We live in such a screwed up world, mainstream culture is increasingly submitting the fringe to be normal and the normal to be fringe.

Boys and girls are more and more taught that they can pick their own gender adventure. The prominent scientific voices tell us we are accidents of the cosmos — the product of a swerve in nature. Who we sleep with is now a product of our birth, but what gender we are can be freely chosen. Science proves neither, but science is the new god.

It is maddening. Add into it the politicization of everything and you can certainly understand why some people want to check out of culture. Contra the left, most boys do not need to be told not to hit girls. They know it. But a secular ideology that wants all the trappings of morality without the foundation of that morality is now convinced that when boys are left to be boys, they are left to be monsters.

The whole thing is messed up.

The fact is, we are not accidents of cosmic collision. We are not the products of a swerve in nature. We are not just animals of a different species from others. We actually have a purpose.

In our present age, more and more boys are told to find their purpose or, more likely, that they really have no purpose. There is just this violent world, then they die, and that’s it. They, and girls too, are taught that “the highest goal of human life is the advancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain,” which is how the Roman philosopher Lucretius put it back around the first century.

The pleasure and pain dichotomy is the sold lie — it is the lie modern culture says, but we know it is a lie because that thing that might give you pleasure, if the culture disagrees with you, rules your choice invalid. They have taken the very idea of pleasure and made it collectivist.

We saw that on the streets of New York this weekend where the very people who have decided science can prove everything except that people are born gay and people can choose their identity marched down the street worshiping Moloch in the guise of creation. The collective demands that the collective pleasure outweigh the individual pleasure. They tell us we have no purpose except bodily pleasure. But now they tell us that our pleasure must give way to the collective’s needs to worship creation.

All they’ve done is traded the God of creation for creation. They want the tenets and symbols and practices of worshiping the Creator, but none of the obligations that come with true commitment.

The truth through all this cacophony and chaos is that you have a purpose. You are not an accident. You are planned. God has a plan. You may not think he exists, but he does. He is real. And you have a purpose.

You are not just an accident of the cosmos, but a being created in the image of God. Science can answer many questions, but not every question. The science of the present age would tell you that you have no purpose and are an accident. But science cannot answer every question. It cannot answer why you love. It cannot answer why one lays down his life for another when he need not. It cannot answer what came before the big bang.

But God can. He can tell you that what came before the big bang was the Word and “Let there be light.”

And he can tell you that you have a purpose and are not an accident and therefore you must be valued and, because all others are created in His image you must value them too.

He can tell you that men and women are equal before him and before the law, but he can tell you that men and women are two beings created differently — one as provider and protector and the other as helpmate. And He can tell men that they must value women above all other creatures in creation because all things were created “good”, but the creation of men and women was “very good” in the eyes of God. Because women are “very good” in the eyes of God, they have more value than all those other “good” things and must be treated as if they are the most valuable. Women are put on earth for a special reason, so that men may not be alone, and men must protect them and provide for them.

The swerve of nature — the accident of the cosmos — would tell us that this is all baloney, men and women are both accidents, and therefore neither has value or purpose and both are the same though any child can see and know men and women are not the same.

God can tell you your purpose. Culture tells you that you are an accident. God tells you he raised you up from the dust of the earth and stitched you together in your mother’s womb. Culture tells you that you have no purpose. God tells you that you are to glorify him and one day with stand face to face with him.

The modern age wants all the semblance of God without God. And around us more and more every day we are seeing that semblance crumble. As this culture crumbles, the faith of those whose bodies once were used as torches to light the streets of Rome will, though their love and charity, shine brightly on your purpose.

You have a purpose. You are not an accident of the cosmos.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Let nobody make us feel that we don’t need God. . . . This is the God of the universe. And if you believe in him and worship him, something will happen in your life. You will smile when others around you are crying. This is the power of God.”

You have a purpose and God has a plan. And the really awesome thing is that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God.”

You have a purpose. You are not an accident. And you must love and value all made in the image of the God. Culture wants to tell you that, but culture does not practice that.