As the culture celebrates that which should be suppressed, and kids are encouraged to explore hints of desires that were once easily corrected through both social stigma and proper understanding of desire as it relates to sexuality, we can expect more people to identify as other than “straight”+ their biological gender. In the end, it’s a disordering of the order of creation, a destruction of society,  and an attempt to dethrone God.  

Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.—Romans 1:32
“George, what are you afraid of if Gay Marriage is legalized? Its not like people will become gay.  People don’t choose to be gay.”  That was an oft-repeated point in the time leading up to the Obergefell decision.  In the years since, we have seen homosexuality go from merely tolerated to Gay Marriage being legalized, corporations tripping over themselves to cash-in, school books celebrating it and kids encouraged to explore it, dragshows for children, and now the Presidential Declaration that June is Pride month.
In the midst of all of this, I have heard repeated concerns from parents with stories of gender and sexual confusion running rampant in their children’s middle schools. One friend in North Carolina told me that in the public school where his daughter goes that 50% of the girls identify as other than straight-female.  A friend in Florida laments how all the middle school girls have girlfriends.   One man in a Christian Facebook group asked for prayer because his daughter who is struggling to make friends came home and told him that she is bisexual because a popular girl in her class came up and spoke to her and she became flush. Naturally, this to her meant she must be gay, because that’s what she’s hearing in school. It can’t be that she was just glad to be noticed.
Are these stories just anecdotal?  Or is something going on? And why is this phenomenon heavily weighted toward adolescent girls?   Abigail Shrier, who is not a Christian, explored an aspect of this in her 2020 book entitled Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze that is Seducing Our Daughters.  Her observations are heartbreaking, the statistics are telling, and what is happening is nothing short of child abuse.
And while 50% may be difficult to believe, the statistics do bear out a huge increase in youth identifying as something other than heterosexual + their biological gender.  In reporting on this phenomenon, US News cited a study showing that 17.8% of girls between ages 15-17 identify as other than heterosexual.  Nearly 18%! This compared to a much lower 6% for boys.  When both genders are taken together, that is an overall 41% increase in just 5 years!  A Christianity Today piece cites a recent Barna Study that shows that “Teenagers in Gen Z are at least TWICE as likely as American adults to identify as LGBT.”  That’s a 100% increase between current teenagers and adults.
It is common for social scientists to explain this phenomenon in this way:
…we cannot be certain if this represents a true increase of this magnitude, or if it reflects at least in part, greater comfort by teens with acknowledging a non-heterosexual identity on an anonymous questionnaire…—Dr. Andrew Adesman
It is reasonable that this explains some of the increase, but 41% over 5 years, and 100% increase over adults?  Not likely.
What’s this have to do with the Moral Law?
This is where Calvin’s Institutes, Book II helps us out.  Calvin explains that while Christians are saved by Grace through faith there is still validity to the Moral Law of God.  In that, he gives his “3 uses of the law”:

It is a Mirror – It shows us that we don’t live up to God’s standard.
It Restrains Evil in Society – Civil Law is modeled after the moral law.
It shows us what is pleasing to God and encourages us to walk in that manner by the Power of the Holy Spirit.

While there has been much controversy over the 3rd use of the Law being abandoned among Christians, we are seeing the same happen with the 2nd use of the Law.   This has even occurred among Christians who have bought into the lie that gay marriage should be allowed because we aren’t a Christian nation.  We are supposed to after-all have a separation between the Church and State, so the argument goes.
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God has graciously given Christ and his death as the fully adequate means of dealing with sin and of including human beings of all types within his people (Galatians 1:4; Galatians 3:13–14; Galatians 4:5). To accept this gift but to insist on conversion to Judaism in addition to it is to examine God’s gift and judge it inadequate to the task God claimed it would accomplish.

Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.4You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.5For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.Galatians 5:2–6
The Spirit Testifies
The importance of Paul’s warning in these two verses is clear from the expression “Look” followed by an emphatic reference to Paul himself (cf. 2 Cor. 10:1) and the repetition of the warning in a second, explanatory sentence (cf. Gal. 1:9). A Gentile’s acceptance of circumcision was a sign of full conversion to Judaism and of a willingness to submit to the Jewish law as a way of life (e.g., Josephus, Jewish War 2.454; Jewish Antiquities 20.36–48). From Paul’s perspective, such a step would signal a lack of confidence in the effectiveness of Christ’s death to redeem the believer from the law’s curse and a vote of confidence in one’s own ability to keep the law and receive life by that means.
Paul has already argued at length, however, that the law requires total obedience from those who want to receive life by keeping it (Gal. 3:10, 12). This is something not only that no human being can do (Gal. 2:16; 3:11) but also that God did not intend when he gave the law (Gal. 2:21; Gal. 3:21). God gave the law to reveal the depth of human sinfulness and to prepare for the fulfillment of his promises to Abraham through the faith of both Jews and Gentiles in the gospel (Gal. 3:22).
In Romans 7:2, 6, Paul uses the Greek construction here translated “you are severed from” (katērgēthēte apo) to speak of believers’ freedom from or release from the law. The expression communicates that the object of the preposition has no impact, for good or ill, on the subject of the verb. Here, then, Paul uses the phrase to underline what he has just said about the person who adopts the Mosaic law in Galatians 5:2–3: that person has opted for the law over Christ, and this is the same as rejecting Christ altogether.
Paul explains why this is true in the verse’s final clause, “You have fallen away from grace.” God has graciously given Christ and his death as the fully adequate means of dealing with sin and of including human beings of all types within his people (Gal. 1:4; Gal. 3:13–14; Gal. 4:5). To accept this gift but to insist on conversion to Judaism in addition to it is to examine God’s gift and judge it inadequate to the task God claimed it would accomplish. It is to give God’s gift of Christ’s atoning death a lukewarm reception and thus express distrust in God.
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Is the word defined by the “winsomer” or the “winsomee”? And Christians, well-meaning Christians, who want to be viewed as winsome in the public square, and are reading through their notes carefully before they go up to the public podium, are finding that their problem is not in their delivery, it’s not in their word choice, it’s not even in their body language. No, it’s in their actual beliefs. The problem is that the Christian perspective on marriage is viewed as hateful. And our winsomeness is being viewed as a mask, a get-out-of-jail-free card for ideas that should be banged up in solitary confinement.
 
So here’s me choosing my Christian Word Of The Year.
Drum roll please, “The Christian word of the year is WINSOME!” Taa-dah!
That’s right, winsome! It’s everywhere you look at the moment. So please step forward “winsome” and take a bow. You’ve been over-used, over-realised, under-appreciated, over-stated, undered and overed, and whatever else can happen to a poor old lonesome winsome word in these topsy turvy times.
The big take away for 2022 is how Christians can engage in the public square in a way that is winsome. And if that is even possible. And of course the big question: Is winsome a strategy or a stance? We haven’t decided yet. We haven’t decided what winsome actually means. Does it mean speaking the truth in love? And when we’re told that certain truths that Christians hold can’t be loving in the first place, then we’re being told that we’re masking hate in love language. Where does winsome land in all of that?
As the culture wars roll on, (and on and on) and Christians find themselves in the firing line on ethical matters, is winsome is our ticket out of this? That’s a great question to ask, if only we could decide what winsome actually looks like.
So exhibit A was a great article I read in the New York Times last week by an orthodox Anglican priest in the US, Tish Harrison Warren, who called for respect from both sides of the marriage debate in the US. It was a thoughtful piece from a woman who is very clear about her view that marriage is between a man and a woman, God ordained, and unchangeable in bedrock definition irrespective of government intervention.
Yet at the same time she explored that because the law of the land has changed the definition of marriage legally, then both sides in this issue must find a way to get along with living side by side and respect each other’s differences. Without that ability then it’s going to be tricky to live in the same nation, let alone suburb, with those we deeply disagree with.
She told the story of her gay friend and his “husband” and her hope that he would support her religious school’s right to promote its view of marriage without fear of funding loss, just as she recognised but did not agree with him. He laughed and said, yes. I thought it was a useful article given the times we live in.
Tish Harrison Warren seems an impressive woman. As an egalitarian in the church she even recognises and affirms complementarians and refuses the trope (sadly even found increasingly among brothers and sisters in Christ) that it’s simply a mask for patriarchy. She states this:
Pluralism is not the same as relativism — we don’t have to pretend that there is no right or wrong or that beliefs don’t matter. It is instead a commitment to form a society where individuals and groups who hold profoundly different and mutually opposed beliefs are welcome at the table of public life. It is rooted in love of neighbour and asks us to extend the same freedoms to others that we ourselves want to enjoy. Without a commitment to pluralism, we are left with a society that either forces conformity or splinters and falls apart.
It was a totally winsome article from a woman who holds to a biblical orthodox view of marriage, but who is not looking for some sort of Christian nationalism that will enforce that view on everyone else. She’s nothing if not a realist. And nothing if not winsome.
And what was the response in the comments section of The New York Times? She was shredded. Absolutely shredded. Here I was thinking, “Wow, that’s the type of response we should be able to articulate, and that’s the way we should articulate it” and the general tenor of the comments was along the lines of “bigot, hypocrite, liar, abuser”, etc, etc, etc, including “equivalent of Jim Crow racist”.
Now granted it is The New York Times, which wouldn’t recognised a Hunter Biden laptop if it tripped over it. But winsome went right to the source, with a piece that was as Winsome McWinsomeface as you could get, and still the vast bulk of well over one thousand comments were in the “shred” category.
Which is all a way of saying, if we’re going to have a conversation around winsome (and something tells me it may well be word of the year for Christians in 2023, cos this debate is only getting started), then we’d better have a clear understanding of what we mean by winsome. And by that I mean determining who gets to define whether we are being winsome or not.
That’s the point isn’t it? Is the word defined by the “winsomer” or the “winsomee”? And Christians, well-meaning Christians, who want to be viewed as winsome in the public square, and are reading through their notes carefully before they go up to the public podium, are finding that their problem is not in their delivery, it’s not in their word choice, it’s not even in their body language. No, it’s in their actual beliefs.
The problem is that the Christian perspective on marriage is viewed as hateful. And our winsomeness is being viewed as a mask, a get-out-of-jail-free card for ideas that should be banged up in solitary confinement. That’s the problem right there. And the more words you say, words like “love”, “tolerance”, “acceptance”, “pluralism” are simply seen as special pleading. They are being used by the losers in the culture war to try and carve out a city of refuge to which they can flee for safety.
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