Short Take #2: The Transgender Movement’s Presence in the Church

Here is another short take from The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton. How are homosexuality and transgenderism making such strong inroads into the evangelical church today when the Bible is just consistently and from front to back so clear about God's standard for sexuality and gender?

Well, there's several things we could point to and highlight in this. One, I would say, is just the desire to be nice. Christians, of course, we love people. We want to be seen as loving because it's a reflection of God's love towards us. So we want to be loving, and we want to be kind. We certainly don't want people to think ill of us or think that we have an ax to grind or we're out here just trying to make people's lives miserable.

Of course, that's not the case. But within that is the temptation to begin to think, well, maybe I'm wrong on this, or maybe I just need to be quiet, or maybe there's more to that experience than I've ever really given credit to, and I just need to be silent, and I just need to sit back, and I just need to accept these things and let them roll out. Well, of course, that leads to this kind of thing, and there's a lot of passivity and a lot of unwillingness to really get in there. Frankly, sometimes because we're embarrassed. Now, it could be embarrassment for some people because they have their own sexual skeletons in the closet. Perhaps they're addicted to pornography, or perhaps they're having an affair, or there's a lot of ways in which they haven't sanctified their own mind. And so suddenly when someone says, well, I'm just attracted to the same sex.

I'm not saying that I'm sinning when I'm doing that. Someone might say, well, I don't want to talk about my own issues because that would then put the burden back on me. So I'll just kind of accept this and let it roll out. And then sometimes it's just an embarrassment because we don't want to be seen by the world as standing against the world's way. And so we want to find this kind of other way, this middle way that is able to appeal to things that the world likes. So we'll say, well, homophobia is wrong, and the church has been real cruel toward gay people.

So we need to stand up on this. But then when it comes to bearing the truth on the issues of homosexuality, suddenly it gets real loose and it gets real vague. And suddenly the real scriptural words, such as it is an abomination or it's a defiling passion, these kinds of words suddenly disappear from the Christian's language. And now it's just orientation or it's just same sex attraction.

Do you see the difference in those two descriptions? You know, the Bible calls it unnatural lust and we're like, well, it's same sex attraction. I'm just kind of generally bent in this way. That's very much a softening of the language with the intent.

I mean, who knows what an individual person's intent is, but I can tell you what the enemy's intent with the use of that language is. And it is to move us away from the truth and to lock people into this mindset of thinking, well, I am this way and I can't change. You know, this whole orientation narrative kind of sets up this whole idea that, well, I'm just born this way.

It's innate and it's immutable. That means I was born this way and I can't change. Well, if that's true, then how is 1st Corinthians 6, 9 through 11, where it talks about, you know, Malakoy and Arsenokoytai, in other words, effeminate and homosexuals, such were some of you is what it says there. That you were this way. You were thieves. Some of you were idolaters.

Some of you were homosexuals. And yet you've laid those things aside and you've come to Christ and he has redeemed you. And of course we recognize that the Christian still struggles with indwelling sin. The Christian still struggles with temptation, but it actually is a struggle. It's not something that we just accept and kind of sit back in and make the special category for that says, well, you know, this is different from just having a sin nature.

This is something that I'm born with and it can't change. And even God's grace can't reach in and change this. This has been a short take from the Christian worldview with David Wheaton.

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