Part 6: The Cult of the Sun Monster
By Laura Terrell
The following post is written by my friend and colleague, Laura Terrell. Laura holds a degree in Religion: Women’s Ministry with a Psychology minor (Liberty University). She is also a certified copyeditor (University of California, San Diego) and a published author. She is the editor of The Life I Now Live: Continuing Machen’s Historic Battle for the Gospel.
Disclaimer: This particular blog post deals with sensitive topics regarding the sins of our culture.
Blessings,
-Rich
“The Italians [have] a Proverb,
‘He that deceives me once, it is his fault; but if twice, it is my fault.’”
– Anthony Weldon, 1651(1)
I’ll be honest. I really don’t know where to start with this one. There’s so much to say. A lot of prayer has gone into this post. A lot of research—months of it, in fact. And there have been many conversations between Rich and myself as to how deep we should dive into this subject. And we keep coming to the same conclusion. We have to talk about it. Because too many people aren’t talking about it.
I guess, to help you understand how I got here, I have to explain where I was just over a year ago. I was in the middle lane, politically. Or, at least, what I thought was the middle. Turns out, not so much.
I was raised in a household that very much did not subscribe to the old maxim, “Don’t talk about religion or politics.”
My dad has been an elder in the PCA since before I was born, and my mom has been a Sunday school teacher since she was a teenager. Also, my dad is absolutely obsessed with politics—Conservative, of course. Our nightly routine for years included watching Hannity & Colms on Fox News. On top of that, he listened to every Conservative commentator who came on the radio every time he got in the car, which meant that, if I was riding with him, so did I (very much unwillingly at times, only slightly unwillingly at others). The worst radio commentators, in my not so humble opinion, were the shouty ones. I won’t name names. Not as bad were the ones who knew they had nothing to lose, so they told it like they saw it. I was an extreme introvert for most of my life, so the idea of just spouting off opinions with an attitude of pure indifference to what people thought of you absolutely horrified me.
Enter Ben Shapiro. I couldn’t stand him. I didn’t want to listen to him. End of story. Well, actually, beginning of story.
The reason I didn’t want to listen to him was because I was trying to be a peacemaker amongst my peers. I had many liberal long distance “friends,” several of them in the LGBTQ+ community, with whom I was trying (albeit sporadically and half-heartedly) to share the gospel, and I knew that the minute they thought I was “too conservative” they would slam the door on further conversation on the subject of Jesus or anything to do with him. So, I was fiercely determined to remain neutral on almost all political subjects. I certainly had my personal beliefs, but they didn’t collectively fit either party. There were Republican ideals I agreed with, and there were Democrat ideals I agreed with. Nobody was 100% right and nobody was 100% wrong. In my attempt not to pick either side, I even went through a brief Conservative Libertarian phase, from which I’m still recovering.
By August of 2021, my liberal friend group had finally proven too much for me and I had to get the heck out of Dodge, literally on the advice of my therapist. I also purged my YouTube subscriptions of any channels I felt were a bad influence or a time waster, which prompted YouTube to suggest other channels.
Re-enter Ben Shapiro, and all the other Daily Wire members. I pretty quickly found myself mesmerized by Shapiro’s debate videos, for two simple reasons, one of them perhaps petty, but I don’t care. Reason #1: He’s brilliant. I’ve never seen anyone with a brain that fast whose mouth was able to keep up with it. Reason #2: He’s Jewish—a fact I had as yet not realized. My parents taught me from a very young age to have a great respect for the Jewish nation because my Savior is Jewish and we as Christians have been grafted into the same family as Jews who have accepted that Jesus is the Messiah. So, I began to ravenously and indiscriminately devour all the Daily Wire content I could find.
And then it clicked. The middle doesn’t work, because the middle isn’t the middle anymore, due to the “Overton Window” shift.(2) What I needed to be—what made the most sense and finally soothed my aching conscience—was a Constitutional Conservative. So, that’s what I am. But what does my (admittedly long) confession have to do with my post on the origins of abortion, transgenderism, and—of all things—public school? Or the one on the Bohemian culture of the 1920s?
You see, if you and I aren’t paying attention to what American culture is becoming, nobody is going to tell us, especially if you’re on the Left. Over there they tell us that the Progressive cause is all about helping people, letting them live their own “truth,” being the “good” you want to see in the world, and even trying to save the world.
But the second people like us I wake up from being woke and travel back through the looking-glass, we can clearly see the very obvious distortion of what’s actually going on.
The Progressive moment isn’t helping people. They’re murdering their unborn children for them.
They aren’t letting people live any sort of truth. They’re cutting out reproductive organs and cutting off body parts that can never be functionally reattached, and transing the children to simulate a gender that isn’t and never can be truly their own.(3)
They aren’t being any sort of good in the world. They’re affirming mental health issues that lead to suicides, of body-dysmorphic children.(4)
They aren’t trying to save the world. They’re trying to save the planet from the world—from our children. All to appease the “Sun Monster.”(5) And therein lies that one last sun cult I had promised earlier: climate change.
To quote Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire,
“After the Soviet Union, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was no more Communism [for the Left] to idolize (it had so obviously failed) and so they had to take that totalizing religion for the Left and transform it, and they’ve transformed it into Environmentalism. Every political issue, for the Left, can boil down to that first principle…Global warming, global warming, global warming. Because it gives people a sense of purpose. It gives them a substitute for sin. It gives them a substitute for redemption. It gives them a substitute for penance. It gives them a substitute for salvation, for saving the world. It gives them a substitute for charity… That is what it’s all boiling down to… So, how can people get behind it? Because it touches everything. It totally changes everything. We have a beautiful new world ahead of us, a utopia ahead of us, all based on this foundational myth which is global warming.”(6)
My theory is that they think if they reduce the population, through abortion, our carbon emissions will be reduced and global warming won’t kill the rest of us quite so quickly. Or at least, that’s the talking point. I think controlling people through fear is also a big part of it.
And so, in the name of choice and to appease the Sun Monster, they have given their children to offer them to Molech and so profaned the name of our God; he is the LORD (Leviticus 18:21).
This comparison might seem like a stretch to some of you, but it really isn’t. The practice referred to in the Bible as “giving [one of your] children to Molech” (Leviticus 20:4) or causing their son or daughter to “pass through the fire to Molech” (2 Kings 23:10) or “set apart their sons and their daughters to Molech” (Jeremiah 32:35) is widely contested as to just exactly what was going on. However, I’m of the opinion that the simplest answer is most likely the right answer. And the simplest answer is the most gruesome of the hypotheses. This is that Molech was an idol with an iron pot in its belly with a fire underneath, in which babies were sacrificed alive—exactly the way you’re imagining it, unfortunately.(7)
When I first read that, it sounded like the most horrific thing I had ever read. But then I thought about how an abortion is done. Exactly the same way, but with scissors and scalpels instead of water and fire. Exactly… the same… way. Alive. With no anesthesia or pain medication. Together with a 0% intended survival rate.
Now is probably a good time to tell you that I was born with Spina Bifida.
Had I been born to different parents who weren’t pro-life, I probably wouldn’t have been born at all. My parents were told repeatedly fed the lie that “terminating” me was the ethical choice, because I would have not quality of life.” After hearing my story, I’ve actually had people (albeit keyboard warriors on social media) tell me to my face that it would have been better for my mother if I had been aborted. Point blank. No equivocation. I—a living, breathing human, made in the image of God himself—“should have died” in order to save my mother the inconvenience of raising me.
You’ll be happy to know that my mother completely disagrees with this pronouncement, as does my father.
You’ll also understand how it boggles my mind that pro-abortionists have the audacity to use the word “choice,” when I myself have been deemed by many to be unworthy of the choice of my own life. But my mother has that choice. It’s not choice. It’s population control and eugenics. All for the Sun Monster.
And the ones they can’t abort or trans they indoctrinate through the public school system. Children, as early as preschool, are being taught—as part of the government sanctioned curriculum—about advanced sexual practices and gender ideology.(8) It’s getting to the point where they’ll know what all the letters in LGBTQIA+ mean before they can spell a word or use that + to add 2 and 2. And heaven help them if they ever actually need to know what a real pronoun is and that “cakeself” is not one of them!(9)
But Leftism, and even the Sun Monster, isn’t the big boss of this level in the post-apocalyptic Wonderland of a video game we seem to have found ourselves trapped in. They’re just scare tactics. The actual big boss is the devil.
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).
The plight of our modern society isn’t about political games any more. It isn’t about a culture war. It is about good vs. evil. The kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of Satan. Christ’s Church vs. the Leftist Sex Cult of the Sun Monster. And we feel the struggle of this spiritual war being waged on a daily basis, because we were created to serve God. All of us. Every person, no matter how vociferously he proclaims himself an atheist, is made to serve the True God and will inevitably worship either him or a false god in his place. Mainstream American culture—even if it’s only a highly vocal minority—has chosen a humanistic, naturalistic “god” that requires human sacrifice in the form of abortion and the mutilation of children. As gruesome as that sounds, it’s neither exaggeration nor sensationalism. It’s a simple recounting of the plain, barbaric, and yet not at all new, facts. It is plainly and simply what is happening before our very eyes.
So, the Church has to make a decision. Do we stand by and watch? Or do we proclaim the true gospel louder and longer and bolder and braver than the loudest and proudest Leftist until it either changes the culture for the better or we go to our true home in glory?
“And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your father served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15).
To paraphrase J. Gresham Machen, “I’m so thankful for the active obedience of Christ,” for in this fight for the souls of our nation there would certainly be “no hope without it.”
From the “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” at Disney to animal fetishists and “minor attracted people” (read “pedophiles”) in our own government and schools to public school teachers being allowed and encouraged to talk to kindergarteners about advanced sexual subjects and socially transition students without their parents’ knowledge or consent, society in America—at least a very vocal and government sanctioned portion of it—has become nothing more than a cult of degeneracy and false morality.(10)
So, what is the Church to do about it? Well, first off, read the Bible and calm down. This isn’t a call for a pitchfork mob by any means. Quite the opposite.
“Say to them, ‘As I live!” declares the Lord God, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11).
Get the people out of the burning building before you treat their wounds. Don’t expect people who are Christians to act as if they are. The only way to become a Christian nation once again is for those in power to get saved first, and then create new legislation to reflect that.
“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27–28).
Love the sinner; hate the sin. Cancel culture is poisonous. If we cancel everyone who does something we disagree with, we’ll be forced to completely ostracize ourselves from everyone in the world—including ourselves.
“Let your love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9).
Now, admittedly, we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are a few good principles to which those on the Left embrace. We should love our neighbors. (Although we shouldn’t let them live here undocumented.) We should take care of the planet. (But not for the planet’s sake alone.) We should do it because God gave us stewardship over his creation, and we have a responsibility to suitably prepare it for the next generation to live in. We should have genuine compassion for everyone, even those we vehemently disagree. We don’t have to—and shouldn’t—condone their behavior, but we do have to show them the love of Christ.
When I first started writing this blog I was angry. Angry at the doctors and parents for transing and sterilizing the children. Angry at the abortionists for mass-murdering unborn babies. Angry at how quickly things have escalated over only the past two years. Angry at the post-Covid chaos that allowed so much of it to go unnoticed by so many and prevented those who did notice from being able to stop it before it got this bad. Angry at myself for being one of those who, up until a few months ago, failed to notice. Just… ANGRY.
Until a few paragraphs ago. In fact, I had to take a 24-hour break between writing the words “no hope without it” and “secret gay agenda,” because the anger was too mentally and emotionally exhausting.
And that made me wonder. What’s the point? Why am I writing this? Am I just venting my frustration? Am I just sick and tired of being sick and tired? Do I have the guts to actually stand up and speak out, or do I want this blog to sit unread on my computer for the rest of my days?
No.
I simply want the cultists of the Sun Monster to stop harming themselves and others. I want them to stop sabotaging humanity—the best of God’s creation, the only creature he called “very good.” The one made in his very image. I want them to stop trying to destroy what God has made in his image so that they can try to remake it in their image. They can’t ultimately succeed, but they can certainly try with all their might. And they are.
Ultimately, God will win the war against Satan. And he’s blessed us with the opportunity—and the duty—to fight this spiritual war with him by sharing the gospel. As Romans 16:20 tells us, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” But the only way to do that is for the Church to stand up and speak out, wearing the full armor of God and brandishing the “Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of Truth,” which we must declare boldly for all to hear. After all, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:14-15a).
Everyone in our culture is made to worship. But we are not made to worship just any god—and certainly not the Sun Monster. We need the true triune God of the Bible, who loved us—even when we were dead in our sins and even though our own righteousness is like filthy rags. We need the God who loved us enough to come to this fallen and broken earth as a human for thirty-three long years, just so he could live the life we couldn’t live and die the death we should have died. All because he loves us.
It’s because he loves us that “We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing… And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing” (2 Corinthians 2:15; 4:3).
As a closing thought, I got something wrong in my first post. I misquoted magician-atheist Penn Jillette. What I remembered him saying was stirring enough (“How much do you have to hate somebody to believe they’re going to hell and not tell them?”) but I actually much prefer the real quote. “How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?” He goes on to say, “I mean, if I believed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you, and you didn’t believe that truck was bearing down on you, there is a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.”(11)
My brothers and sisters in Christ, the truck is bearing down on the souls of our nation. And it is not going to swerve before hitting them. It has no intention of swerving. Because it’s intentionally and maliciously aimed at them by the ultimate enemy of God.
It’s time to tackle.
– Laura
Footnotes:
Anthony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James. Whereunto Is Now Added the Court of King Charles: Continued Unto the Beginning of These Unhappy Times, With Some Observations Upon Him Instead of a Character (London, 1651).
Derek Robertson, “How an Obscure Conservative Theory Became the Trump Era’s Go-to Nerd Phrase,” Politico, February 25, 2018, accessed September 13, 2022, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/25/overton-window-explained-definition-meaning-217010/.
Matt Walsh, “What Is A Woman” (The Daily Wire +, 2022), documentary.
For a comprehensive explanation of the association between gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia from the perspective of a queer eating disorder survivor, please read the following article: Jamie “OJ” Bushell, “Body Dysmorphia & Body Image in Trans and Non-Binary Folks,” May 27, 2022, Center for Discovery Eating Disorder Treatment, accessed September 13, 2022, https://centerfordiscovery.com/blog/gender-dysphoria-body-dysmorphia-trans-non-binary-folks/.
Michael, Knowles, “The Michael Knowles Show, Episode 308: ‘It’s The Sun Monster, Stupid,’” 45:27, March 5, 2019, accessed September 13, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H87vjXO5QJY.
Ibid.
Marco Margaritoff, “The True History of Molech, The Ancient God of Child Sacrifice,” All That’s Interesting, October 2, 2021, accessed September 13, 2022. https://allthatsinteresting.com/Molech.
Ben Shapiro, “Insane Video Exposes PRE-SCHOOL Teaching Gender Identity,” 11:22, February 17, 2022, accessed September 13, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF1QfRYzlUU.
Via Brett Cooper, “The Newest Woke Pronoun Sounds Pretty Tasty,” The Comments Section with Brett Cooper, 1:00, May 13, 2022, accessed September 13, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gCj5sNB4XU.
Latoya Raveneau, Animation director for Disney’s “The Proud Family,” as quoted in Jacob Ogles’ article, “Disney Execs Promote ‘Not-So-Secret’ Gay Agenda in Leaked Internal Vid,” March 30, 2022, accessed September 13, 2022, https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2022/3/30/disney-execs-promote-not-so-secret-gay-agenda-leaked-internal-vid?amp.
Penn Jillette, “How Much Do You Have to Hate Somebody to Not Proselytize?” Justin Taylor, The Gospel Coalition, November 18, 2009, accessed September 13, 2022. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/how-much-do-you-have-to-hate-somebody-to-not-proselytize/
