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True Story – ad Absurdum
“They invent ways of doing evil” – The Apostle Paul, Romans 1:30. This begins as a true story: When I was an outcast, oddball, “loser” in high school, bottom of the pecking order and always in danger of getting picked on or beat up, I came up with the idea of pretending to be a Satan worshiper. I found this could be helpful to me in several ways: 1. It made people think twice about picking on me. 2. It brought me the attention I craved as an awkward, outsider teenager. After all, any attention is good attention. Now let us imagine a nightmare scenario. (Think along the lines of…
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The Lies You Hear About Transgender
I am deeply concerned about how the cultural narrative about transgender keeps ratcheting up. I believe this is a massive display of spiritual warfare, where the enemy of our souls is screaming lies about gender and identity—especially to teens and younger and younger children. Jesus warned us that the devil’s agenda is to “steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10), and this deception about gender is, I believe, one of the most wicked and insidious deceptions he’s ever come up with. Consider some of the lies that have become commonplace: “People can be born into the wrong body.” This represents a thinking disorder, not a biological problem. There is no such…
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How Should We Think About Pride Month?
How should Christ-followers think about Pride Month? Well, first, in case you are not aware, Pride Month is a time of highlighting and celebrating everything LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender). You might have seen a few more letters tacked on—QQIAA (queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally). It’s hard NOT to notice it’s Pride Month when rainbows suddenly appear on all kinds of products and logos. Many cities have Pride marches, much of which is not safe to broadcast on the evening news because the behavior in these parades is definitely not family-friendly. How should believers think about it all? We need to pass our thoughts and judgments through the filter…
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Hard Questions about the LGBT Community and Our Vote
The LBGT community has asked hard questions of us in its struggle for acceptance: “Why do you care what we do in our own bedrooms?” So state courts struck down laws against sodomy. “Why can’t we have the civil right to marry whom we please?” In 2014 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage. “Why should any employer be able to fire us because of our sexual orientation or gender identity?” In June 2020 the Supreme Court ruled they cannot. One of the cases litigated was that of a funeral home whose biological male employee transitioned to a woman. The court insists that the funeral home may not…
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LGBT sexuality and persecution: What are you prepared to do?
Growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s and reading what the book of Revelation says about the persecution of Christians in the end times, I could only imagine that such apocalyptic scenarios must be way, way off in the future. Surely beyond my lifetime. We didn’t know anyone who didn’t go to church. I couldn’t fathom how our culture could change that deeply and rapidly. There was a little tension between Catholics and Protestants, but believing in God and going to church was not only acceptable, it was respectable. Even culturally expected in some parts of the U. S. If you didn’t, you kept it quiet. Except for Madeline Murray…
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The Thought Police Are Here
Recently, in the same week, I watched two strikingly polar opposite events unfold on my Facebook feed. One was the long-awaited, long-prayed-for birth of a precious baby girl whose daddy had left homosexuality and repented of a gay identity as he pursued intimacy with Christ. After several years of sexual sobriety and spiritual growth, he was actually quite surprised to find himself starting to be attracted to girls. I remember him saying, “If you think puberty is rough the first time, you should try it at 28!” I was privileged to watch him weep with gratitude through his wedding to a beautiful lady, and pray for him as he became…
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Sephora Transgender Ad: “We belong to something beautiful”
If we could sit down for coffee I'd ask some questions… Walking down the mall last week I saw this large poster in the Sephora makeup retailer window. It was the end of June, gay pride month, and of all the messages I’d seen celebrating LGBT I found it the most riveting. I continued on to my car, but the poster haunted me. I live in Columbia, South Carolina, not exactly a hotbed of LGBT activism. But here was this poster in our neighborhood mall going beyond asking for acceptance for transgendered people. It went beyond celebration of diversity. It made a strong moral statement: Transgender is beautiful. …
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How Bad is This Conversion Therapy Thing?
As pro-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) voices and values grow louder and more insistent in the culture, what about those people of faith who experience same-sex attraction and don’t want it? What are they supposed to do with feelings and desires at odds with their faith? How are they supposed to learn to reconcile their faith and their sexuality? The cultural narrative has become, “LGBT represents normal, healthy variations in human sexuality, so everyone should support and celebrate all forms of sexual diversity. And if you don’t, we’re going to punish you, shame you, and squelch your voice.” Part of the punishing and shaming includes outrage over “Conversion Therapy.”…
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Raising Gender Healthy Kids
Emotionally healthy children who grow up to be emotionally healthy adults are comfortable in their own skin, in the gender God chose for them. These days, when a child shows non-stereotypical gender behavior, people start to freak out, afraid that their child is actually the opposite sex on the inside. Good news! There are things parents can do to raise gender healthy kids, girls who are content to be girls and boys who are glad to be boys. Without resorting to artificial stereotypes, either. First, loosen up your expectations of what boys and girls should be like. A friend of mine now in college was recently exasperated when the instructor…
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When Ex-Gays Return to a Gay Identity
I recently received an envelope in the mail with no return address and no personal note, just copies of three articles about men who used to be part of Exodus International, who used to identify themselves as “ex-gay,” and now repudiate that part of their histories. It is consistent with emails and blog comments I have received pointing this out, and asking if that doesn’t negate my position that homosexuality is changeable.
