From Absolutes to Approval Ratings: How the Fight for Justice Became the Fight to Keep Up.

An Op-Ed from Faith News @ docbmedia.com

By Pastor Terry W. Bailey

During the 1960s, individuals such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton led the charge against the Ku Klux Klan and championed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for justice. The lines of conflict were well-defined. The adversary was visible. The cause was anchored in moral certainties, based on the principle that all men are created equal. You could firmly stand on that truth, understanding your position, whether you won or lost, lived or died.

However, a shift has occurred. Nowadays, many of the same individuals — along with others who participated in those causes — now use similar tactics of pressure, public shaming, and narrative control, not against violent racists, but against anyone, including those within their own ideological circle, who do not conform to the constantly changing expectations of modern wokeness.

Previously, moral absolutes enabled you to maintain your beliefs steadfastly or, if convinced by truth, to repent and change. Nowadays, influenced by wokeness, there are no constant standards—only a changing, unpredictable target. What is celebrated today might be condemned tomorrow. As the rules change, you are expected to adapt instantly, or you risk being labeled a traitor to the movement.

The Bible speaks directly to this in Isaiah 5:20: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.” God’s truth remains constant, unaffected by the shifting winds of culture. His moral standard is fixed — not to oppress us, but to keep us free.

The tragedy is that the fight for justice has been replaced, in many cases, by the battle to maintain approval within a movement that demands loyalty to its current talking points rather than to the truth itself. And when a cause abandons absolutes for the convenience of popular opinion, it becomes not a movement for justice, but a machine for control.

Whether the year is 1965 or 2025, the only way to resist that control is to anchor yourself in the Word of God. In His kingdom, repentance is never demanded by mob pressure, but instead invited by the conviction of the Holy Spirit. And once you have stood on the truth, you are not commanded to move with every new cultural tide — you are commanded to “stand therefore” (Ephesians 6:14).

At Faith News @ docbmedia.com, we see the danger clearly: the tools once used to fight evil are now being used to enforce ideological conformity. The answer is not to abandon the fight for justice, but to fight it on God’s terms — with truth that does not change, and courage that does not bend.

“Buy the truth, and do not sell it” (Proverbs 23:23). That is the antidote to the tyranny of shifting standards.

Until Tomorrow:

One Truth At A Time —

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