Don’t you love the stars? We rarely see them during summer because of the midnight sun, but once fall approaches the days shorten and I can see all the lovely constellations again. Ursa Major, also known as The Big Dipper. Ursa Minor. Orion’s Belt. Shining with all their might in the night sky, so bright, so lovely.

Their fixed positions have provided guidance to countless groups of people over the ages as slaves used them to navigate their way through the dark to freedom and sailors used them to find land when the only thing they could see was water. Those stars flung into the void became pinpricks of light and hope as people aligned their course to the North Star and made their way home.

I think part of the problem these days is that we have decided we can rewrite the stars. God created some things to be fixed and unmovable, like the law of gravity. That’s a law we can respect because we can immediately and visibly see the effects of it. Morality doesn’t seem to hold much weight, mostly because the effects of violating moral laws are not immediate and often the first effect of violating a moral law is satisfaction and even happiness.

If drugs or alcohol produced the effect of a splitting migraine or debilitating sickness upon the first try, no one would get addicted to them. They are attractive because the immediate experience is pleasant: people feel brave, confident, energetic and brilliant. Through that example alone you think we’d learn that feelings shouldn’t be the only thing dictating our decisions.

CS Lewis once wrote that ancient man felt accountable to God but modern man has reversed the roles: now God must prove himself worthy before we will serve or obey him.

That’s an interesting position to be in because in the meantime we begin to experiment with doing as we please because we are the only person we are accountable to. That gives us a lot of freedom because our morality then becomes a sliding scale where I decide what is good and bad for myself based on how much happiness each choice brings me at that moment. This is why we’ve seen such a shift in language over the last decade. No one “sins” anymore we just make poor choices.

We’ve cloaked our faults with softer terminology because no one in their right mind would choose to do something knowing it’s wrong (sin). So we rename and justify, then flaunt and insist everyone else agree.

We rewrite the stars.

Then we proceed to deny any person who would try to point it out.

This is probably fun at first but after a while, it can cause a lot of confusion. God designed the world and if we believe he exists we must acknowledge that there is wisdom behind his design and any aberration from the original design will produce chaos, dysfunction, and even brokenness.

You can’t navigate life (the one God intended for you) once you’ve rewritten the stars. We need to return to the truth, it’s the only way we’ll find our way home.