Are we seeing the beginning of a great change in our culture? Weinstein, Cosby, Spacey,  and a host of other formerly-popular celebrities now wear the scarlet letters of #MeToo. Might this indicate the emergence of a new morality—or even an old one now returning to the surface? When even Hollywood goes moral, it looks like a genuine sea change could be in the offing.

There is certainly nothing older and less imaginative than sin, but when it re-emerges in the popular square and gets a hearing, Christians like us tend to feel a bit vindicated, or at least encouraged in our adherence to Biblical standards of ethical behavior.

Among sinners past, I have found great delight in the writings of Oscar Wilde toward the end of his life. Sadly, due to the restrictions of his day, Wilde was imprisoned for homosexuality. From gaol he penned the work De Profundis [“From the Depths”] while looking back over his life of sin. An old sinner may well be a wiser soul than a young pastor, which is why I bought the book at the beginning of my ministry.

While Wilde remains a fave figure for championing libertine sexuality, it seems he had a great deal of genuine contrition over his sinful youth. We hear from him very mature reflections about sin:

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What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetops. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. [De Profundis, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910 p. 38]

Wilde acknowledges his self-absorption and how it blinds one in addiction. Sin will soon have its way with the sinner and invert his or her value system completely. Hear Wilde:

I would sooner say, or hear it said of me, that I was so typical a child of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity’s sake, I turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good. [Ibid., p. 45] 

In the end of things, the sinner completely loses the ability to distinguish good from evil.

C.S. Lewis, in  his “space trilogy” of writings, puts the matter clearly:

"It is idle to point out to the perverted man the horror of his perversion:  while the fierce fit is on, that horror is the very spice of his craving.  It is ugliness itself that becomes, in the end, the goal of his lechery; beauty has long since grown too weak a stimulant."

[C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength p.268]

Oddly enough, the sad awakening that came through Wilde’s imprisonment also afforded him a return to loftier ideas of beauty and truth than he was popularly known for:—he came to see Christ as the true source of real beauty:

…wherever there is a romantic movement in art there somehow, and under some form, is Christ, or the soul of Christ. [Ibid., p. 40]

While it is one thing to awaken from the distorted perspective of sin, it is another thing to walk a new path and be fed for new life. Wilde was fortunate enough to find his new food:

At Christmas I managed to get hold of a Greek [New] Testament, and every morning..I read a little of the Gospels, a dozen verses taken by chance anywhere. It is a delightful way of opening the day. Every one, even in a turbulent, ill-disciplined life, should do the same.    [Ibid., p. 83]

To what degree did Wilde encounter Christ? Did he bow his heart before the throne and acknowledge that Jesus is Lord? This is impossible to know and not wise to speculate over. Most of Wilde’s contemporary fans would be outraged by the suggestion, and few would be willing to take his mea culpa seriously. What we can see clearly is a life that had been steeped in privilege, wealth, education, and the wretched excesses of worldly pleasures now unblinded by the clear light of truth. His late-in-life proclamations carry a word to the #MeToo era with as much clarity as ever:

Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that everyone is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is.  [Ibid., p. 86]

God’s love changes lives. Let’s pray it changes our lives, our nation’s, and yes, even Hollywood’s.†