Forgetting how to blush

By Robin Schumacher, Exclusive Columnist Monday, September 28, 2026

Anyone else tired of the constant parade of stories and social-media posts celebrating evil?

I am.

University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds appears to have had enough of it too. In a recent article, Reynolds observed a disturbing trend: people who once kept their darker impulses hidden are increasingly taking the masks off. They’re no longer embarrassed by the horrid things they believe or support. In fact, they seem eager to announce it publicly and sometimes revel in it.

You know what I’m talking about.

When UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered, Luigi Mangione acquired adoring fans who openly celebrate and idolize him. Didn’t you know that murder’s OK for guys like Thompson?

When 32-year-old Bank of America Vice President Erin Placenti was stabbed in Times Square by a whackadoodle, filmmaker Lexi Alexander argued that Placenti encountered karma because of the bank's investment position regarding Israeli financial institutions.

Then came the dark celebrations surrounding Charlie Kirk's assassination anniversary, including people on college campuses posting things such as “Happy Kirkiversary” and “Merry Kirkmas.”

And this type of thing isn't confined to political violence.

For years, pro-life supporters were mocked when they warned that once a society decides certain human beings can legitimately be killed before birth, the moral reasoning used to justify that killing can eventually be extended to children after birth under certain conditions. Philosophers such as Peter Singer and Michael Tooley helped advance arguments along those lines, although such views were considered highly controversial when first presented.

Yet we now find ourselves in a cultural moment in which the boundaries surrounding the value of human life seem increasingly negotiable. In the Lindsay Clancy trial, only one juror maintained that infanticide could not be justified by appeals to mental or emotional circumstances.

Something’s changed.

There was a time when people were ashamed to be caught celebrating things that were obviously wicked. Shame itself functioned as a kind of social restraint. Someone exposed for saying or doing something morally repugnant might literally turn red with embarrassment: a physical manifestation of the body's involuntary response to being exposed.

But what happens when the shame disappears?

Jeremiah described exactly such a society: “Were they ashamed because of the abomination they had done? They certainly were not ashamed, and they did not know how to blush” (Jer. 8:12).

That sounds remarkably contemporary. And Scripture gives us a framework for understanding how a society gets to that point.

The pillars of God’s protection

While some work hard to dismantle the idea that America has been historically shaped by Christianity, it's difficult to deny the enormous influence Judeo-Christian moral principles have had on our nation's laws, institutions, and understanding of right and wrong. But that moral structure has been crumbling for some time now due to the destruction of the pillars that have protected us up until now.

In a message about how evil invades a culture, John MacArthur talks about these divine restraints as follows:

“So God had to build into human life barriers, restraints — restraints to mitigate this evil, to mitigate this corruption, to subdue sinful passion and expression so that man could make a society and be civilized and enjoy His creation, and find happiness, and peace, and a measure of joy and gratitude. These restraints are absolutely critical. Where these restraints function as God intended them to function life is good, people enjoy common graces, life is rich, and God is thanked. Where these restraints are assaulted, corrupted, diminished, rebelled against, society is on the brink of self-destruction.”

The first pillar given by our Creator is the human conscience. God created humankind in His image and gave us an innate awareness of moral law. Yet fallen people can suppress, distort, and eventually blister that conscience when they repeatedly reject what they know to be true. Paul tells of people whose scruples have been “seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron” (1 Tim. 4:1–2).

And once that happens, Isaiah's warning becomes reality: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Is. 5:20).

Notice the progression. It’s not merely that people do evil; they eventually begin to rename evil, then they begin to defend evil, and eventually they celebrate it.

The second restraint God has provided is the family. The family is foundational to society because it’s where children first encounter authority, responsibility, sacrifice, love, truth, and moral boundaries. It’s supposed to be the place where one generation teaches the next how to live.

When that institution is fractured, corrupted, or stripped of its God-given purposes, one of society's most important moral anchors is weakened. And when disobedience to the Fifth Commandment, “Honor your father and your mother,” is treated not as rebellion but as liberation, we should not be surprised when generations grow up increasingly resistant to authority, tradition, and moral limits.

The third protector God has established is civil government. Paul calls government “a minister of God to you for good” (Rom. 13:4). That’s what it’s supposed to be, but how many of you see it that way right now?

Government has a God-given responsibility to restrain evil and protect the innocent. Yet when authorities fail to punish wrongdoing — or actively remove the consequences that are supposed to restrain it — the result is predictable. Solomon observed: “Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to do evil” (Ecc. 8:11).

When evil consistently goes unpunished, people learn. They learn that consequences are optional, that transgression can be profitable, and that there is no reason to be ashamed of what they are doing.

The final restraint is the most important of all: the Church. True solutions to the world's problems require an internal transformation of the human heart, which is the root of all moral wrongdoing. This inner change is precisely what the Gospel of Jesus Christ accomplishes, as Scripture notes: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17).

But unfortunately, the Church itself has not escaped the cultural collapse. Too many churches have become filled with people who want Christianity without doctrine, spirituality without repentance, encouragement without conviction, and a Jesus who comforts but never commands

People want milk without real food.

But Scripture says:

“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil” (Heb. 5:12–14).

Needless to say, there is something profoundly wrong in a culture when murder becomes entertainment, cruelty becomes virtue, wickedness becomes something to boast about, and moral outrage is reserved for the person who dares to call evil by its proper name.

We desperately need people who still have enough moral sensitivity to blush when evil appears before them, and the proclamation and obedience to the Gospel is the only way we’ll ever get that back.