Confused

Toward the end of His earthly life and ministry, Jesus asked the disciples this question in John chapter 16, verse 31: "Do you now believe?"  

That's a great question for us - do we now believe?  And, if we say we believe, how does that affect our actions?  Jesus went on to address our attitude:

32 Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.
33 These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

We know that life will not always be easy, and it will possess its challenges, but we can be confident in the Lord and rejoice in Him.  That doesn't mean we should be aloof or ignorant of what is going on around us and not take life seriously, but we can be, as the Bible instructs us, sober-minded and realize that we have a purpose in this world and we have a promise for a world to come. 

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These words from Isaiah 5 could have been written today, because it accurately describes the shape of the world around us, it seems:
20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, And prudent in their own sight! 

In a story that I covered recently on The Meeting House, I interviewed Zach Mettler from Focus on the Family; he writes for The Daily Citizen, and he wrote a story about a Pennsylvania health director under consideration for a federal post named Rachel Levine.  He pointed out not only that there were concerns about actions that Levine took regarding nursing home patients and COVID and the story also contains this morsel: "Dr. Levine is a transgender woman, that is, a man who believes he is a woman."

To promote this story, The Daily Citizen issued a tweet on its Twitter feed.  The website, in another story, says:

Paraphrasing from the first paragraph of the story, the apparently controversial tweet said, “On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden announced that he had chosen Dr. Rachel Levine to serve as Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of HHS. Dr. Levine is a transgender woman, that is, a man who believes he is a woman.”

Zach explained to me that for this content, this arm of Focus on the Family has been blocked from adding new content from Twitter - that is, until it deletes the tweet, which it refuses to do.  Go to the Twitter feed, and there are no new tweets following January 22.

Levine went before a U.S. Senate committee recently, where she was met by resistance from Rand Paul, who is a doctor.  CBN.com reported that Paul "...grilled President Joe Biden’s nominee for assistant secretary of health over whether the government should be allowed to override parental authority in allowing children suffering from gender dysphoria to begin taking puberty-blocking hormones or pursue irreversible surgeries to reconstruct their genitalia."  Paul has received mainstream media criticism because he, as CBN puts it, "likened the procedures to genital mutilation, which is seen by Western society as a human rights abuse."

Alabama senators took the brave and principled stand yesterday by overwhelming voting to ban medical treatment for minors, with a purpose of changing one's gender, such as puberty blockers and surgeries.  Now House members need to step up and pass the VCAP bill to prevent children in the state from perhaps enduring permanent damage trying to change their gender identity.  VCAP stands for Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act.  If you support this bill, contact your House member and encourage him or her to vote in favor of it - you can get contact information from the Legislature's website.  And, the House is expected to take up a bill that would prevent biological males from participating in female sports in the state; perhaps that will come to the floor soon; so, perhaps you could include that in your communication, as well.

I do think that there are those who are spending way too much time as a culture promoting a false narrative - in essence, that you can change the gender which has been given to you by God.  Those who identify as another gender are standing against "science" and attempting to make outrageous changes in biology.  

A book that offers a scientific approach to this pervasive phenomenon was pulled from the Amazon website recently.  It's called, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, and was written by Ryan Anderson of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In a piece on the First Things website, Anderson wrote:

Now, three years after publication, in the same week that the House of Representatives plans to ram through the Equality Act—a radical transgender bill amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964—Amazon has erased my book opposing gender ideology from its cyber shelves.

The people who did read the book discovered that it is an accurate and accessible presentation of the scientific, medical, philosophical, and legal debates surrounding the trans phenomenon. Yes, it advances an argument against transgender ideology from a viewpoint. But it doesn’t get any facts wrong, and it doesn’t engage in heated rhetoric.

This was written on February 23, and Anderson stated:

...I’ve heard nothing from Amazon regarding the decision to remove my book. Perhaps it’s a religious liberty or compelled speech concern. But I doubt it. I do know that there’s no reason to blindly believe that granting Big Tech unlimited liberties is how we best protect human flourishing and human dignity. Policy makers will need to address what sort of limits to place on Big Tech to protect the common good.

We are certainly living in a culture of confusion.  The Bible speaks of those who would call evil good and call good evil.  Certainly, Christians are facing their share of hostility directed their way. But, we can continue to adopt the words of Jesus, who told us that 1) we would have tribulation and 2) to be of good cheer.  This world and all of its philosophies will pass away but the word of God endures forever. So, we can choose to hold fast to its teachings.

That certainly doesn't mean to withdraw from this world and just hope for the days to come - we have a bright future, but God has a purpose for us now. And, that involves being a faithful servant who is dedicated to exalting the name of Jesus and allowing the teachings of Jesus to guide us, reliant on the Holy Spirit.  In the face of redefinition of sexuality and marriage, we do have rock-solid principles which we can trust.