We must affirm that there is one God who exists in three distinct persons–Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who are equal in glory, majesty and power. This is how God reveals himself in his word.

It is common to hear people claim that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the same God. Not true. Unlike those who worship Allah, or those Jews who claim to worship the God of Abraham, Christians worship the true and living God, who reveals himself in three persons as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
It has been said that the Holy Trinity is Christianity’s most distinctive doctrine. Although in many ways the doctrine of the Trinity is beyond our comprehension, we believe this doctrine because this is how God reveals himself to us in his word, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are the one true God.
The doctrine of the Trinity is a difficult topic to discuss, because it stretches the limits of human language and logic. Despite the difficulties this doctrine presents to us, we must believe and confess that God is triune, because this is how God reveals himself to us in his word.
The three persons of the Godhead are revealed as equal in divinity, glory, and majesty. Each of the three persons are expressly called “God” in the New Testament. And to each of them is assigned the same divine attributes (i.e., simplicity, aseity, immutability), as well as the same glory and majesty which are ascribed to the other persons of the Trinity.
The Scriptures reveal that there is only one God. In Deuteronomy 6:4, Moses declares “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” In Isaiah 44:6, we read “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.” This same assertion is found throughout the New Testament, even though we learn of three distinct persons in the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 8:4-6, Paul writes, “there is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many `gods’ and many `lords’—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” Elsewhere James writes, “you believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” (James 2:19). The Scriptures are crystal clear, there is but one God.
Yet the Bible plainly teaches that although there is one God, he is revealed in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three persons of the Godhead are mentioned together throughout the New Testament. When Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist, the Father declares, “this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” even as the Spirit of God descended upon Jesus as a dove (Matthew 3:16-17). In Matthew 28:19, Jesus commands his disciples to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by baptizing them in the name (singular) of three persons of the Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).
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Written by T.M. Suffield |
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Lamentations describes Yahweh in the language of enemies time and time again, and goes back-and-forth with the appropriateness of this designation. It asks us difficult questions about whether God did this terrible thing to them, and even though it’s clear that it’s deserved, it questions whether it’s gratuitous and causes us to wonder what we think of a God who wounds his people.

Lamentations is a difficult book. I’ve been reading through it with my Bible reading group recently and it’s heavy going.
There’s much to gain, but when you read through it in your mornings you can slide through it fairly quickly. When you spend a few hours per chapter slowly chewing it over around a table the emotional weight of it starts to settle on you like a heavy blanket, and the challenging questions it raises cannot be ignored.
For all it’s been challenging, I’ve been particularly struck by the echoes of the rest of scripture we’ve pulled out together. It’s a poetic book that heavily references the prophets, the Psalms and the Torah, so in that sense it’s replete with intertextual references, but it’s the New Testament echoes that I’ve found most interesting.
In chapter 2, a chapter that expresses the destruction of Jerusalem and particularly the Temple in biting anger, there are some fascinating Christian readings available that open the text to us.
We might read verse 12 in light of the Lord’s Supper, or verse 13 a call for healing from the dragons Jesus slew at the cross, but it’s 14-16 I’d like to call particular attention too.
In the narrative the poet has enumerated the desolation of the city and the Temple in excruciating detail, and they move on to explore three potential healers, none of whom can heal the city or the people because the Lord has done what he purposed (verse 17).
We were discussing the way Kenneth Bailey thinks that Mark deliberately echoes this section of Lamentations in Mark 15.29-30, which I find persuasive, and my friend Elly pointed out that it sounds like the parable of the Good Samaritan.
I’m not sure that Luke had Lamentations 2 in mind as he retold Jesus’ parable, but I think Elly is right that these texts can be read fruitfully together. Let me show you what I mean.
The Parable
A man is travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho and he falls foul of a group of thieves and robbers. He’s left beaten and bloody on the roadside. We’re told he’s half dead, and without help he will be wholly dead before long.
His situation is not that different from the sort of language the poet in using in Lamentations’ second poem. Three people pass the traveller by. Three groups are presented as healers for Jerusalem, at least one of whom is said to pass by.
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The problem isn’t that there is too much individualism.  Pure individualism can still result in people seeking God because God is the source of their highest good.  Nor is the problem merely that people want to be happy because a consequence of knowing God is happiness and joy. The gender cult is simply an expression of the failure to know God and to know oneself.

Imagine two adults.  They are having an argument.  The argument is about whether or not one of them is a woman.  Adult #1 says, “I am a woman.”  Adult #2 says, “no, you’re not.”  By what authority is this dispute settled?  One answer is biology, chromosomes, and sex organs.  But for those in what I am calling the John Money cult, this is not a satisfactory answer.  They believe they are being authentic and true to themselves by determining their “gender” based on their sexual desires and how they feel. This is the viewpoint adopted by the vast majority of intellectuals today.  So what is a satisfactory answer?  What will finally settle this madness that has affected the crowd of “academics” in our day?  There is no doubt this is an embarrassing time in which to have lived when future generations are told our intellectuals didn’t know what it is to be a woman.  “Don’t kindergarteners know how to figure that out?” they’ll ask.
John Money the Cult Leader
For those who have studied the LGBTQ+ sexual philosophy, John Money is a well known pervert, or rather, a well-known name.  Although raised in a Christian home, he set out to make his life’s work overthrowing Christian sexual morality. He was a researcher at Johns Hopkins University working in the field of human sexual behavior.  Like Alfred Kinsey, his research was plagued with falsification, gross ethical violations, and more than the usual nonsense for a secular intellectual.  He is perhaps best known for having destroyed the Reimer family with no consequences from his peers. He went before the Lord for judgment in 2006. 
What is important about him for our question is that he made it so that kindergarteners can no longer answer, “who is a boy and who is a girl?”  How?  By inventing the terms “sexual orientation,” “sexual preference,” and “gender roles.”  These are now terms around which entire university departments are built.  At my university (Arizona State), and in my school, we have a “gender studies” program that promises to help the student do the following, “Gender, women and sexuality studies is an interdisciplinary field that involves analyzing societal issues through the lens of feminist theory. Through coursework and scholarly research, you’ll gain critical knowledge and a deep understanding of feminist theory and practice. You’ll also have the opportunity to challenge conventional wisdom about gender and explore many new perspectives.”  All of that for only 15K a year.  What will the student do with that degree? The first job recommendation is “advocate.”  
The Gender Cult
What are these “new perspectives?”  Money, like Kinsey, taught that human sexual development begins identity formation in each person from the time of birth.  Both did unethical sexual research on children and neither faced discipline, in fact, they are praised as heroes.  Their new project is that there is this thing called “gender.”  Here is where the kindergartner’s expertise is called into question.  The kindergartener knows how to determine sex.  It is biological.  But does the kindergartener know how to identify gender?
No.  But here’s the secret.  Nor does anybody else.  This is why Jordan Peterson told Matt Walsh, in “What is a Woman?” that gender is a completely unhelpful term in research.  It cannot be measured and it is imprecise.  Instead, Peterson recommends “temperament” which can be measured.  A woman can have a temperament like some men, and a man can have a temperament like some women.  The biological facts aren’t in question, and the word “gender” is useless.  The solution to a man with a temperament like some women is not to cut him up, it is to help him understand how to use that temperament in pursuit of the highest good.
The Cult’s Failed Solution
The failed solution of “gender” remains with us because it has the features of a cult.  What is different about this cult is that it is State funded and taught in all secular and many Christian universities.  The United States has had its share of cults.  This is the first time that they are given unquestionable status in the university and almost limitless resources.  In other essays, I have written about the Marxist cult and its hold on the intellectuals of our days.  This gender cult is a close second.  They go hand-in-hand so that future scholars will undoubtedly link them.
But why?  They share a common problem and common parameters of acceptable answers.  The problem is the unfairness of life and the unhappiness this causes.  The acceptable parameters are that any solutions must affirm the basic goodness of the individual.  The explanation is that the good individual only becomes corrupt due to human society.  For the Marxist, this starts with the invention of private property.  For the gender cultist, this begins with rules about different roles in life.  These rules cause the suppression of the individual’s desires.  Suppression leads to inhibition and potentially to neurosis and psychosis.  
The solution to the dangers of suppression is to just stop it.  Be yourself.  Be brave, have pride, and tell the rule-makers of your society to go pound sand.  This message resonates with a culture that is already enamored with the individual and the search for happiness.  Recently, Carl Trueman wrote about this, however, he was repeating the insights of Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind.”  Bloom traced the conflict between the Lockean and the Rousseauean streams of thought in America.  The Rousseau branch teaches that the individual is good and corruption is due to society. 
We know this has had many implications in American thought and life.  For instance, criminals are no longer immoral but are forced into crime by need and environmental factors.  Our pop culture praises the villain (pirate, vampire, adulterer, thief) and portrays pastors as setting out to ruin everyone’s fun (Footloose).  Enter the drag queens reading to children at the public library.  Why do you care if a man wants to dress in drag and read to children?  Let him live his dream.
Why Do We Care?
One reason to care is that psychology tells us a healthy mind is one that is integrated with reality.  If our friend tells us he is surgically removing four inches from his shins because he is the Emperor Napoleon, it is our duty as friends to help him reintegrate back into reality. He isn’t Napoleon.  Loving your friend means telling him he isn’t Napoleon and should never carve up his body to try and look like Napoleon. So why do we play this game with gender?  Why is thinking you are something enough to make everyone else be forced to agree you are?  
There have been many useful answers.  An overemphasis on individual happiness.  A short-sighted consumerism culture that values immediate gratification.  An over-sexed society that is always looking for new ways to be perverse.  However, I’m a philosopher and a pastor so I will give a different answer. 
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