The Devil’s Strategy Of Patient Gradualism

How do you boil a frog? If you throw a frog into boiling water, he will jump out. But, if you put a frog in cool water and then gradually turn up the heat, you can boil him. He won’t realize the creeping danger. Most people, like the frog, only react strongly to sudden cultural change. When that change happens very gradually, most people adapt fairly easily to the “new normal” and fail to see the possible danger ahead. Those who seek to radically transform our culture understand this very well and use this strategy of patient gradualism.

I’m a big fan of the Mary Tyler Moore television show. It originally aired during the early 1970s, a time of rapid social change. In certain ways, the show pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable in that era. It dealt with sex, feminism and divorce – topics that were taboo for television sitcoms just a few years before. However, compared to more recent TV series such as the Sopranos or Sex in the City, the show seems tame and innocent.

Our culture today is radically different from what it was in 1960, just a little over five decades ago. The change happened gradually, because it would have been impossible to move too quickly. There would have been too much of a public outcry. Fifty years ago, if someone had said that same-sex “marriage” would someday be legalized, he would have been laughed at. Now, it’s legal. The same is true for other things that at one time were considered unacceptable such as abortion and hardcore pornography. Today, we are on the verge of legalizing marijuana and euthanasia. What will be next? Paedophilia?

Most people, like the frog slowly boiling, still fail to see the acute danger facing our once Christian civilization. The devil knows that a completely corrupted civilization must collapse. He wants it to collapse so that he can replace it with an evil New Order, a hell on earth.

In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.” We all have a choice: We can go along with the ongoing cultural revolution that would destroy all that is good or we can take God’s side. Our Lady of Fatima said, “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” There is no neutral ground. Whose side are you on?