, people get angry. Sometimes they resort to violence. What about school or college? You study hard and get a 95% on the test. But the teacher gets a wild-hair and decides to give everyone a 95% no matter how low their score. It wouldn’t be long and High School diplomas and College degrees would be worthless. Why? Because there is a process of earning a degree and there are psychological rewards for attaining them. Take the process away and you strip the diploma of meaning. It wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on even if it were printed on Harvard cardstock, signed, sealed and delivered.

We live in a time where people are celebrated for breaking everything from man’s laws to God’s laws. Lawbreakers struggle to find meaning in life because were wired to appreciate genuine success and legitimate accomplishment. Rather than turn back to what’s right and equitable, they double-down on their rebellion. This attitude is touching almost every area of life today and is the primary reason why there is such confusion, despair, and hostility. Simply put, modern society is normalizing iniquity (lawlessness). A generation has been raised to believe that obeying the law is optional. It can only lead to absolute disaster.

There is a passage in the Old Testament that reads, “(…) from his right hand went a fiery law for them. Yea, he loved the people; all his saints are in thy hand: and they sat down at thy feet; every one shall receive of thy words” (Deuteronomy 33:2–3 KJV). Notice the basis on which God gives His law. It is love. When we break God’s laws or try to substitute some lesser thing, we strip our lives of meaning. Not that we are under the Old Covenant; we are not. But a true believer will do by nature those things written in the law. We will walk out God’s eternal character by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We live in an age of lawlessness. People are increasingly doing what is right in their own eyes. The impact on society is spelled out by Jesus, “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” (Matthew 24:12 KJV). The voices of lawlessness are multiplying to form a deafening chorus–especially in the churches. People flout man and God’s laws as if their lawlessness were a weapon to wound God or anyone who would seek to align with Him. And it’s this very thing, these very people, who will be ultimately sent to hell according to Matthew 7:23 and 13:41. They have led people after what was right in their own eye and not after God’s word. They are a menace to the Creation and God’s kingdom and just like the Devil himself, they must ultimately be eradicated.

We hear a lot about various “phobias” today, but the phobia that’s destroying society is Nomia Phobia (Fear of law). Maybe we can just call it “nomo-phobic” for short. No, not fear of losing your cell-phone, fear of law. This is the times we live–brought to us by a generation of men and women who lived and taught a lifestyle of iniquity. Our only hope in society is to buck the trend, come into our right minds, and return once again to a basic sense of right and wrong. Our only hope in the churches is to return to God’s word as the infallible directive for our lives that God gave it to be. Otherwise, welcome to the last days. You wondered what it would be like? We’re seeing it unfold.