Ideologies and Revolution

What follows is an unrolled Twitter thread from Josh Daws, host of the Great Awokening Podcast, a pod devoted to explaining the various concepts that comprise the tapestry of today’s Western zeitgeist, commonly called Woke Ideology. 

I usually try and write my own material, but this thread was so good and helpful that I wanted to share it across platforms, and I thought it made the most sense as a full blog post. Thanks to Josh for such insightful explanations. 

To start, Josh alludes to a meme with the bus driver from the Simpsons saying “Don’t make me tap the sign,” which sign contains a tweet that says, “It’s not rocket science guys. They’re just evil and want to diddle kids.” This is obviously referring to the current movement to indoctrinate kids in school with radical gender ideology. Doubtless you’re familiar with the fight in Washington and Florida over this, where the lines have been drawn clearly. The funny meme alluding to the battle might make a interesting point worth considering. But, as Josh explains, it is likely shortsighted and oversimplified. 

Here is Josh’s helpful take, unrolled: 

“I’m seeing a lot of people on the right share this meme. While it may be a strong satirical response to those who get lost in nuance, it fundamentally fails to recognize why the left wants to talk to your kids about sexuality. Let’s connect some dots: 

“The left doesn’t want to diddle kids. They want to create little revolutionaries. To do that they need to sever the bond between students and the parents they believe are raising their children to be hateful bigots.

“In order to sever the bond between parents and their children, the left is using a two-pronged approach. Critical Race Theory and radical gender ideology (properly known as Queer Theory) are not two unrelated sets of ideas. They are two parts of the same strategy.

“CRT is usually the first set of ideas to be introduced. This is often enough to radicalize racial minorities, but it’s merely step one for white (or white adjacent) students. 

“CRT instills in these students a negative self-identity as they’re taught to believe they’re recipients of enormous privilege that was stolen from others and that they are complicit in historic and ongoing injustice. In child terms, they’re taught to believe they’re bad.

“Apart from shame and guilt, this also gives them a worldview at odds with the one their parents grew up with and are trying to pass on to their kids. Step one is complete.

“Once CRT is done tearing down these kids and leaving them with a negative self-identity, Queer Theory (QT) is introduce and offers them a wide assortment of positive self-identities to choose from.

“Instead of living with the shame and guilt of being a member of the oppressive dominant culture, these students can be celebrated for coming out as gender nonbinary or pansexual.

“In an instant, these kids can trade their negative self-identity and all the accompanying guilt and shame of being an “oppressor” for a positive self-identity as a much-venerated “oppressed” minority.

“At this point, the left desperately wants this new identity to stay at school so it has time to be cemented before the parents find out. In the guise of helping these students, schools withhold this information about their child’s new identity from mom and dad.

“Once the parents do find out about their child’s new identity it is firmly in place and an adversarial relationship between the child and parents has been manufactured. It takes extraordinarily deft parenting to repair the relationship once it has reached this stage.

“The parents’ tendency will be to overreact and push the child further into the arms of the woke radicals who now have the little revolutionary they wanted from the beginning. The bond between the parents and child has been severed, ending the perpetuation of hate and bigotry.

“The left is determined to replicate this process in as many families as they can, using whatever means at their disposal. It is not about diddling kids. It is about capturing the minds of impressionable children.

“Unfortunately, this creates environments where actual predators can thrive. When young children are isolated from their parents, encouraged to adopt different beliefs, and keep secrets from their parents, they are made easy targets for abusers.” 

(You might say, “But my school has Christian teachers and a Christian principal. They couldn’t possibly have this agenda.”) 

“Hear me loud and clear on this. Most teachers love the kids in their classrooms and want only the best for them. (But) they have had their empathy for these students weaponized against them by leftist activists promoting educational programs that sound nice and caring.

“Highly empathetic teachers are being used to promote this agenda unaware of its insidious purpose. An example: I recently saw a teacher at a Christian school announce that she would no longer be using the words “mom,” “dad”, or “parents in her classroom. Her reason? She had just read a paper on the importance of making kids from non-traditional families feel included. She suggested replacing “Donuts with Dads” with “Bagels with Buds” or something of the such.

“This sounds like a very considerate thing to do for kids who might feel different because they don’t have a dad or they liv with their grandparents, but its purpose is to subtly chip away at the very idea of the normative nuclear family (a stated goal of the BLM organization.) 

“Christians who think that we can embrace the ideas from CRT and reject the radical gender ideology need to realize how the former is used to prepare kids to accept the latter.

“These are your kids we’re talking about. The left wants them. They would love to sever your bond with them. They think your appeals to childhood innocence are an attempt to force heteronormativity on them. Seriously. They write papers on it. It’s not a secret agenda.” (Click here for James Lindsay’s three-part series walking through the whole agenda, looking at primary sources. Click on the channel name, and find the "videos" page to find the other videos in the three-part series; they're all called "Groomer Schools.")

“The meme I opened this thread with” (the “diddling your kids” meme) “is an easy response to the insanity we’re seeing today, but it is not a great explanation. We should take the time to help people see how nice-sounding programs are being used in the classroom to create little activists and put kids in danger.” 

Wow. I’ve written in the past about the troubling examples I’ve seen of adults who represent the uber-liberal ideologies of the day, saying explicitly that they want to come after kids and convert them to their ideologies (similar to Hitler telling German parents that their kids already belong to him.) This whole endeavor, whether we’re talking about racial issues or issues of sexual freedom, is not about justice or personal identity. It is about cultural revolution against the God of order (1 Corinthians 14:30) and true justice (Psalm 97:2). They do not want to just be heard or listened to, nor do they want fairness. They want power. They want to break off God’s chords from the world that is His, and in which His gospel has penetrated so far, so that they can live autonomously and continue in rebellion against him, while bringing as many along with them as possible. 

Let me be clear: In a fallen world, sexuality struggles will occur, seen in the fact that the New Testament speaks so much about it (see especially Romans 1:18ff.) But Jesus can redeem even from in the midst of such struggles (the point of 1 Cor. 6:9-11). Also, where there is actual injustice being practiced, especially along racial lines, Christians should be the first ones to point it out as wrong. But neither of these things are the aim of the Revolutionaries. They want kids to think that if they have a stray desire (maybe a sexual or gender one), it is legitimate, and only an oppressive religious framework would hinder their exploration; and in order to start this conversation, the Revolutionary has to use CRT to convince the kid that the framework of yesterday, with its traditional gender norms, is wrong and oppressive, so they had better be on the right side of history (hence "progressive" - we have progressed from the Christian past.) It’s a scam; although it is an effective scam. But before anything, it is rebellion against the God before whom we live (Daniel 5:23). 

It has been this way since the beginning: “The rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their chords from us,’” David wrote thousands of years ago (Ps. 2:2-3). But what is God’s response? “He who sits in the heavens laughs” (2:4). He laughs. They’re fools, and He’s laughing at them.

Still, be discerning. These are not innocent ideologies, but the maturation of a cultural rejection of the risen Christ. And if you’re not careful, you might be guilted into believing it as well. 

May the Lord protect His sheep. 

Moses, and the Extra Long Test

This morning reading through the early chapters of Exodus, I was struck by a few factors in Moses’ calling: 

-God’s miraculous protection of the man before he was ever “on the scene.” He was set apart well in advance - anyone else in the story before Moses comes to the foreground might not understand why this one child was protected. But God knew, and that’s what mattered most.

-Moses’ pre-calling (and in-calling) foibles, a la his ancestors: Similar to Jacob’s earlier birthright and blessing thefts, Moses was a murderer. There is no one who God calls to His work who has a squeaky clean past. In fact, it is often the case that they’re messy people, and that’s part of why God can use them: there is an Adam-ness about them that motivates them for the last Adam’s Kingdom. Moses’ foibles also include his famous hesitation to enter into God’s labor, famously ending by saying, “Please Lord, send someone else” (4:13). Note, God isn’t calling a man with an initially strong faith. Like his ancestor Abraham (cf. Rom. 4:20) Moses’ faith was going to have to grow over time. He accepts the call and begins the trek to Egypt. 

-Moses’ first—strange—test: On his way back to Egypt, he again follows his ancestor Jacob’s pattern by getting into a nighttime wrestling match with God who “sought to put him to death” (4:24). Such strong language is doubtless the text’s way of telling us how brutal the fighting was. Since Moses’ son’s foreskin getting cut off deescalates God’s pursuit (4:26), it seems clear that this is God’s way of making sure that Moses knows he’s a part of a grander story that includes his circumcised ancestors. In God’s targeting us, He teaches us. Moses and his wife Zipporah learn the lesson.

-Moses second—and much unexpected—test: When he gets to Egypt and tells Pharaoh to let the people go to the wilderness to worship, the latter doesn’t listen, and he orders heavier work on the Israelites, because how dare this Moses make such a suggestion? The Israelites understandably turn on Moses. At this point Moses cries out to God, “Why have you sent me here? You haven’t delivered the people yet, and now they want to kill me” (5:22-23 my loose paraphrase). It is only at that point that God tells Moses, “Now you’ll see what I’m about to do… Go back to Pharaoh” (Ex. 6:1ff.) What immediately follows is Moses and Aaron’s genealogy, which is the text’s way of telling us that God is about to begin working powerfully with these men.

But don’t miss what has happened in this last test: Moses the murderer, who has begged God to send someone else because of his own weaknesses, is taken through a night of wrestling with the Lord that most of us can only imagine in horror; when he survives, he obeys God by speaking with Pharaoh, only to then have God let him sit there with egg on his face while Pharaoh, instead of complying, gives the Israelite’s heavier burdens; for a time, everyone is against Moses.

This inexplicable scenario—that is, Why did God delay his fulfilling his promise one more scene, and with such disastrous and terrifying consequences?—is never explained in the text. 

But we know that the testing of our faith is often “necessary” (1 Pet. 1:6), and that it is given to us for our maturation and growth in grace (Jms. 1:3-4). Without such dark nights of the soul we wouldn’t truly depend on God; we only would talk about depending on God (see 2 Corinthians 1:3-8).

The lesson is simple: If you want to follow God’s call, be ready for twists, turns, and extended times of testing that you won’t understand, maybe ever in this life. But trust the hands of the Potter who only fashions beautiful vessels. He knows not only the right temperature, materials, and time needed to make  the vessel, but also the right amount of pressure. And it will be perfect in the end. 

On God's Natural Work and God's Strange Work

*Disclaimer: I started writing this based on my own reflection on some texts, and then when I opened up Dane Ortlund's Gentle and Lowly, I realized that most of my reflection was influenced by reading his book. That is to say that the proceeding thoughts are not born out of my own private Spirit-driven reflection, but out of Dane's. I highly recommend reading everything he writes.

Jeremiah 32:41 and Lamentations 3:33 show a contrast that teaches an insightful lesson ab God's nature and work:

Jer. 32:41 - God delights to bless his people w his whole heart.

Lam. 3:33 - God might afflict (ie, allow/work trial), but it is not "from the heart."

The blessing of God--his goodness expressed in such a way that it produces a tangible effect--comes from his heart, meaning his blessing is an end. But trials are not from heart but are secondary, meaning that they are a means to another end; I say, a means to the previous end. In other words, trials are what he uses, but blessing is his goal. 

This is why we cannot please him unless we believe that he rewards those who seek him (Hebrews 11:6: "Whoever would draw near to God must believe that He is and that he rewards those who seek him."): It is in his nature to bless and reward - it is not in his nature to curse or punish. When he does those things, it is his "strange work" (as theologians say), meaning it is the response of his character to that which offends his holiness. But when he blesses and rewards, it is his "natural work;" that is, what it is in his nature to do. He naturally gives and blesses; His judgments or punishments are his responses. His disciplines (which are reserved for his covenant people) are a separate category that include both sides: He gives discipline for good purposes (thus, natural), but his doing so is indeed a response to a need that he sees in his disciple (thus, somewhat strange).

How would your life change if your view of God begun with seeing him as primarily Giver instead of primarily Judge? Of course, He is the Judge of the whole earth (Gen. 18:25), let's be clear. And only He can be the Judge. But again, judgment is his response. Giving is his natural outgoingness. Thus He "is not served by human hands but he gives to mankind life and breath and everything" (Ac. 17:25).

Never be afraid to seek the Lord - it is in his nature to respond with goodness (Lk. 11:1-13). And even his disciplines, experienced as trials/affliction, serve his ultimate purposes of good. Trust the One who is love.

*For further reading, see Ortlund's Gentle and Lowly, as well as Michael Reeves' Delighting in the Trinity and What Does It Mean to Fear the Lord?

Faith

"Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists (Gk He is) and that he rewards those who draw near to him" - Hebrews 11:6

What is saving faith? I've done a lot of thinking, preaching, teaching, writing etc. on the nature of saving faith over the courses of my pastoral ministry and student life, and I still do not think that I've plunged the depths of the topic. In Scripture, faith is enjoined as the way in which humans connect with God as early as Abraham (Gen. 15:6), and it is so throughout the Old Testament narrative. When the New Testament era comes, consistent with prophetic promises (Is. 28:16, Habak. 2:4), faith is central. All through Jesus' earthly life and ministry, he calls on people to believe in him (Mk. 5:34; Jn. 3:15-16), and the Evangelists are sure to remind their readers that these invitations from the Lord extend to them, too (Jn. 3:36; 20:31). After Jesus leaves and He sends his Spirit, the Apostles go throughout the world preaching eternal life through faith in Christ (10:42-43, 13:34-35, 16:31, cf. 15:9), and Paul emphasizes throughout his letters that the gospel of Jesus can only be appropriated by faith (Rom. 3-5, Gal. 3, Eph. 2:4-9, etc.) The merits of Jesus can only be received by faith as a gift, or else they can't be received. To add anything to His merits is to strip them of their value, and therefore, to not truly believe that He has done enough to redeem us. So faith is central. 

But there are a few central elements that often get passed over, which the Hebrews passage quoted above helps to clarify. 

1. First, faith is oriented to pleasing God. That is, the believer is interested in, before anything else, seeking God's happiness. "Without faith it is impossible to please him," means that the one with faith wants to please Him. To some degree (and the degree varies depending on the degree of spiritual maturity a person has), the believer has learned that reality revolves around and depends on God, not themselves. Therefore, they have learned that they exist for God's glory (Is. 43:7), and, therefore, want to please him.* 

2. Second, faith is relational. That is, the believer wants to "draw near to God," to get close to him and enjoy His presence. They are not afraid of God's closeness. They can't get enough of Him, His presence, and His Word, so they pursue Him for His own sake (ie, Mk. 1:37). They would "rather be a doorkeeper in  the house of God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness" (Ps. 84:10).

3. Third, faith consists of belief in the foundational nature of His existence. In other words, the believer believes that before everything else, and undergirding everything else, God is. The greek of the middle part of the Hebrews passage is more simple than "He exists;" it is more like, "He is," which might remind a Jewish person (the original reader of Hebrews) of God's famous self-identification at the burning bush, telling Moses, "I Am" (Ex. 3:14). When God said, "I Am," he was saying he is pure act, outside of time, not subject to influence, change, or progress.** Before all else, God is; and the rest of existence flows from His being. Faith has some degree of clarity about God's transcendent being; while sound theology might not be as clear as it will be years into the believer's discipleship, every believer must be clear that God is transcendent and other. But God is patient as people continue to grow in their theology.

4. Fourth, and finally, faith means to be sure that He receives seekers. "He rewards those who seek him." Let's be honest: Since Eden, we've been prone to default to snake-talk that convinces us that God has more He could give us, but since He isn't good, and therefore isn't trustworthy, the only way we'll find what we're looking for is if we go and take it ourselves. The notion of waiting on the Lord (Is. 40:31) sounds good for worship songs, but is the opposite of what we assume in real life. Nevertheless, to believe, according to our text, is to believe that God is open to us when we seek him; that He wants to establish fellowship with us; that He is ready to open his heart for us if we draw near to him. "Whoever comes to me I will never cast out," Jesus said (Jn. 6:37). 

Unbelief, then, assumes the worst about God's intentions: He doesn't tell the truth, He is powerless and even exacting when it comes to your own personal sin, and He has limits to what He can do for you. Belief, then, assumes the best about His intentions: He tells the truth, He can not only forgive but heal your fallen propensities, and He has no limits whatsoever.*^ Belief, then, is to assume that, contrary to what is our theological default, God is receptive to us, regardless of what our past or present looks like. How glorious is it that even after all of the disciples' failures and before their most embarrassing failure of leaving Jesus the night he was betrayed, that, nevertheless, "Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end" (Jn. 13:1)? He knew their hearts, and what they'd do moving forward. But He loved them still. And Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8), always receptive and ready to receive us when we return.

So let's remember when we read the Scriptures concerning faith, and when we examine our faith to make sure it is real--because it might be counterfeit (Lk. 6:46)--that we remember that God looks for the type of faith that assumes that He is both good and warm to us. That is his nature. Whereas He must be provoked to wrath, when his holiness is offended, love and kindness is His default (1 Jn. 4:8, cf. Ex. 34:6). How can we be sure? Because the triunity of the Father and the Son consists in eternal love (Jn. 17:24) which overflowed into eternal decrees that include the loving choice of sinners to salvation (Eph. 1:3-4) and into a creation that puts his goodness on display every moment of every day (Ps. 19:1-2, Mt. 5:44ff). And since He never changes, we can be sure that the relational love that comes from all eternity comes, indeed, to us, establishing relationship with Him, and maintaining it by faith. In short, to truly believe in God is to love Him; and this love is the gift of His Spirit as we feast on His Word and goodness (Rom. 5:5).

*Piper's Desiring God was written to make clear that seeking God's happiness is not contradictory to seeking our happiness, if it is understood that our happiness is meant to consist in our enjoyment of God's happiness. See that book, if you haven't. 

**See Matthew Barrett's None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God, if you haven't, especially pp. 41-69, which comprise his chapters on God's limitlessness and aseity. 

*^I'm reminded of an old AW Tozer quote: "How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none" (in Knowledge of the Holy, 47).

Christ the Preeminent Word Who Effectively Saves

(Taken from a recent Wednesday evening study of Colossians 1:15-20. The text is wiidely considered to be one of the most important New Testament texts for understanding Christ’s identity. Many theologians and scholars think the text is a first century hymn that either was penned into the canon or was made into a hymn because it was in the canon. Other NT examples of this phenomenon might be John 1:1-18 and Philippians 2:1-10, both of which also deal with Jesus’ identity and work.)

Christ’s coming into the world altered how the people of God thought about and reflected upon the Word of God. Christ didn’t change the Word of God, nor was his life and ministry a “twist” in the story. Rather, his coming showed how God would fulfill HIs promises and plan which had been witnessed to throughout the Old Testament. Things that were unclear are now clear. This is why Paul refers so often to the “mystery” that was hidden for so long but is now clear (ie, Rom. 16:25; Eph. 3:6,9; and Col. 1:26, 2:2): While God’s Word accomplished all of his purposes throughout time (Is. 55:10-11), there was much that still needed clarified in order to understand it. Christ clarified it, and now the purposes of God are revealed in the fullest way possible within a fallen world. Thus we can’t read the Old Testament any longer without remembering our relationship to Christ. We, to borrow from one theologian, can't help but to “read backwards."*

The Preeminence of Christ’s Person in Col. 1:15-17

How important is Christ, the Son of God? 

-First, He is the “image (Gk icon) of the invisible God” (1:15a), as in 2 Cor. 4:4 and Heb.1:3. For a human to know what God is like, they must look at Jesus, who is his image. 

-Second, Christ is the “firstborn of all creation” (1:15b). An ancient church leader named Arius took the notion of “firstborn of creation” to mean that Christ was the first creation of God. Arius, along with others like him, thought he found support in Prov. 8:22. They say that this verse must mean that Christ is not eternal. For how could he be the firstborn of creation, if he was never “born?” 

-But 1:16-17 entirely rules out the possibility of Christ being created: “By him all things were created…he is before all things,” which means first that he is, in some way, himself the Creator, and second, that he, predating all things, is not a thing himself. So “firstborn of creation” must mean something else. 

Psalm 89 drips with Christ as the promised descendent Seed of David. Verse 27 has God promising “I’ll make David (that is, his promised descendent) the firstborn.” But this promised seed, not having come yet, if he were a created being, would be far from the first person created. It becomes obvious, therefore, that “firstborn” is a term, not of chronology, but of priority. So the Seed promised to David will be the most important in all of creation. 

But what of the phrase “of creation” in “firstborn of creation?” This is where it gets tricky, but not so tricky that we end up confused. The eternal Son of God, the eternal Word (Jn. 1:1-2), in becoming incarnate to be the promised seed of David, put on a created body in order to do so. Make sure you understand that: While the eternal Word is uncreated, the body he took on in the Incarnation is created. This is the doctrine known as the Hypostatic Union (formulated in the Athanasian Creed, 4th c), which means that Christ united in one hypostasis (existence) two natures: Humanity and Divinity. Doing so, he becomes the most important of all that exists, especially of the creation, with which he can identify because his body is created. While the Word is not just a man, but is also divine, in His humanity He is the firstborn of all of creation.

The Efficacy of His Work in 1:18-20

So the next few verses emphasize his work from his time on earth and on, as the Redeemer. Whereas 1:15-17 focus on his eternality, 1:18-20 focuses on his work as the Redeemer who, being divine, identifies with creation in order to save it. The work he did on earth 2000 years ago continues, because his resurrected body included his physical body (Lk. 24:39), and that resurrected body entered into heaven to intercede for sinners such as us as “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). 

-1:18 - He’s the head of the church, his physical body on earth. He’s the beginning 

(meaning, the beginning of the New Creation, cf. 2 Cor. 5:17). 

-1:19 - In Him God’s fullness dwelt bodily (Jn. 14:10).

-1:20 He alone can reconcile all things to himself.

The point is this: His eternal Person and his work in time establish him as the most important of all that exists. In this way he is “the firstborn of all creation.” 

The Importance of Distinguishing Bw His Person and His Work 

Arius and others like him (in the modern world, Jehovah’s Witnesses) act as though texts like Col. 1:15 teach that it wasn’t until the 1st century that Christ existed. But being pre-creation, He is eternal. Time didn’t exist until creation existed, and now it only exists as the measure of the temporal limit of creation. But Christ is the eternal Word who is himself from eternity. The incarnation reflects something of His eternality as the Word, but is special in that it fulfills God’s promises and reaches the goal of the Old Testament (that is, giving God a faithful covenant partner). In other words, the eternal Word put on humanity in a way that accomplishes God’s purposes without jettisoning the Word’s eternality. God becomes a man in order to draw man to himself.

When we glory in Christ (Phil. 3:3)—that is, when we worship him, reflect on his goodness, and enjoy him—we not only glory in Him because of what He’s done for us, but because of who He is in himself. If you belong to Jesus, you can rest assured that as old as Christ the eternal Word is—and age doesn’t really apply to him, being eternal—that is a reflection of HIs eternal love for you (Eph. 1:3-4). 

________________________________

*Richard Hays, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (Waco: Baylor Press, 2016). 

On Avicii, Suicide, and Romanticizing the Wrong Things

If you have been on Google today you have probably seen that today is a day of remembrance for late Sweidsh DJ Avicii, real name Tim Bergling. Tim died a couple of years ago of suicide by glass shards, aged 28. Having become internationally famous, his success didn’t stop him from his constant wrestlings with questions of life, purpose, and absolutes. In a seemingly heartless age, it is somewhat touching to see how many people participate in remembrances of the young man. 

On the other hand, I am struck today by two thoughts that I’d implore my readers to consider with me: 

First, in a modern day that has done everything that it can to strip itself from subjection to any undemocratic absolutes (that is, absolutes that don’t depend on public opinion), we cannot be surprised at the darkness that enshrouds even the most gifted minds. Many of us were stunned at Robin Williams’s suicide several years ago. How could someone with such gifts of humor and laughter be so sad and lost? 

I think that one reason is that the spirit of our late modern age is not built for happiness or peace. The modern mind has set itself up for confusion, restlessness, and subjectivism, the sum of which is unsustainable for those with questions and natural skepticism. Some of us skeptics look for and find some answers that give us satisfaction. Others of us are so skeptical that we see through everything, finding, to borrow from Lewis, nothing on the other side. It seems that Bergling was never able to find answers within a culture that says, “Look inside of yourself and express yourself. That is who you are: What you say about yourself (if what you say agrees with the general consensus).” There are so many problems with this self-expressive individualism, but I’ll just mention two: First, you could be wrong in your self-expression, because you could have habits and ways of living, thinking, feeling, etc. that are not good for you. Second, the rest of us could be wrong in our affirmation of your self-expression, because we could have similar wrong habits (ie, Rom. 1:32). I wonder if Bergling wrestled with this? 

While people look at the Middle Ages as a time of “darkness,” at least there was a sense of absolutes that could be depended upon. I’ve been reading about Thomas Aquinas recently, and have grown to appreciate that the history of Christian philosophy shows a consistent witness to there being God-ordained universals which, once known, give peace. Thus, after the Psalmist wrestles through his own dark night of the soul, he concludes God-ward, “Whom have I in heaven but you?” (Ps. 73.25)  Jesus said “This is eternal life, to know the Father, and the Son whom He sent.” (Jn. 17.3)  When I say “God-ordained universals,” I do not mean that God decides what is true, but that God’s very nature is truth, and that there is therefore a grounding on which we can identify our personhood, our purpose, and the nature of reality. Maybe the so-called Dark Ages weren’t so dark after all? What if a democratically controlled definition of absolutes is the real darkness, seen in what it is doing us and the world around us? 

My second thought is this: Why are we romanticizing suicide? I want to say this with the utmost sensitivity, because I, a depression sufferer and frequent visitor to Bunyan’s slough of despond, understand the darkness. Like Spurgeon, I understand that there are “dungeons beneath the castles of despair.” The Psalmist understood it as well: “Darkness is my only friend” (Ps. 88.18), as did Abraham Lincoln: “If my misery were evenly distributed to every person on earth, there would not be a single happy face.” If you’ve seen darkness then you know, it gets darker. 

But hear me out: The amount of well-wishes and almost celebratory language for the supposed intellectual liberation of our suicide-taken loved ones (forgive me if you think I'm overblowing the degree of romanticism; but explain it another way) is indicative of a greater problem. The worldview of our current day cannot handle questions of the absolute, because there is a latent fear that to accept—or at least imply—absolutes might mean that we have to acknowledge a God in heaven in whose mind those absolutes exist. Put more simply, to ask, “What if I have a purpose but I can’t find it by looking in the fickle world, but by look outside of the world?” begs the existence of God (a la C.S. Lewis’s conversion story). And this is a problem for us because we naturally do all that we can to marginalize God from our thinking (Ps. 2:3, 10:11, 73:11, 94:7). Then when the media incessantly brands Christians with laughable caricatures (some of which are warranted), we find ourselves entrenched in fears of being perceived as “religious,” so we leave God alone, and just suffer silently.
 

But the need for God is not a need to be religious before it is a need for truth, and truth that can set free (Jn. 8:32). It seems to me that the current popular opinion about suicide is that it sets sufferers free. I don’t think it does, but it might not be for the reason you think. It doesn’t set free because to take one’s own life is to follow functional atheism—a functional atheism that says “There is no God who can lead me out of this suffering”—all the way to its end, which is death, the wage of sin (Rom. 6:23). I’m not trying to say that all suicide sufferers are under God’s judgment. I'm not the final Judge, of course. But I am saying that to refuse to acknowledge a God who promises to reward those who seek him (Heb. 11.6) is the genesis of death itself. I think it is at most atheism and at least a cousin of atheism to take one’s own life. It is not selfish (as Christians often say), but Godless. We should not celebrate suicide. Instead we should weep, and seek the God who gives life-giving truth.

We should also weep even more for the mental fog which we’ve created by acting as though we’re so smart today. We act as though all that we need are our talents and self-expression, and science will tell us the answers to the important questions of life. That might make for good movies and sitcoms, but it doesn’t make for rich real life. That way of living crushes people, like Avicii. In fact, that way of living isn't real life. Like Rich Mullins sang all of those years ago, “We are not as strong as we think we are.” Why? Because we’re not God. 

But there is a God. And if you long for reality, you have to know that it starts with him. You can either live on your own and hope for acceptance by society, until society finds a reason to cancel you (did Bergling assume that his own cancellation was looming?). Or you can turn your attention to the God who cares and reveals. Like it did to King Nebuchadnezzar, your reason will begin to return to you then (Dan. 4:34). If we keep going in our godless epistemology until we’ve deconstructed everything, even deconstruction itself, what will be left? 

The God who was there all along, with life in his hands. Only let us not wait until the end of deconstruction to find out. There's too much life to live with the God who cares. 

"We're coming for your children" says gay mens' choir

Click here to view the video of the San Fransisco Gay Men's Chorus singing that they're "coming for your children" to convert their worldview. (UPDATE: Within the time it took me to write this post, the choir has taken the video from public to private. When I first wrote this blog, the public could still watch the video. My apologies. Click the next link to see some of the lyrics of the song. You might be able to find the video somewhere online if you look hard enough. Just google the title and the choir name.)

Click here for an article which includes some of the lyrics, if the lyrics are difficult to understand in the video. 

It is a horrifying way to try and get a point across.

While any effort to stamp out "hate" should be applauded, neither this group nor most progressives define "hate" the same way that true Christians do. To the progressives, "hate" means "disagree." To Christians, hate means to mistreat, famously prohibited by Jesus in Matt. 7:12: Treat others how you'd want to be treated. Contrary to popular opinion, we can disagree without mistreating. But groups like want absolute acceptance in every sense: It isn't about "rights," but a conversion of morality. A revolution.

Based on their mis-definition of "hate", the group linked above has put out a horrifying propaganda song entitled "We're coming for your children." You read that right. Even if I could support the agenda - and no Christian can, I don't care what textual origami you try to do to make homosexuality agreeable with Scripture - I can't imagine ever trying to advance the agenda with a song title like this.

Thereby, they not only jettison the possibility of getting a hearing with many, but they further prove my suspicions that neither wokeness nor the gay agenda are innocent pursuits of "justice." Both are power-hungry pursuits of an anti-God revolution driven by a marxist worldview where the "conversation" is controlled by maoist rules for dialogue: You can't participate in a discussion unless you agree.

Doubtless, many will respond, "You're misunderstanding what they're saying. They're saying they'll turn your kids from hateful like you to friendly like them." Really? A friend would not tell a stranger, "We will convert your children, just wait."

At least we know what they really want. And countless once-sane people will sympathize because they don't want to be regarded as bigoted, homophobic, or racist. Guilt - not thinking - will win the day, again.

You might respond, "Pastor, what difference is there between this and what churches try to do in reaching and catechizing children?" Churches base their message off of revealed truth from the one who has proven throughout history that he is the Creator and sustainer of all things (Ac. 17:25). Churches attempt to convert people to the truth. A group like this bases their message off of internal feelings acted upon and affirmed by a fickle public opinion that constantly changes. You decide.

And if you want to see just how friendly this agenda is, just look up the story of pastor Chuck McIlhenny, possibly reading his book When the Wicked Seize a City.