Knowing and suppressing truth

In Romans, the Apostle Paul writes that men “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth,” and in the next breath says that “what can be known about God is plain to them” (1:18-19, ESV).

This seems self-contradictory. How can a man at the same time know the truth and suppress it? I should think that either a man knows something or he doesn’t. Doesn’t “knowing” by definition involve consciousness?

But today’s cultural gender phenomena have helped elucidate the paradox for me, alerted me to how the curious psychological dynamic works, and shown me the way to avoid it.

Not long ago everyone knew that homosexuality was a serious mental illness. You knew it, your next-door neighbor knew it, Democrats knew it, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association knew it.

Note the gradual descent into “suppression of the truth”: In 1952, the DSM listed homosexuality with sociopathic personality disorders. In 1968, DSM-2 reclassified homosexuality from sociopathic to a mere sexual deviation. In 1973, DSM-3 decided that homosexuality was only problematic if the person who had it didn’t like having it. In today’s DSM homosexuality is not referred to as a problem at all.

Or take transgenderism. We all once knew it was a grotesque perversion. But over time, less so. Then less so. In a Philadelphia Inquirer story about a teenaged girl who became a boy she said the easiest part of her transition was the response of her peers, who thought it was “cool” and “not a big deal.”

Does that mean that her peers don’t know the truth? Well, according to Romans, they do and they don’t. But on Judgment Day we will all be responsible for the do part. This is because at one time it was obvious or “plain” to all of us, and there were little milestone choices we all made along the way, quietly electing either to obey our conscience or to suppress it and believe the cultural lie. Every choice to believe a repeated lie changes us; it leaves us a slightly more deluded person than we were before we made the willful choice—a person just slightly more receded into the darkness.

Here is the lesson to derive, in time for the next strange fashion that comes down the pike: Listen to your first reaction to a thing. Take note of how you feel on the first introduction to a new fad and social “enlightenment.” This gut response may well be a God-given indicator. You suppress it at the cost of your humanity. Listen to your gut before your gut changes and stops speaking to you.