It is so obvious that even before Christ brought me to Himself, I realized abortion advocates had arrogantly redefined “baby” to justify committing murder. Babies in the womb became “a clump of cells.”

They obviously were dehumanizing the child to make his murder less onerous, more palatable. Indeed, once the child’s humanity was disestablished, it was a short step to defining abortion as something good, like extracting a decayed tooth or removing a wart.

To do this necessarily required changing the meaning of the word that refers to what mothers carry in their wombs. Language is how we communicate. Words matter.

“Baby” had to be redefined because more than half a century ago when this movement gained wide support, even the most barbarous among us still were repulsed by the idea of killing an actual living baby for convenience’s sake.

But if it’s not a “baby,” it must be something. The abortionists’ redefinition resulted in it becoming something far less worthy of protection, even something that it was good to destroy.

A clump of cells was hardly indistinguishable from an inanimate object, and certainly light-years away from a child you lovingly, protectively cuddle. In this way the moral revulsion to baby killing was overcome for anyone willing to use the new dictionary definition of life in the womb.

“Our current culture wars are battles over that dictionary. Understand that, and everything else follows,” Doug Wilson wrote recently. “They want to define boy and girl, true enough.

“But they also want to define hate, bigotry, holiness, guilt, identity, victim, and more. And by ‘more,’ I mean every word in the dictionary, including and and the.”

If a baby can be redefined out of existence, it explains how easily these word sorcerers can make a man become a woman, simply by rewriting the dictionary.

And, as Wilson notes, the redefinition business is potentially unlimited. What would limit it? Certainly not language, which is now made infinitely pliable. And certainly not even reality, as we have seen.

Indeed, by redefining reality now, even some who profess faithfulness to God insist they have a God-given right to murder babies in the womb. The Bible speaks about those who pretend that evil acts are something good. It doesn’t have anything good to say about that.

In reality, conforming to God’s natural order is right and proper. But today to suggest it is so has been redefined as hate. 

Where does all this lead? Chaos, of course, because what is up today will be down tomorrow and then the next day whatever the chaotic impulses dictate it to be.

As a noted leftist tactician observed half a century ago, "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If it is difficult for those followers of Jesus Christ to live up to His rules, it is impossible for the Woke, progressive left to live by its rules because the resultant chaos makes life utterly unlivable. 

This is demonstrated daily as the identity factions of race, gender, age, religion, economic class, etc. continually crash into each other as each seeks to gain something that inevitably means the other must surrender.

The Woke live in a zero-sum universe. Unlike in free enterprise where mutual exchange of something of value results in both parties receiving something they value, the progressive system demands that when one gains, someone else must lose. Think feminists versus transgender. Think black activism versus brown activism.

That’s why in the long run those who redefine reality lose. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that reality lasts a long time and there’s nothing to guarantee this redefinition business will end any time soon. If you want a truly horrific thought exercise, imagine that what we are experiencing is only beginning.

Mark Landsbaum is a Christian retired journalist, former investigative reporter, editorial writer, and columnist.  He also is a husband, father, grandfather, and Dodgers fan.  He can be reached at mark.landsbaum@gmail.com.

Image: drsuparna

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