Suspend Your Disbelief—Things Really Are This Bad

From the Baby Organ Black Market to the End of America

Suspension of disbelief is the idea of “temporarily accept[ing] as believable events or characters that would ordinarily be incredible,” usually for the purpose of “appreciat[ing] works of literature or drama that are exploring unusual ideas.” The concept is particular to fiction, since non-fiction (by definition, it would seem) doesn’t contain unrealistic events or characters.

But given the very real cultural descent into madness in recent years, I’m increasingly finding the need to suspend my disbelief not about fiction, but about reality—and not in order to “appreciate” it, but in order to come to grips with just how sideways things have gotten.

I’m apparently not alone in this. For years, conservatives have joked about how we now live in an alternative timeline, a “clown world,” where satire continually predicts reality. Unfortunately, the joke is getting less and less funny.

A Black Market for Baby Organs

One recent example of real-life news that boggles the mind was the lead story in Project 18:15 two weeks ago.

At a congressional hearing last month, anti-abortion activist David Daleiden revealed “previously unreleased” undercover footage of abortion providers making sickening admissions about their baby organ harvesting activities.

In one clip, an abortionist discusses a method she used to avoid violating the federal ban on partial birth abortion (PBA). “Like if I’m doing a procedure, and I’m seeing that I’m in fear that it’s about to come to the umbilicus, I might ask for a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix and pull off a leg or two, so it’s not PBA.”

She proceeds to tell Daleiden, who is posing as a buyer of aborted fetal body parts, that “even if I can’t get it out intact, I can still get you a good sample.” Other clips likewise exposed Planned Parenthood’s willingness to illegally sell fetal body parts.

Two Things

To comprehend what you just read requires two things. First, suspension of your jadedness. We’ve become so used to hearing and talking about the mutilation and murder of babies that we’re at risk of thinking it’s normal, as if it should be tolerated.

That, of course, is what the purveyors of evil, the enemies of God—those who defend and excuse abortion, among a whole host of other evils—want. You must not give them that.

Second, it requires suspension of your disbelief. If you’re not jaded, you have to watch out for this other extreme: being so scandalized that you act like it’s not real and retreat into the shell of your own comforts, or even your own troubles.

If the kind of wickedness we’re talking about persists, you will soon have neither your comforts nor your troubles. This road leads to the end of life as we know it in this nation.

The slope of moral decline is slippery, and anyone who’s been paying attention can see how far we’ve slipped already. You cannot afford not to pay attention. You cannot afford to be a practical disbeliever of the depth of perversion to which we as a culture have already sunk.

I say “practical” because some readers (you?) would undoubtedly say with their lips, “No, I believe it; I can see it,” but then go back—as if they didn’t believe it and didn’t see it—to whatever Netflix show they’re currently watching. They will bury their heads in the proverbial sand and willfully forget the profound and ever-encroaching perversions all around them, thereby becoming, by their silence and inaction, complicit in them. This is to their shame.

"How do good men become part of the regime?” the Josh Garrels lyric asks. "They don't believe in resistance." The rejoinder, of course, is that those men prove themselves to not be good men after all. Just impotent and weak. "If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small" (Proverbs 24:10).

Don’t Look Away

The alternative to either of those extremes (jadedness or disbelief) is this: look the evil in its face. Don’t look away, look closer. Know that it’s real and it’s not normal—not tolerable—and act as if you know it.

Yes, there are people who use forceps to keep a baby from coming further down the mother’s birth canal, then chop off the baby’s legs, because if they do it that way they can get away with it.

And yes, they would happily sell the rest of the baby’s body for a profit.

That is reality, and you must not look away. And that’s far from the only evil you ought to be aware of.

Thirsty For Blood

How about the Chicago man who was just arrested after plotting to molest the child he and his gay partner bought via surrogacy? He almost got away with it. Do you think other pedophiles using surrogacy haven’t already gotten away with it?

Consider that pedophiles have been rebranded as “minor attracted persons” to somehow make this sin seem less vile than it is. While it remains illegal for now, how long can we count on that if culture keeps regressing leftward?

Consider also that surrogacy is a booming industry that involves literally renting a woman’s body and purchasing a human child. There hasn’t been such an obvious, legal commodification of human beings since slavery. These are evils in our culture, and they’re only growing.

How about the Kentucky Democrats who stormed out of a meeting in protest two weeks ago when a House bill was changed to “require hospitals to refer patients with nonviable pregnancies to perinatal or palliative care programs”? The Democrats’ reason for protesting: the bill “would discourage healthcare providers from talking to patients about seeking a legal abortion out of state." — In other words, they were protesting the fact that there might be fewer abortions.

While Democrats used to say they wanted abortion to be rare, now they’re showing their hand. They don’t just want abortion to be accessible, they want it to be encouraged. For them, the more babies murdered, the better.

Oh, the list of nearly-incomprehensible evils in our headlines is virtually endless. What can account for these atrocities? I’ll tell you.

These people are demonic. They hate God, they suppress the truth about Him because they love their sin, and they are thirsty for human blood. It’s not that they want to murder or would murder, it’s that they do murder.

Have you realized that? Do you act as if you’ve realized it?

In the words of Jack Richardson IV, “None of us like to think of someone else being so malevolent, but they are, and it is time to wake up to reality.”

You Too, By the Way

Lest we forget ourselves, let's pause for a moment of self-reflection. We, too, are damnable creatures. The Bible says:

“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)

Maybe you’ve never physically murdered someone, but have you ever been cowardly? Have you ever been sexually immoral? Have you ever lied? Have you ever loved anything more than God (that’s idolatry)?

Of course you have. We all have. Self-righteousness is a delusion.

Solomon writes, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). Paul quotes the Psalms when he agrees,

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10–11)

Jesus Himself says flatly, “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18).

So, kings, prophets, apostles, and the Lord Himself agree: all of us are morally abhorrent, and reprehensible before a holy God.

Regardless of how you’ve sinned, you have sinned—and all sin is damnable. As James writes, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10). If you break the law, you’re a lawbreaker. Even the smallest sin is bad enough to earn you hell forever.

So, even as we call out the evils around us, let’s be careful: “For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things” (Romans 2:1).

But that doesn’t mean we go easy on these evils. It just means we hold ourselves to the same standard, and “pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22).

You can only do that if you have repented of your sin and given your life to Christ, believing that His death on the cross paid the price for your sin, and believing that He rose from the dead, ascended into heaven where He presently reigns at the right hand of God the Father, and—as the Apostles’ Creed says—will come again to judge the living and the dead.

God-Haters Of All Stripes

Whoever doesn’t embrace the kingship of Christ, the Bible teaches, is a God-hater (Psalm 5:5), a truth-suppressor who loves their sin (Romans 1:18). They belong to the domain of darkness (Colossians 1:13), and they only pursue their own desires (Ephesians 2:1-3). They cannot help themselves. Some of these God-haters are so demonically influenced, their consciences so seared, that their greatest thrill is to get away with the greatest evil they can.

Lump these flagrant transgressors together with a horde of cowards (God-haters in their own way) who will not stand up to their offenses, and you have a recipe for the fall of a nation.

The Nation Is Falling

Suspend your disbelief. Things really are this bad. What are you going to do about it?

There are only two possibilities. Either things get better or they get worse. They are on track to get worse. They will not get better without intervention.

As nations before us have fallen, the United States will fall. I’m no prophet, but I don’t need to be. It’s the way of every superpower in history: when prosperity gives way to degeneracy, judgment comes in the form of destruction. It comes from within or without, or both.

It’s Happened Before

The city of Nineveh, Assyria’s capital, is most famous for its appearance in the book of Jonah, where it averted God’s wrath by sincere and severe acts of repentance. As I’ve written previously, this is a good example for us.

But, unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of Nineveh’s story. There’s another, less famous book of prophecy in the Bible that’s also about Assyria’s capital city—the book of Nahum.

The prophet Nahum came several generations after Jonah, and also prophesied the destruction of the sinful city. Only this time, the city didn’t repent. Not long after, history tells us, Babylon and its allies destroyed Nineveh, and the entire nation of Assyria with it (c. 612 BC).

Now get this. Assyria was the most powerful nation in history at that time. Does that sound familiar? It had suffered some years of internal and external conflict leading up to its demise. Does that sound familiar? The city of Nineveh, a symbol of the nation at large, had become full of violence, deception, greed, and sexual immorality (Nahum 3:1-4). Again, sound familiar?

The nation which once humbled itself before God had again become His adversary, His enemy. And He said this about them:

“The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.” (Nahum 1:2)

The Pattern of Judgment

The pattern is seen with cities and nations again and again throughout history: Sodom and Gomorrah, the nations of Canaan, Israel itself, Assyria, Babylon, etc., etc. etc.

God bears patiently with the sins of the people, giving them ample time to repent, until their iniquity is full—it reaches its limit—and then He brings judgment (cf. Gen 15:16). The city or nation is overthrown, often by conquest or invasion.

Is the United States suffering an invasion? Yes. Millions are pouring into this country unabated at our southwest border. This has aptly been called “America’s end times.”

God has been so patient with the United States, and we as a nation have rejected Him. Our recompense is on its way. Our debt is coming due. We are living on borrowed time.

The question you have to ask yourself is, do you believe it? Are you willing to suspend—no, to expel—your disbelief and accept the fact that our nation, apart from drastic action, is coming to an end?

Normalcy Bias

Most won’t. As I’ve written previously, there is a phenomenon in psychology called normalcy bias. Normalcy bias is a pattern of thinking (a cognitive bias) in which people disbelieve or minimize a threat or disaster, leading them to underestimate the danger and continue acting as though nothing unusual is happening.

Researchers have found that around a whopping 70% of people in a disaster respond in this way. Rather than fight or flight, they freeze—or just carry on as if nothing’s the matter.

If those stats hold up, about 70% of the nation will continue to be in denial or shock about the end of the nation as we know it. They will sit there with their heads in the clouds as the world burns around them.

What about the other 30%? Research has found that while most people in an emergency situation act like nothing is happening, about 10-15% simply freak out. They recognize the danger but they don’t know what to do about it or can’t think about it clearly enough to do the right thing, so they react with wild irrationality.

The final 10-15% of people are those who, in a disaster scenario, act decisively and effectively. These are those who accept the situation for what it is, deliberate quickly, and act appropriately at the right moment to meet the danger in the best possible way.

Where do you fall? Will you stay in denial, making yourself an impotent lamb to be led to the slaughter? Will you recognize the danger but lose your head? Or will you recognize the danger and rise to the occasion?

A Ray of Hope

Here’s a ray of hope. Researchers have found that the 70% who are stunned into denial and inaction in the face of disaster are not necessarily doomed; rather, “people who are in this state are docile and can be directed without chaos.”

So, perhaps the few who rise to the occasion may be able to lead the masses from disaster to safety—that is, to repentance and to faith in Christ. To speaking out against evil wherever it rears its drunken, overfed head. To calling on our governing authorities to turn from injustice. To replacing those wicked and incompetent leaders with righteous leaders who are committed to truth. To loving God above all, and our neighbors before ourselves. To put time, talent, and treasures to work for these ends.

It may be too late for this nation, but if not, we must take resolute action, quickly. Hurry!

Anthony Langer
Creator of Project 18:15