Category: Culture

White Paper #2: Our Cultural Moment

Silva

Recently, Rev. Dr. Kevin DeYoung, senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, NC, wrote an article for World Magazine online titled, “We live in confusing times: the progressives can’t keep their story straight on sex and gender.” It is very much worth reading because Kevin assimilates many of the messages the LGBT advocates push here and there. Indeed, what the article points out is both the very confusing and irreconcilable differences that exist in the modern sexual messaging.

Here is a short list of other online articles, each of which adds a brick to the overall sexuality structure:

I found these articles in one day. A single day cannot pass without just as many and more articles pushing, defending, advocating or decrying the ubiquitous sexual messaging. What is clear enough is there is no real clarity to be found in our culture regarding sex and gender. We are living in the fruit of expressive individualism, post-Christian and post-modern thought and the abandonment of those ideas and institutions that has carried the West.

In must the church step. My denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, commissioned a group of pastors and scholars to do a study paper on human sexuality. It can be found here (abbreviated AIC, hereafter). It is biblical, pastorally sensitive and widely accepted in our denomination. The authors summarize the modern sexual messaging in five statements that read as if they are being spoken by an advocate:

The oppression of the past. In the past, ancient cultures surrounded sex with all sorts of taboos. In general, sex outside of marriage was forbidden in order to control women, to help men protect their daughters and wives as their property. 

The need for authentic expression. In modern times, however, we have come to believe in the freedom and rights of individuals, including the right to love whomever we choose in a consensual relationship. Science has shown us that sex is a healthy thing and a crucial part of one’s identity. It is also a human right, and therefore we will only thrive and flourish as human beings if that right to choose is equally available to all people. 

The fight to love whom we want to love. Over the past century a number of brave individuals—usually women, gay, and transgender persons—have heroically stood up to the oppressive culture and said, ‘This is who I am! Don’t let anyone tell you who you can or cannot love!” Many of the early heroes of this movement were marginalized and many died for their willingness to challenge the cultural elites. 

The hard-won rights of today. But today we have a culture that affirms the right to have sex outside of marriage, to conduct same-sex relationships and include them in the legal institution of marriage, and to allow people to choose their own genders. In all these changes we are forging the first human society in history which is sex-positive and in which all persons can live as equal sexual beings. 

The continual danger. Despite these great accomplishments, most places in the world, and many places in our own society, still resist this healthy culture of sexual freedom and justice. Indeed, there are those who would try to turn back the clock and roll back these rights. Under no circumstances must we allow regressive forces—the foremost of which is religion—to take this away from us again. 

The bottom line (35), “This modern moral story about sexuality creates a plot-line of a struggle between courageous heroes and bigoted oppressive villains—all toward a  happy ending.” Happiness is the goal.

The modern sexual narrative is driven largely by people seeking to be happy and thinking expressing their individualism in sex is the way to get there.  “If you want to use sex for the development of new human life, that’s an option and your choice, but it’s not the primary reason people have sex.  Rather, sex is for individual fulfillment and self-realization” (AIC, 34).  In a word, “happiness.”

Among the bulk of the present young generations there’s been an abandoning of the church. In this way, finding true and lasting joy in our created sexuality is impossible. In its place, many are turning inward and seeking happiness in self-expression.  As a result, we are witnessing the success of the Freudian paradigm—happiness through sexuality.

Just a sample of the evidence of this carnal pursuit of happiness:

  • Centenary University in New Jersey just announced a master’s degree in “Happiness Studies.”
  • The intersection of happiness and sexuality is seen in Lady Gaga’s song, “Born this way” in which she equated being gay, bi-, lesbian or transgender with being black or white… “I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way!”

The Gender Unicorn is a case in point.  The “Gender Unicorn” is a soft and friendly picture created by the Trans Students Educational Resource group to be used in schools at the lowest levels.  It teaches a “fractured” view of human sexuality and identity.  According to the dogma behind the Unicorn, now, when it comes to sex and gender, each person has five (5) decisions to make:

  1. What gender identity will I take: male, female, neither, both?
  2. What gender expression will I make?  How will I live this out?
  3. Who am I physically attracted to: boys, girls, both?
  4. Who am I emotionally attracted to: boys, girls, both?
  5. Will I live consistently with the sex I was born with?

With the Gender Unicorn, there are sex-ed courses of instruction for high schoolers, elementary school–even three year olds. Mark Bauerlein in his excellent book, “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up,” reports having taken his child to music camp at a school in Vermont, he was sitting with other parents waiting for a particular workshop to end. While he waited, he heard a 30-something choral teacher leading a song with 5-7 year-olds that had this chorus, “It doesn’t matter who you love.” He writes:

“I peered through the small window in the classroom door and saw her clapping and singing and swaying back and forth with the kids repeating the refrain with a kindly maternal glee, everything about her posture, countenance, motions and voice reinforcing the warmth of the message.”

Recently on an NPR podcast “Embodied,” host Anita Rao in the podcast titled, “Parented: Raising A Gender-Expansive Kid,” lamented that she was guilty of perpetrating the gender binary problem with her nephew.  (“Gender binary” refers to the male-female distinction.) She said it was not by denying him the opportunity to try on lipstick or a headband but by not offering them to him. Further, she calls organizing our experience using gender is “limiting at best and harmful at worst.” Why? She reports (with no empirical evidence) gender binaries are not helpful for kids exploring who they “are.” 

Further, she interviewed a family in Raleigh, NC, whose daughter just decided to be a boy.  At some point the daughter (still believing she was a boy) asked her dad how to dress like a man and he said affirmingly, “However you dress is how a man dresses.”  This child is 14.  She has a 5 year old brother who is willing to correct people when they don’t follow the pronoun change of his big sister.  A five-year old correcting people.

Another part of the podcast recorded a conversation between an adult and a 6 year old boy—who had decided that when people called him a boy it made him sad but now that people call him a girl he’s happy because, “Now I feel happy that they understand.” He was asked about his favorite thing about being transgender.  He said, “I’m myself now.”  Ten years later, the same host interviewed the same boy because in a week he was going to get puberty blockers.  Here’s what he said,

“A lot of trans people, people who want this can get a blocker because it can block the wrong puberty…so that I don’t grow a beard and my voice doesn’t deepen…and I can grow some breasts and I can go through the puberty I want to go through.”

The program closes with advice from the 16 year old about so-called trans youth, “Hearing what they need is the most important thing ever and simply just using their preferred name and pronouns.” I can’t tell you the number of times I heard the word, “happy” in that podcast.

This fractured view of human sexuality, driven by the pursuit of happiness is united only by one thing: choice.  The highest good in today’s sexual narrative is choice: “I get to choose and no one can tell me otherwise.” With a prior commitment to personal happiness this makes sense. But of course we can see how problematic this is for young people. Think about that fractured view of sexuality and identity: what if they choose wrongly?  The current cultural indoctrination says authentic humanity depends on them making the right choice: that is a lot of pressure.

But what is the right choice?  It isn’t what is historic or traditional.  It isn’t what Mom and Dad and Nana or the pastor says.  So is it: What feels good?  What is accepted by friends or on TikTok or by Lady Gaga (or whoever is popular)?  And, how on earth is a teenager, with a dozen and a half years of life—whose sexuality is under hormonal assault anyhow—supposed to make an informed decision about his or her sexuality?  

  • These facts don’t matter for two reasons: Happiness is all that matters. And our culture is telling them that it is their right to make and theirs alone.

White Paper #1: Our Approach to our Gender Confused Culture

Silva

A Forsaken Moment?  Psalm 10:1-11

Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor; let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised. For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul, and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord. In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, “There is no God.” His ways prosper at all times; your judgments are on high, out of his sight; as for all his foes, he puffs at them. He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.” His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression; under his tongue are mischief and iniquity. He sits in ambush in the villages; in hiding places he murders the innocent. His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless; he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket; he lurks that he may seize the poor; he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net. The helpless are crushed, sink down, and fall by his might. He says in his heart, “God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”

The writer didn’t understand God’s absence from his experience.  In this lament, he records situation after situation where it appeared the wicked was unhindered in his evil.  One poignant reference is “…in hiding places [the wicked] murders the innocent.  His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless…”

It’s true: when righteousness wanes and wickedness waxes, the righteous can be bewildered.  Let’s jump ahead: rampant sexual immorality flows through our culture unchecked, unhindered.  The Bible is clear in its condemnation of the behavior while holding out hope in Christ for those who perpetrate it.  Let’s call it what it is: evil.  

In this social-media saturated environment, it certainly seems that we are in our own version of a forsaken moment.  Where is God in this confusing cultural moment?  How do we live in the “forsaken-ness” of it? 

Preliminary Principles

The goal of this White Paper isn’t yet to lay out our moment, but rather our approach to it.  Unless we are certain ofhow to approach our moment, we may certainly not live in it as we should before the Lord.  Here are a few preliminary principles.

First, only the kingdom of this world—common to all mankind—is in decline.  Even as immorality seems to be running the place, it has not and will not penetrate the redemptive kingdom.  That is not to say the church is immune for we are not; simply, the gates of sexual hell will not prevail against the church.

Second, when God made the covenant with Noah, He did not promise to save the common kingdom but to preserve it until the return of Christ.  As we see in the steady circular movements of history John records in the Revelation, we inch closer and closer to the return of the Lord.  In other words, the degradation is part of the birth pains the Lord promised (Matt. 24:8).

Third, for a long time in the West, Christendom influenced the cultures of the West—there was a shared sense of morality.  This is a large topic that is beyond the scope of this paper.  As Aaron Renn wrote recently in First Things, (“The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism,” Feb. 2022) and as Carl Trueman has written in his latest book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, the trappings of Christendom that had given the Western world a common moral lexicon, is dimmed.

Fourth, the influence of Christianity over culture is declining but its power to grow the redemptive kingdom is not—the power of the gospel to save is not weakened.  This might seem like a contradiction.  But the more Christendom is stripped from our culture, the more the real thing will shine.  We don’t need to lose hope that things are beyond the reach of God and the gospel—indeed, they are not.  

Lastly, sexual brokenness is not new.  Our cultural moment is new to us but as we see from the Scriptures, sexual brokenness seems to define every age in some way.  

Governing our Approach: Jesus with the Samaritan Woman

These preliminary principles lay out some of the landscape of our approach.  Still, we have to be careful and compassionate upon those who are lost or wayward as seen in their sexual choices.  Dr. Gary Yagel, in his book, Anchoring your child in God’s Truth in a Gender Confused Culture, began his study very helpfully in John 4:7-26, the Samaritan woman.  Some of what follows will resemble his work.

What we see with the Lord’s interaction with the Samaritan woman is at least five things that should mark our approach to the sexually broken.

First, His willingness to engage her (John 4:7).  He didn’t turn away from her but took the initiative to engage her.  It is quite likely this took her by surprise given what she said about the standard interactions between the Jews and the Samaritans, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?”

Second, His willingness gave way to His interest: He spoke to her.  In speaking to her, He dignified her—he treated her as an image-bearer worthy of the Lord’s interest.  Indeed, by speaking to her He transgressed a number of cultural taboos that John even mentioned (John 4:27).

Third, His discipling: He cared for her soul.  It was evident very quickly that He was prepared to present to her living water even if she didn’t quite grasp the concept (John 4:10, 13).  He preached the good news to her before addressing her sexual sin and situation in life.

Fourth was His honesty: called her out for her failure to live by the law of God: she had five husbands and the one she was with was not her husband (John 4:16).  He didn’t do it to win points or prove Himself but because her sin was enslaving.  He accepted her with an agenda.

Fifth, His commitment was her true worship.  He didn’t ask her to leave the man she was living with but rather leave the false religion she was committed to.  All of the sexual brokenness will come to an end if she turned to embrace the gospel.  It might not come to an end in her lifetime—like Gomer the harlot, she may return to sin again and again—but its grip on her, broken by the gospel, will be weakened over time by the Spirit.

In all of these ways, we see the Lord Jesus model for us how to approach those who are broken and lost in sin, specifically sexual sin.  Our mission field has changed—now our “new” cultural field is sexual.  

Sinners and Sufferers

The last part of our approach is to recognize two truths about those we may strive to serve and help.  Our attention is to people who are, at the same time, sinners and sufferers.

First, they are sinners, indeed, they know the truth and choose to suppress it (Romans 1:18ff).  As sinners they need to repent of their rebellion against God that is witnessed in their lifestyle choices and embrace freedom from sin and judgment by faith.  We have a duty to share the converting and free gospel of grace.

But secondly, they are, at the same time, sufferers.  They are blinded by the prince of the power of the air (2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:1-4).  They do not know what they are doing.  They are captive to do the devil’s will (Romans 7:5-6) and so they need to be rescued.  In this way, the sexually broken and wayward are the new “widows, orphans and sojourners” who need protection from those who would subjugate them further.

In this way, they are subjects of our mercy and our interest—just as the Lord modeled with the woman of Samaria.  We cannot categorize the sexually broken and wayward as untouchable outcasts; they are not.  They are suffering at the hands of their sin and our enemy.

In a word, our approach is grace and truth (see John 1:14).  

Christians, churches and culture

Christians, churches and culture

Silva

Today is the March For Life in Washington, D.C. For 49 years Americans have been killing the unborn out of convenience. It’s no surprise our culture is a mess of contradictions and conflict. Is American culture by and large sick? Yes. Why? Perhaps because it has been growing in the blood of 60+ million abortions.

What do we do? It depends on who’s asking.

If “we” is a man or woman committed to following Jesus Christ and the Bible’s teaching that the strong must advocate for and even fight for the helpless, then vote, blog, podcast, canvas neighborhoods, run for office, call your political leaders, share the gospel, create school clubs or non-profit organizations, hold conferences, write books and pray–all for the purpose of seeing abortion end.

We happen to live in a culture (mostly) governed by the Constitution that makes all of this possible and even desirable. I’m often surprised that Christians somehow don’t believe we have power enough to effect cultural change. How did the culture get the way it is? Men and women of all political inclinations and religious persuasions have done all the things I listed above. There is no special power to change culture: it is done by the consistent use of the opportunities and freedoms we have at our finger tips.

If “we” is a local church then preach the full counsel of God’s word, eat the Lord’s Supper, pray together (all from Acts 2:42) and plead for the Lord to return and roll up the evil world like a scroll (2 Peter 3:10) delivering the New Jerusalem.

You’ll notice the scope of activity is very different than the first? The business of the church is to grow a different kingdom in a different manner. The Bible tells us the power of the Holy Spirit is not for the sake of building worldly institutions: family, school, government or culture. It is for the building up of the church, the Temple, the House of Living Stones whose Cornerstone is Christ.

Why is it that there are some in Christendom who believe there aren’t two “we’s” here? That the work of the church and the work of the Christian aren’t distinguishable? Would they have the State ordain Ministers? Then why would they have the Ministers give orders to the State? “State Church” experiments in human history have rarely produced faithful churches–they still don’t. Have “Church State” experiments fared any better?

There simply is no benefit in conflating the work of a Christian in the culture with the work of the Church in the culture. There is no greater power for the Christian if this was so; indeed, there is only the danger of the culture contaminating the church (the mainline churches who have abandoned Apostles’ Creed Christianity for some social variant is proof of this).

It is also not true that if the Church were to build its house in the ways mentioned above and stay out of political or cultural advocacy that becomes a version of isolationism. Culture changes from the inside-out, not the outside-in (education is far more effective and long lasting than litigation / legislation). Faithful churches make cultural change each Lord’s Day as the word and sacraments tinker with the souls of the redeemed to give them courage and Christlikeness. As a result, individual believers are subjectively motivated to glorify God in all we do and objectively equipped by the truth of God’s word.

Our culture doesn’t need the church telling it how to behave–that’s not the church’s role. It needs individual Christians motivated and active in making change to unjust institutions working with men and women of all stripes.