As the Angels in Heaven: A Theological Reflection on the Plight of Bruce Jenner

Long after his sordid story broke, we are still talking about Bruce Jenner.  His sad state fascinates us and brings many of our societal failures and follies to the surface.  Chief among them is our destructive devotion to the ultimacy of personal choice.  Devotion that borders on idolatry.

In this man's fractured life, we see the folly of making the subjective will ultimate. 

When a full-grown man says something like, "as far back as i can remember, i have felt like and identified as a woman," and we are unable to respond with anything but, "well, then you must really be a woman," we are in deep trouble.

Certain fundamental things precede memory.  Certain truths are objectively true about us - whether we prefer and identify with them or not.  Several of these objective truths of reality come by way of the body we're given. We receive our bodies, and therefore our genders, long before we possess anything like memory or feeling or a sense of identity or even any self awareness at all.
You show up at conception and there it is - already right there in your DNA from the first second of your life.  And centuries after you die, if archaeologists happen to dig up your bones, one of the first things they will determine by the most basic testing is whether you were male or female.

When we hear ourselves asking questions like - "Can you imagine being trapped in a body you don't belong in?" ... as if you could be switched at birth into a foreign body by accident or trickery... as if - because of its gender - your body were something you could be "trapped inside of" like an elevator in a blackout.

Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment

Within the churches are those who defend the historic Christian teaching on sexuality.  It is assumed that there will always be some discernible dissonance between the Church and the world and that part of the mission of the Holy Spirit through the Church is, as Jesus says in John 16, to “tell the world that it is wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.” 

On the other side are those who reject the historic Christian teaching and who seem to believe that the world, as represented by its most self-consciously progressive institutions and thinkers, is ahead of the Church in ushering in the Kingdom of God. Indeed, that the world is right in telling the Church that it is wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement. They say that God is doing a new thing. But they seem unable to imagine that God might say ‘no’ to any new thing done in the world in the name of progress. There seems to be no room on the part of the revisionists for any truly prophetic word to be spoken to the world’s claims about love and justice.

-Ken Myers

Judges as Umpires

[Folks, here's an old piece I wrote for my students several years ago when we were studying government and history.  I'd probably nuance differently today, but the basic thesis holds true and is quite timely.]


Thurgood Marshall once admitted that his judicial philosophy boiled down to “do what you think is right and let the law catch up.”

This is exactly what we mean by the phrase ‘judicial activism’. A man [or woman] in a black robe takes it upon himself to change a state or country whether or not the Constitution gives him that authority.  It's a quiet coup.

This is the heart of the issue. We all want to change the country, but the ultimate question is this: which side is attempting to do so illegally? It’s that simple. The Constitution lays out what our judges are and are not authorized to do. Any actions they take beyond those found in that document are, properly-speaking, illegal.  As Justice Scalia helpfully points out, if you want to change the nation, pass a law.  Don't appeal to the Constitution or its interpreters [judges] because Constitutions are adopted to impede change, not facilitate it.  Stability is their whole purpose.

He uses the analogy of being a referee or umpire in the legal system.  A judge is umpire.  He doesn’t agonize about whether the rules are fair or right or good for the future of the game.  He makes the call to the best of his ability by applying the rules. That’s all. He doesn’t have the power to make or alter the rules based on a preferred outcome! He’s just an umpire. They’re just judges.

"In the system which says that the Constitution changes and it’s up to the judges to say what it means – they really have no answers. There is no criterion for when it changes and how it changes. Every day is a new day. Some of my collegues have said that they agonize a lot. I don’t agonize at all. Sometimes it’s hard to follow and find the record in history, but you know, I don’t agonize if there’s a right to this or that. But with these guys – every day’s a new day. Last year the death penalty was constitutional and I’ll have to worry about whether it’s still constitutional next year."

A Helpful Explanation

“We objectify everything and begin to think of our bodies as an achievement… We see the body as a problem, as a hindrance to spiritual life – in order to get to the true self, who we really are, we have to somehow control the body and make it do what we want it to do.  In that way we will finally be who we’re ‘supposed to be’,  ‘who we are’.  Previously secular women have a lot of interest in spirituality.  And what drives this is the idea that spirituality is a way to find your ‘true, inner self’ as seen in opposition to your ‘bodily self’.  In other words, we want to escape the body and the limitations of our bodies by becoming spiritual in a disembodied spirituality.  This comes from Descartes’s mind/body opposition.  What happens when you do that is everything done immediately through the body – your eating, your work, your sexuality - becomes meaningless.  So you can do anything you want to, sexually, or through surgery, or manipulation of any kind that you want.  These things are considered acceptable because you’re just trying to get down to ‘who you really are’ your ‘inner self’.  Now, we are more than our bodies, but we are our bodies.  And we need to think of ourselves and other people holistically – not think, ‘Well, there’s somebody in there who really is who you really are’.  In the Christian paradigm, this is how our faith is supposed to be lived out.”

Lillian Calles Barger, author of Eve’s Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body and President of the Damaris Project

Legislation & Morality

"You can't legislate morality!"...

... said no millennial ever ...

... when discussing affirmative action, minimum wage law, environmental protection, welfare aid taxes, gay rights legislation, or education reform.

Repentance All the Way Down: PRIDE

"There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.
“The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

- C S Lewis, Mere Christianity

[illustration: Kali Ciesemier]

DOMA & Gay "Marriage" - a Christian Evaluation Part 2

In the aftermath of the SCOTUS DOMA ruling, here are 7 points to help us understand why we are where we are and 7 things Christians should do about it.

1. Heterosexual couples destroyed the sanctity of marriage long before the gay rights movement hit the mainstream. "I have two dads, you know." This is what a young boy I know recently told me. His words struck me. I knew they were true. But I'd never thought of it ... like THAT before. His birth parents divorced while he was an infant [for what I believe were sound, Biblical reasons]. His mother went on to remarry a fine Christian man and so, like so many other boys around, he has "two dads". Today this trend continues, though now with the ruthless efficiency of eliminating the mother altogether. A long time ago, our society began to deliberately streamline the process by which a man or woman can dissolve the oath they had previously made before God, church, family, community, and state, to stay united until death.  And for decades, the process of oath-breaking has been made more and more convenient.  At this point in our history, "the sanctity of marriage" is a hollow-sounding string of words that used to mean something.

2. It was heterosexual promiscuity that paved the yellow-brick road on which gay rights activists now march.  What young people really mean when they say "Don't tell THEM what THEY can't do in THEIR bedroom" is "Don't tell ME what I can't do in MY bedroom".  This is what 'the pill' is all about. What we see today is the fruiting of seeds that were planted fifty years ago and have been faithfully watered and fertilized ever since. Pulling levers and pushing buttons isn't going to change that or stop what has been in motion for so long. But being faithful will... eventually. This is a bitter fruit, but the story is far from over.  As a society, we seem to have lost the ability to to make even the most basic moral judgments and distinctions.  Just open up your iTunes store and watch the scrolling "what's hot now" banner at the top.  By and large, we are daily consumers of the obscene.

3. The black church is crucial in our culture wars. They have been the sleeping giant that has been roused in the recent cultural reversal of popular-level abortion views. They will be crucial in courageously speaking out to reject FALSE equivocations between civil rights struggles and the campaign to make sodomy a socially-acceptable sexual practice. One of my best friends in the world was born with very, very dark black skin.  His ethnic background is Nigerian.  He was black last year as a Ph.D. student in Seattle.  He is black today as an entrepreneur in Charleston.  He will die black.  None of this has the slightest thing to do with extraneous cultural influences or his own behavior and personal choice.  He is a black man, pure and simple.  To equate his blackness with another man's decision to engage in sodomy is false and wrong, and there is no amount of voice-raising or finger wagging that will change that fact.  But my voice here isn't the one that matters.  Those belong to my brothers of color, [many of whom are speaking out] such as Voddie Baucham, Thabiti Anyabwile, Ken Jones, Jemar Tisby, Philip Holmes, Reddit Andrews, Mike Campbell, Anthony Carter, LaCrae, Shai Linne, Curtis Allen, and others.

4.  Gay is cool.  Let's face it.  Well, perhaps it would be better to say it this way -  the gay cause is the cool side.  For the general public actually being gay is not the cool thing [see the horrifying long-term health statistics below], but it is most definitely cool to have gay friends.  It is cool to support them vocally and frequently.  It is cool to be passionate for their cause.  And the gay rights movement has found a way to morally tap into the fashion sense of the American public.  Many have wisely noted that in current public opinion, image trumps character.  The average Joe arrives at his ethical views in large part the same way he chooses his shoes, skinny jeans, and coffee brand.  Designer ethics is part of a designer lifestyle.  Pro-gay is chic and fashionable.  But as we've seen with fanny packs, disco, and eugenics, trends change and fashions - material and ideological - alter.

5.  This is an experiment - a cultural experiment.  I'll admit, I'mm an optimist, not a henny-penny kind of guy.  I probably wouldn't run around like my hair was on fire if my hair were actually on fire. And here is one of the reasons. This is an experiment. Will state-sanctioned gay marriage result in a happier, healthier society?  The answer is 'no'. This experiment is doomed to NOT work. Our great, great grandchildren will look back on this sort of thing and scratch their heads. You cannot rebel against a creational pattern as deep as gender and think things will just keep rolling forward. So stay faithful and keep on keepin' on. Roe was hardly the end of the abortion debate, and we are not even close to the end of this discussion either. There are plenty of people paying attention and taking notes. The numbers are being counted.

6. And this brings us to a separate societal trend which is set on a direct collision course with the Gay Rights Agenda: that of fully-socialized medicine. We've already heard it loudly suggested that lawmakers ban soft drinks because of this conflict.

Prayer for Mother's Day

"Father, because our nation was founded upon Your Law, and in many ways still reflects this, for indeed it is impossible to live and thrive apart from obedience to You and Your will, we as a nation have set aside this day as a special day of honor to our mothers.
So we lift each of our mothers up before Your holy throne today. Shine the light of Your face upon them, for theirs – above every other station – follows after that of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who showed forth His greatness by washing the feet of the lowly and serving and caring for the little ones when the others would send them away.
We are so grateful for the priceless gift You have given to us in our mothers. God bless, guard, keep, and strengthen them. Encourage their hearts who the world despises, but who are precious in the sight of God, which is to be truly precious indeed."

Such were some of You - Dr Rosaria Butterfield

Above are a few selected samples of a jaw-dropping presentation from former radical Lesbian feminist activist turned Reformed Pastor's wife homeschooling mom [yeah ... another one of those!].  I encourage you to listen to her full talk here and then the entirety of her Q&A here.  I have been studying this issue for several years and this is the best - the most faithful expression of the true Christian/Biblical answer to the questions of homosexuality I have found in both  what she says and how she says it [the latter often being where we fail miserably].

Why I Lost Faith in the Pro-choice Movement

WHY I LOST FAITH IN THE PRO-CHOICE MOVEMENT

by JENNIFER FULWILER

... [The] pressure built and built over months, and eventually years. And then, one day it clicked.

I was looking through a Time magazine article whose infograph cited data from the Guttmacher Institute about the most common reasons women have abortions. It immediately struck me that none of the factors on the list were conditions that we tell women to consider before engaging in sexual activity. Don’t have the money to raise a child? Don’t think your boyfriend would be a good father? Don’t feel ready to be a mother? Women were never encouraged to consider these factors before they had sex; only before they had a baby.

The fundamental truth of the pro-choice movement, from which all of its tenets flow, is that sex does not have to have life-altering consequences. I suddenly saw that it was the struggle to uphold this “truth” that led to all the shady dealings, all the fear of information, all the mental gymnastics that I’d observed.

The Pressing Duty of our Time

"To establish the fact of decadence is the pressing duty of our time."

- Richard Weaver

The Death of Pretty ...

by Pat Archbold
[abridged]

Pretty is dying.

People will define pretty differently. For the purposes of this piece, I define pretty as a mutually enriching balanced combination of beauty and projected innocence.

Young women today do not seem to aspire to pretty, they prefer to be regarded as hot. Hotness is something altogether different.

Pretty inspires men’s nobler instincts to protect and defend. Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity. Its value is temporary and must be used. It is a consumable. A consumable that consumes as it is consumed but brings no warmth.

Most girls don’t want to be pretty anymore even if they understand what it is. It is ironic that 40 years of women’s liberation has succeeded only in turning women into a commodity. Something to be used up and thrown out.

Of course men play a role in this as well … But here is the real truth. Most men prefer pretty over hot.

Our problem is that society doesn’t value innocence anymore, real or imagined. Nobody aspires to innocence anymore. Nobody wants to be thought of as innocent, the good girl. They want to be hot, not pretty.

Girls, please, bring back the pretty.

Choose Subversive Sarcasm

For those of my readers not from Maryland [okay, ... hi mom ... and to my other reader from Lithuania, 'Zdravstvuj, comrade!'], a bit of background is in order.  For the last 2 years, Howard County has launched a public niceness campaign based on the Oprah-endorsed book 'Choose Civility'.  The initiative is based out of their award-winning library branches, where I have to admit I do spend a considerable amount of time.  The whole campaign consists almost entirely of handing out free bumperstickers that say "Choose Civility in Howard County".  But because civility is so dependent upon some ethical framework, I find that daily, as I drive to and from work, a miniature Greg Bahnsen appears [poof] on my shoulder spouting presuppositional jabs each time I see the bumpersticker.  So, not wanting to miss an opportunity to declare the postmodern emporers' new clothes of civility to be, in fact, non-existent, here are some humorous parodies I've come up with.  My good friend and creative genius John Barnes was the original inspiration for most of these and you can find his batch of these with a quick google search. 

To see the rest of the collection, click below ...

Learning to Love Limits [together ... at the dinner table]

One of the worst things you can convey to kids is “You can do anything you put your mind to”. The idea that nothing should get in the way of their 'willing' something to be. I think that this is a really pernicious thing that denies their ‘createdness’... that denies the fact that their gifts are tied with limits that God has established. God has created them with a particularity that doesn’t include everything and shouldn’t include everything, otherwise they wouldn’t be the particular person they are. …Now, how does that [great childrearing] happen? You don’t lecture about that; you don’t put an outline on the blackboard. This happens largely through the ritualized aspect of life. I often say that it starts with having meals together regularly. That’s the place where most orientation in life begins. All of you who’ve raised children know that this is the beginning of civilization – teaching your children to eat and not be barbarians.
-Ken Myers

No Armchair Fathers

It’s the height of hypocrisy to scream from all the rooftops ‘Where are all the men?!’ and not be doing anything at all to rectify the problem.


-Voddie Baucham

Our Problems have Deep Roots

I have seen it without going a mile from home, that in a Church of between three and four hundred communicants, there are but few more than one hundred men; all the rest are women.

-          Cotton Mather, 1692

Absent Fathers

In the 18th century manuals on raising children are always directed primarily to the father. In the 19th century, you direct them to the mother. Part of that is social – what’s going on in the 19th century men are out of the home. They are at the factory 12-13 hours a day, 6 days a week. So the mothers become the main vehicle for raising the children spiritually and morally. But the consequence of that is a loss of male leadership in evangelicalism in the 19th century.

- Michael Haykin, 19th Century Evangelicalism

Dad's the House Bouncer

Not only must you be able to spiritually lead your family, you must be able to physically protect your family. Now that doesn’t mean that you’re 6’4” and shrouded with muscles. But it means that as a man, you’ve developed the character that you’re going to meet every adversity at the door. You assume that responsibility. You’re not sending your wife to do it. You’re not like Adam who will stand at a distance while the serpent talks to his wife. You are the one who stands at the door and you meet every adversity head-on.

-Paul Washer in What it Takes to be a Man

A Prophet of Their Own Said ...

Men won't step one foot into the local church cuz' it caters to the woman's bent and it's full of feminine men. Man, we're pushing them far away from Christ into the arms of the Muslim men. Cuz men don't need to primp - we need strength. Christ was not a hippie pickin lilies with His friends. Jesus was a man's man - so men follow Him.

-lyrics from 'Man Up' by Emanuel Lambert, Jr [aka: da T.R.U.T.H.]

For Adam was First Formed...

Masculine worship does not exclude women in the same way that feminine worship excludes men. Women flourish when men take spritual responsibility. Men wither or stay away when women lead in the church. So the church is not a men's club - men, women, children, and babies gather before the Lord together. Masculine worship is not worship for men; it is worship in which men fulfill their responsibilities to others. As a result of masculine leadership, women and children are free to contribute to worship rightly. But they do so because men have taken responsibility. In a Scriptural worship service, both masculine and feminine elements will be present, but the masculine will be dominant, in a position of leadership. When the feminine element leads or dominates, the result is that those who are masculine are encouraged to stay away.

-Douglas Wilson, Future Men [Picture of Gen. Jackson just for effect]