“Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason … my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot, and will not, recant, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me!” Martin Luther, Diet of Worms, AD 1521
Over 500 years after Luther uttered these brave and desperate words, we now have need of the same courage. Faced with the intolerance of woke cancel culture, we must each ask ourselves if we are willing to stand up for our convictions, come what may, or will we choose our comfort, safety, and even survival as higher priorities?
For Christians, if the Holy Spirit speaks to each of us through our own conscience, then what it says to us is of the gravest importance. For Secularists, if our conscience represents our best impulses, then violating its dictates is a fundamental betrayal of our selves.
Whether or not God will judge us for what we do or leave undone, we will surely judge ourselves. There isn’t enough therapy, nor are there enough narcotics in all the world, to silence our own inner voices once we have betrayed them.
Early Christians faced the same inescapable choice between truth and survival. As a ritual of unity, every non-Jewish Roman citizen was required to annually sacrifice a pinch of incense in a pagan temple to the emperor.
Christians, committed to faith in one God, could not in good conscience even insincerely mimic such worship. During Christianity’s first three centuries, countless martyrs were created by a widespread refusal to prioritize survival over conviction.
It has always been this way for any person of conscience, of any faith, anywhere in human history. The worldly powers demand obeisance when one’s inner self insists upon defiance. Jewish history is the classic example of this.
This oppression comes from within our human nature as an impulse to “purify us,” where both “us,” and what constitutes “purity,” are defined ideologically. Thought-criminals must be excised by self-appointed guardians of rectitude who are trying to murder their way to paradise.
We face this madness today, in all parts of the political spectrum. However, the “woke” leftism of cancel culture is by far the most powerful and widespread of these conformist cults.
A century before, Hitler, the German poet Heinrich Heine once prophesied, “Where one burns books, one soon burns people!” Any society that establishes a mandatory orthodoxy guarded by a holy inquisition which employs gulags is well on a path to murdering its conscientious objectors.
No freedom can long abide such zealotry. Dissent, the lived freedom-of conscience, is the foundation for all liberty. The way that unpopular dissenters are treated is the proverbial canary-in-a-coalmine of freedom. If we wish to remain free, no one can sit idly by when anyone is punished for speaking their own version of truth.
As a teacher, I may soon have to choose between my conscience and my career. Thanks to the destruction of traditions about sexual identity, many young people have been convinced that gender is an absolutely flexible personal choice. They have been groomed to demand that everyone in their world be compelled to conform to this choice.
Each student has a right to explore their reality within the broadest possible limits. They do not have a right to demand that I conform my truth to theirs.
I have already encountered this in the classroom. I have made what compromises I can make in good conscience. I call such students by their first names, without reference to their pronouns. I am willing to go that far in trying to positively interact with every single student entrusted to my care.
However, I cannot — I will not — harm a child by knowingly feeding a delusion, even when that delusion is a popular one. Reality is not democratic. Truth is not subject to majority votes. To me, playing along with an objectively false contention would be a betrayal of my trust as a teacher.
Biological sex determines social gender. Every individual’s physicality is suffused with this difference. The structure and characteristics of one’s bones, musculature, organs, nervous system, DNA, and brain chemistry are utterly sexually dimorphic. Neither homosexuality, heterosexuality, nor any other form of attraction alters this objective fact.
I will not knowingly harm a child in order to protect my job security. I will not say that 2+2=5, even when surrounded by a mob that demands that I comply with its falsity or suffer.
To submit to such oppression would be to teach the worst possible lesson to my students: that conscience must give way to tyranny. More than this — any school, profession, or society that demands that I violate my conscience does not deserve my loyalty.
We are now balanced on a razor’s edge between a future of ongoing freedom and one of unity at the expense of individuality. Many worldly powers increasingly demand that we sacrifice our integrity on their altar of political correctness.
A life of slavery and self-loathing is not worth living. To protect myself by harming an innocent would be to defile what is best in me. To go against conscience is neither right, nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, may God help me!
