Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, August 11, 2024
In the modern west the sort of thick community, that which would allow us to witness each others’ Christians lives lived up close, is often unattractive to us. It requires us to give up some of our rights for the benefits of others. It requires us to privilege particular individuals (rather than a vague ‘everyone’ which is much easier but not what Jesus demands of us) over ourselves. 

In the last post on the causes of the discipleship crisis, I explored why Sundays are shallow. The gathered worship of the church is supposed to be the pattern of life for the church scattered and for the life of the world. However, it’s not supposed to be the training pitch of that culture.
Because our communities have narrowed and atrophied our opportunities to encounter and catch what the life of faith and faith formation look like have narrowed to just an hour and a half on a Sunday morning. If you’ll forgive the machinespeak: it’s unsurprising that if you reduce the inputs, the output lowers too. Except that isn’t how it works, but it is how it looks.
There was day, now long past, when we would have all been involved in webs of community within our localities, reinforced through many different associations, of which the church would have been the keystone. For an array of reasons those days are long gone; and while we can lament, they won’t naturally arise again in our lifetimes.
What does that mean that we’ve lost? Previously you would have seen people live their Christian lives in front of you, their foibles and sin visible as you all looked to Christ to redeem you. Their patterns and rhythms of life would have been open to you. The opportunities to express your frustrations and challenges, as well as to see how Christ applies to all of life, would have been myriad.
This is probably a little rose-tinted. I’m sure plenty of ordinary Christians didn’t muse about the faith down the coal mine or bring Christ into everything that they did. However, they would have prayed together and sung together. Those sorts of communal habits are forming to our hearts and our households.
I don’t think we can simply recover those patterns—not in our lifetimes anyway, though working for the long haul two generations hence would be worth a lot—
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Supporting the LGBTQ movement is tantamount to endorsing rebellion against God. Saying nothing is not only cowardice but a rejection of God’s good commands and character. It is a declaration that we value man’s approval over God’s precepts and laws. By promoting and celebrating these lifestyles, or even by remaining aloof and watching from a distance, we align ourselves with wickedness, we allow the rot to continue, we call what is evil good and what is good evil, and we let fester what will kill this society and leave it languishing under God’s culture-ending judgments.

The LGBTQ Mouth Funk
There are many diseases that can kill you, from things like cancer, heart disease, or kidney disease, but few people consider the perilous bacteria-laden threat that gum disease presents. And this, of course, is for obvious reasons. Gum disease, or gingivitis as it is commonly called, begins in the early stages with very mild and easily treated symptoms, such as redness in the gums, irritation, and swelling. It might reveal itself with a little blood in the sink when flossing or a darker hue of pink upon the gumline, but with a commitment to brushing regularly and perhaps a routine visit to the dentist, it is entirely reversible and will not become a long-term issue for you.
Yet, if it is ignored for long enough and left untreated, gingivitis will turn into periodontitis, which is a much more significant and pesky version of gum disease. After years of gingival neglect, the gums will begin pulling away from the teeth and pockets, where bacteria can settle, will form, infection will set into the gums, and if ignored for long enough, will erode bone structures and even lead to death. What could have been a routine fix ends up polluting the entire mouth and eventually toxifying the whole body, which should be instructive as we enter into the month of a thousand rainbows, or more accurately, stain-bows and shame-bows.
Every year, we are thrust into an entire month filled with an ever-changing flag devoted to the sickest forms of moral deviancy; we have advocacy groups slamming the worst content down our throats from woke companies who virtue signal their way through June, such as Target selling women’s bathing suits last year with penis pockets, or Budweiser – an already piss-poor excuse for beer – putting Dylan Mulvaney, a piss poor excuse for a man, on its can. This is the month when the Whitehouse invites biological men with breast implants to stand on the south lawn and flash manufactured saline flesh sacks at children to the applause of adults. This is the month when people lose their jobs over social media posts dedicated to Biblical fidelity and the month where if you are not an ally of the alphabet gang, then you will be canceled.  
Like gum disease in its most advanced stages, our culture has become thoroughly toxified by what was once a fairly routine infection. A couple rogue LGBTQ germs implanted themselves into the base of America’s gumline about 60 years ago, and now the stink or death has settled into the face of our culture. 
How did we get here? One too many rainbow Twizzlers without a commitment to Biblical fidelity, and what you have is the makings of a full-blown face-rotting disease. You see, in the early twentieth century, as our culture crested the hilltop of Christendom, its first exposure to the LGBTQ movement was tasted. With organizations like the Society for Human Rights in 1924 and the Mattachine Society of 1950 being founded to advance the rights of gays and lesbians, the earliest signs of gum chaffing were beginning to flare up in the mouth. 
A generation later, in the sexually debauched and psychedelic drug era of the 1960s, this mild irritation multiplied into a full-blown condition known as the Stonewall riots of New York, which brought the LGBTQ movement into the national conversation. Suddenly, what was once a minor inflammation that should have been dealt with by the church and the broader culture had morphed into a technicolored blood bath in the sink every time a little brushing was employed. 
Sadly, the movement gained unnecessary momentum in the 1970s and 80s because the dispensational church stood idly by, waiting to be raptured while ignoring the odious smell of swamp breath in the mouth of an infected culture. As we transitioned to the 90s, the cultural gums were already pulling away from the teeth as the AIDS crisis ravaged the homosexual community, demonstrating the damning effects one will receive in the body for violating God’s law. 
Since then, the pesky infection – which would have been curable at every step along the way – has burgeoned into a full-blown septic tank in the soul of our nation, polluting everything it touches, from the legalization of sodomite marriages to the widespread acceptance of pedophiles twerking in dresses for cheering mothers and children to the Mr. potato head trans movement that swaps out genitals faster than you can upgrade your transmission. Evidence of this putrid and aggressive rot is now all around us, and what could have been cured quickly and easily now requires the most potent medicine we have, or this society has no hope. 
To that end, I would like to offer the most vital medicine available, which is found in the Word of God. Instead of celebrating the abominating, becoming allies with the cancer that is killing us, I want to do what so few squishy men will do and simply say what the Bible says and pray that the Lord would use it as an antiseptic to help bring healing and revival to our land. Our only hope as a society is radical repentance and a return to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Without that, our rampant sexual disorders, child sex slavery, and human trafficking, the killing of our babies in the womb, our furbies and two-spirit-pangolins, our trannies, sodomites, and Gomorrah whorings, will collectively put a once proud nation into the grave with every other society that refused to honor God. 
So, in what follows, instead of standing idly by while the culture and fake Christians go on with the celebration of abominations, I want to offer the Biblical antiseptic that will hopefully reverse the rot and bring healing to our land. To do that, I want to talk about what abominations are in the Bible, what kinds of sins qualify as abominations, how those sins paralyzingly infect a people, and why repenting and turning to Jesus is our culture’s only hope! 
What Is an Abomination?
When we speak about abominations, we are talking about the very worst classification of sins in the hamartiological corpus. These are sins so vile and detestable that they provoke God’s furious wrath like nothing else. These aren’t minor slip-ups or trivial mistakes; they are full-blown rebellions against the Almighty’s very good design and order in Genesis 1, making them creation-bending and breaking sins. Needless to say, the Bible doesn’t mince words here, and neither should we.
According to the best Hebrew linguistic data available in the best lexicons money can buy, an abomination is something that causes loathsome hate or violent, repulsive disgust in the viewer. When it comes to God, an abomination is something that enflames our Creator’s disgust to such epic proportions that the only response He can give is unbridled fury because it offends Him so profoundly, overturns His perfect creation and design so thoroughly, and violates His holy character so flagrantly. The Hebrew Word for abomination is “תּוֹעֵבָה” (toʿevah), which translates to something morally disgusting or detestable. Think about your reaction to a rancid steak infested with week-old maggots being served to you on a dirty plate, and you are getting close to the kind of reaction an abomination produces. Understanding this, an abomination isn’t about a subjective feeling or a cultural preference; these actions are foundationally repugnant and noxious to God, and they ought to be repulsive to us as well. They utterly pollute cultures, defy His Holy commandments, defile His image-bearing people, and warrant the harshest judgment imaginable.
With that, abominations are not run-of-the-mill sins that naturally arose in a fallen world because of our penchant for rebellion. We know from the Bible that every sin separates us from God and pays the wages of hellfire and brimstone, so in that sense, all sins are sort of the same. But abominations are also different. In Scripture, they are set apart as land polluting and divine fury inducing in ways that other sins are not spoken about. Also, in Jewish literature such as the “Book of Enoch,” abominations are described as otherworldly sins, so sinister and unnatural that they must have come from outside of the world, from fallen angels foisting them upon humanity like festering leaking boils, that caused God to destroy the earth in a global flood. If the Book of Enoch is correct, fallen angels taught humans abominable sexual sins that produced the cursed race of the Nephilim, that infected towns like Sodom and Gomorrah, and is the reason God thoroughly decimated the deviant lands of Egypt, Canaan, and Bashan. 
Nonetheless, the Hebrew words translated as “abomination” are often used in association with things like idolatry and false gods (Deuteronomy 17:2–5; 27:15; 29:17; Isaiah 66:3; Jeremiah 32:34; Ezekiel 5:9; 11:18; Hosea 9:10), which lets us know that abominations, especially sexual sins, are also religious sins, since, as Paul tells us, that underneath every mute idol statue is the power of oppressive demons, we can understand that abominations are sins offered in the service of the demonic. They are lude disgusting offerings to Satan and his minions, which is why they are so detestable to God. For instance, in 1 Kings 11:5, the god Molech is called “the abomination of the Ammonites” (ESV). Why? Because Molech was the God that ate your children. He required you and your wife to get pregnant, have the baby, and then roast the screaming writing baby alive in the fires of his belly in a dank oven that sat in the center of the idol. The genuinely vile part of this, if the former were not appalling enough, was that you were supposed to wildly cheer and go on to participate in detestable orgies while the smell of your infant’s charred carcus choked out the breathable air. This is what being given over to demons looks like: the total, wanton participation in, and celebration of, human desecrations.
Occult practices are also called abominations in Scripture, further linking demonic and Satanic power with this most unholy class of sins. Sins such as child sacrifice (Deuteronomy 18:9–12; 20:18; 2 Chronicles 28:3), ungodly sexual relationships, cross-dressing, bestiality, and pedophilia all fall under this category. These sins are never described in mild terms; they are always referred to with adjectives like “abhorrent,” “loathsome,” “unclean,” and “rejected.” The root concept of the word “תּוֹעֵבָה” (toʿevah) probably derives from a root that denotes the idea of inviolability or untouchability, which could imply either holiness or abomination. This dual meaning underscores how deeply offensive abominations are to God—they represent a profound violation of His holiness.
In summary, abominations in the Bible represent the highest degree of moral and spiritual corruption. They are actions and attitudes that not only transgress God’s laws but also challenge His sovereignty and disrupt the harmony of His creation. The severity of God’s response to abominations reflects the depth of their offense. They are not just sins; they are existential threats to the divine order, and as such, they incur the most severe judgments from God. Understanding this helps us grasp the seriousness with which we must approach our own moral conduct and the attitudes we must have in response to our societies’ abominations. To say it simply, it is not righteous to love what God hates. It is not virtuous to permit what makes God vomit. When we think that being Christian is akin to not offending anyone and allowing filth to go on in our streets under the banner of winsomeness, we offend our God and become an ally against God with the abominable and the damned. It is better to be viewed by the world as hateful but to be clean and loving in the eyes of God. 
With that, let us detail what specific sins are called abominations. I am only going to be talking about the rainbow-colored ones in this post since we are about to enter the throes of another June dedicated to the worship of Molech.  
Taxonomizing Abominables
Gay and Lesbian Sex
Leviticus 18:22: “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.”
Homosexual acts (and desires) are a direct assault on God’s design for human sexuality. These acts pervert the natural order established at creation and are called abominations by the Holy Scriptures. This isn’t a matter of interpretation, nor something that was simply cultural in the ancient world; it is obvious from the text. Ignoring it requires a heart of stone, and participating in it is to invite judgment upon your own head, both in this life and in the life to come. Furthermore, the normalization of gay and lesbian relationships in our culture represents the most flagrant rebellion against God’s created order possible. The undermining of the sanctity of marriage is a giving of the middle finger by our nation unto God. And, as they celebrate these abominable acts, they look down the barrel of God’s 44 magnum and mock Him that He has patiently waited to pull the trigger. 
Bestiality
Leviticus 18:23-26: “You shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it… it is a perversion.”
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As always the Christian life is one of balance, while holding onto various core truths and realities. We can boldly and with conviction proclaim the gospel of Christ. But at the same time we must always stay on our knees and seek to stay humble and broken before our Lord. That is the right sort of biblical combination we must all strive for.

In this life, the Christian sees through a glass darkly as the Apostle Paul told us (1 Corinthians 13:12). Thus there are many things we just do not fully know about, or can only guess at. But on the other hand, there are some vital truths we can depend upon and fully embrace and affirm. The Christian can have certainty in key areas, while admitting partial knowledge in others.
In this regard, I just posted this on the social media a few moments ago:
Here are three couplets you can pretty well bank on:
We can test a person’s faith by two things:-What they profess to believe (their doctrine)-How they live their lives (their fruit)
Still, there will be surprises in heaven:-Some folks we did not think would be there will be-Some folks we were sure would be there won’t be
This should instill in us two things-A profound and constant humility-A steadfast desire to proclaim the truth of the gospel with certainty and conviction
Hopefully no believer can find real fault with anything said here, but let me tease all this out a bit more anyway. As to how we know if someone is a follower of Christ or not, the New Testament consistently gives us two main sorts of tests that we can make use of.
The importance of adhering to right doctrine is paramount. Believe the wrong things and you are not a Christian – or are a cultist or heretic. What we believe matters. As Peter could say with absolute conviction in Acts 4:12: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Or as John put it (more than once):
1 John 2:22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.
1 John 4:3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
2 John 1:7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.
Not everything we believe is true, and some things we believe are false and will send us to a lost eternity. But of course the way we live provides another good clue as to whether or not we really belong to Christ. As Jesus himself said in Matthew 7:15-20:
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.
So we should expect to see some good fruit in the genuine believer. 
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