Written by Edward J. Erler |
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Transgenderism seeks the ultimate victory of technology over nature—the goal of science at its very origins, “the conquest of nature.” You can ask my friends (if I have any left) whether I predicted that transgenders would soon outrank gays in the new morality, a morality which judges based on who is most committed to the denial of the relevance of nature and all standards of nature. But has transgenderism succeeded? Has it driven out nature with its virtual pitchfork of technology? Or is it merely deluding itself? Isn’t cannibalism a greater denial of human nature? Doesn’t cannibalism outrank transgenderism in the new morality? 

The flagship publication of Hillsdale College, Imprimis, which the College claims has a readership of more than six million, has recently published an article by the current enfant terrible of conservatism, Christopher F. Rufo, entitled “Inside the Transgender Empire.” The article explores the question of how transgenderism became so successful, and especially how the transgendered and Drag Queens became so celebrated among the ruling elites. Rufo rehearses all the horrors that have been visited upon American society and politics by the transgender movement and, I believe, he thinks his analysis of that danger goes to the radical source of that danger.
It does not! His analysis is not radical enough; it ignores the fact that the triumph of the transgender movement will inevitably lead to cannibalism. If you think that statement is too harsh for polite readers, read on.
The Los Angeles Times has published not one but two rave reviews of a movie celebrating cannibalism. Glenn Whipp, reporting from the Telluride Film Festival in September of 2022, describes Bones and All as “a tender story of young love” starring two “fine young cannibals trying to negotiate their natures and doing their best to ethically source their next meal.” What makes the cannibalism ethical, one supposes, is that the movie’s two cannibal stars are “people on society’s margins” who are stigmatized and shunned. Whipp seems to think that this brings ethical issues into the equation. In this clash, the ethical conundrum seems to be a choice between the right to life of the victims of cannibals, and the cannibals’ desire to pursue the food of their choice; who is the real victim?—those who are eaten by the cannibals or the cannibals whose way of life is considered unacceptable and stigmatized by society?
The second review, by Mark Olsen describes the film as “part horror film, part coming-of age tale, part romance.” He explains part of the movie’s plot as “two young ‘eaters’” “attempting “to stake out a semblance of normalcy and stability.” But, of course, it is difficult to imagine normalcy and stability developing among cannibals, and the reviewer observes that “the film is driven by a sadness, a mournful, haunted quality that covers even moments of freedom and joy.” The “freedom and joy” presumably breaks forth from the mournful gloom when then cannibals have stalked and succeeded in consuming their next meal.
We should have been prepared for the praise of the morality of cannibalism. I, for one, have been prepared for it for years. Friends, casual acquaintances, and bystanders have endured my discussions, sometimes polemics and even screeds, on how the result of progressive thought would ultimately be cannibalism. All those many years ago, it sounded utterly fantastic, but when I first heard the claims from anthropologists and other social scientists that opposition to cannibalism was merely western food aversion—in other words, an irrational prejudice—I knew that cannibalism was coming.
Liberation movements from the very beginning sought to free human beings from the restraints of nature and of nature’s god. Marx, of course, wasn’t the first, but his simple account is the easiest to explain. We create God to put moral restraints upon ourselves. Creating this non-human or divine source gives the restrains greater authority. But once we realize that God is only a myth or creation, it loses its authoritative power as a tool of oppression for the ruling classes. Once the proletariat seizes power in the inevitable dialectic of history, God, will be exposed as a fraud foisted on the people and can be dismissed. A new, secular morality will be designed to support the party of the working class. Today’s secular religion of the “woke” resembles that party, but it no longer has its roots in the working class, even as it demands the same loyalty and metes out the same harsh discipline as Marxist-Leninism.
Feminism was a successful liberation movement. Once feminism realized that there are no significant or relevant natural differences between the sexes, it became obvious that there were no grounds in law or politics for any inequality. Elimination of classifications by sex for civil rights issues—equal opportunity in employment, voting rights, etc.—were certainly warranted and just, but once the natural distinction between the sexes was deemed irrelevant for civil rights, then it was almost inevitable (and here I paint with a broad brush) that it became irrelevant for all purposes.
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The book’s weight rests on the rational and liturgical moves a pastor should make in commending the Christian faith: for example, sound arguments for the existence of God, solid historical evidence for the resurrection, apologetic training, and a winsome Easter service. These are nonnegotiables, of course. But in my experience, unbelievers are more often won over by a Christian’s good character than by her good arguments.

“Why should I trust a man who lived 2,000 years ago, hung out with social outcasts, and got himself killed?”
“Even if there is a God, I’d be only 40 percent sure he’d communicate with us.”
“Isn’t the resurrection of Jesus just an inspiring concept?”
“What do Christians have against the LGBT+ community?”
As a pastor in one of America’s most educated and least religious states, I often hear these questions. In many cases, the inquirer is a sincere agnostic who wants to know whether the Christian faith is intellectually plausible, ethically just, and morally compassionate. But in many other cases, the questions come from church members.
These people are committed to following Jesus, but they feel the pressure of navigating their faith in an increasingly post-Christian culture. They regularly ask me about issues such as the reliability of Scripture, the problem of evil, and the relationship between Christianity and science.
As a pastor, I want answers too. When I was a young graduate student, my doubts about Christianity prompted me to investigate the rational basis for my faith and eventually to discover it was deeper, richer, and more beautiful than I could’ve imagined. So, like all Christians, I long to commend Christ in all his fullness and splendor to everyone I can.
This is why I find Dayton Hartman and Michael McEwen’s book, The Pastor as Apologist: Restoring Apologetics to the Local Church, so relevant. Their central aim is “to recover an ecclesial approach [to] apologetics where apologetic engagement and Christian philosophy is intertwined with the ministry of the local church and not completely detached from it” (26). This book equips pastors to weave apologetics into their preaching and even into the administration of church programs.
Reclaim Apologetics for the Church
The local church is seldom considered the center of apologetic work. For most, the word “apologist” conjures up a picture of a high-profile Christian intellectual with several academic degrees, a broad reach, and a packed speaking schedule. That’s an image far different from a local pastor in his weekly work of shepherding the flock.
Hartman and McEwen, both pastors, want to shift apologetics back to the local church, and that’s a good thing. After all, the bulk of the work of commending the faith is not done by high-profile speakers but by little-known pastors. The authors write, “There is no spiritual gifting defined as ‘Christian Thinker.’
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Jesus both provoked the world to the ultimate sin and then stepped in the path of that wrath. He came at the right time just when the priestly people who had been given the covenant law had become the worst offenders. He literally came on Judgment Day. And the only reason there is a world of human beings today is because that judgment fell on him instead of the ones who deserved it. 
Paul writes to the Romans in what may seem almost an off-hand comment: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6 ESV; emphasis added).
This verse starkly shows that Paul, at times, can refer to the flow of human history as a collective pronoun. “We” were weak in the beginning of the first century, and then Christ died for us. Many Christians have conversion stories whereby they learned what Jesus did for them, repented and entrusted themselves to Him, and were empowered by the Holy Spirit to walk in newness of life. That is a fruitful analogy, but Paul obviously isn’t talking about what happened in all Christian biographies. He is talking about what God and Jesus Christ did in human history at the crucifixion.
And this passage tells us not only that Christ died in human history but that he did so “at the right time” in human history.
What was it about what we now know as the First Century AD (which is also the common era, but that designation remain dependent on the work of Our Lord) that made it appropriate for Christ to be born, live, die, rise, ascend to the throne, and pour out the Holy Spirit?
Paul repeatedly makes this claim about the timing of redemption is Christ:

“In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:3-5 ESV).
“…making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:9–10 ESV).
“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Timothy 2:5–6 ESV).
“Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior” (Titus 1:1–3 ESV).

So there are many reasons to ask the question: What was so important about the timing of Jesus’ mission? What made that point in human history “the fullness of time” and “the proper time”?
Perhaps it might help us to answer that question if we developed curiosity about another question. Maybe the real question should be: What delayed Jesus so long in human history? Maybe we ought to expect that there must have been something proper about the time of the incarnation and the work of Christ. Or rather, that there must have been some good reason for the delay. Without an explanation for the thousands of years between Genesis 3 and the Gospels, John 3:16 becomes rather confusing. “For God so loved the world, that” thousands of years later “he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Why the wait?
Consider the synoptic Gospels.
Jesus declared that the sins of Israel were reaching a climax in his own death. In the parable of the tenants and the vineyard (Matthew 21:33–46; Mark 12:1–12; Luke 20:9–19), Jesus described his impending murder as the final climactic sin in Israel’s history, the one that will mean “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matthew 21:41). Of course, this death is, in fact, the action that will provide for a New Covenant that involves forgiveness of many, as Jesus signified in the establishment of the Lord’s supper (Matthew 26:28). So this murder, while bringing wrath on those who remain in unbelief, also provides the salvation for all who believe.
Again, this isn’t presented as a simple one-time sin. It is presented in the parable as the climactic sin that builds on a repeated history. In Matthew 23, the point is a bit more obscure because Jesus includes the persecution of his followers along with his own suffering at the hands of the unbelieving rulers in Jerusalem. But nevertheless, Jesus is again warning them that they are culminating a historic pattern of sin.
Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation (Matthew 23:32–36 ESV).
The plain reading of these texts is that the rejection of Christ (and his followers) was not an isolated incident. It was a climactic sin that fulfilled a practice that Israel had long engage in. And this sin was serious not only because of who Jesus was, but because it showed they were doubling down on their worst behavior. “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours’” (Luke 20:13–14 ESV). They were presuming on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness was meant to lead them to repentance. Because of their hard and impenitent heart they were storing up wrath for themselves on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment would be revealed.
God Meant It for Good
This might be a good place to briefly consider the mystery of predestination. God was repeatedly merciful to Israel. Though he slew the Exodus generation in the wilderness, that was a mere chastisement. When he was really angry he wiped out entire family lines. In this case, he saved all their children.
He constantly forgave Israel in the time of the Judges. When the sins of Eli and his sons caused the ark to be taken into captivity, damaging Tabernacle worship beyond repair, He gave them a new place of worship and a new system of government (Temple and the Monarchy).
And when they sinned to the point that the Temple was destroyed and God sent them into exile, seventy years later God brought them back to their land in a greater way. They had a new Temple and new international influence as a people both in the Promised Land and throughout the empires. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
But when Jesus began his ministry, Israel, having sinned against the grace of restoration from exile, was now more debauched than ever. The prophet Zachariah was shown a vision of Israel being cleansed of demonic possession at the return from exile in a kind of inversion of Ezekiel’s glory cloud (Ezekiel 1) involving an anti-ark of the Covenant:
Then the angel who talked with me came forward and said to me, “Lift your eyes and see what this is that is going out.” And I said, “What is it?” He said, “This is the basket that is going out.” And he said, “This is their iniquity in all the land.” And behold, the leaden cover was lifted, and there was a woman sitting in the basket! And he said, “This is Wickedness.” And he thrust her back into the basket, and thrust down the leaden weight on its opening. Then I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, two women coming forward! The wind was in their wings. They had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between earth and heaven. Then I said to the angel who talked with me, “Where are they taking the basket?” He said to me, “To the land of Shinar, to build a house for it. And when this is prepared, they will set the basket down there on its base.”Zechariah 5:5–11 ESV
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