Doug McHone

Ex Nihilo and the LGBT+ Charade: Part 2 Of 2

It is God who opens and closes wombs. It is God who blesses those of us with children, and the withholding of offspring is not a sign of His cursing. It is not for us to covet God’s decree at which women are given children and which ones He said “no” to for the time being. This is a painful topic and one that needs to be addressed with sincerity and tears. Weep with those who weep! But do not call sin by any other name or act as if Christians don’t have any biblical categories by which we can navigate this discussion.

Oh, you returned! If you haven’t already read part 1, I encourage you to do so, as this recap will be enough to get you pointed in the right direction, but can’t replace the sort of context you would get by just reading the earlier post. I set the stage by pointing out that creation is God’s purview, not man’s. We can procreate and we can take preexisting matter and fashion it into this or that, but creation belongs to God. This is a fact that both human and demonic forces have sought to overcome from the beginning as they coveted the rights of God for themselves. We ended up with me starting to weave a potential narrative of the “daughters of man” from Genesis 6 participating in the evil, coveting God’s rights for themselves, and resulting in the Nephilim, the last straw before the worldwide flood.
You are now caught up.
The symbolism of religion isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
All of religion is, by nature, symbolic. In a church service, we symbolically worship before the very throne of God. The Lord’s Supper is symbolic of His body and blood, as we remember his death and as He nurtures us until He returns. Baptism is symbolic of the life, death, and resurrection so that the one being baptized can say that they have participated in the very gospel and their standing before God is based on the work of Jesus rather than the failings of Adam and self. Baptism is literally the announcement that you are represented by the last Adam now, and not the first.
Pagan worship is also symbolic. And in the Bible, there are many examples of how the people of the time worshiped pagan deities through their symbolism. Perhaps it was by crafting and worshipping an idol. Maybe it was through a pinch of incense to Caeser. Sometimes it was feasting upon meat that had been sacrificed to demons. And sometimes worship occurred as one engaged in sexual acts with a temple prostitute. The random man would pay money to the priestess and then would have sex with her. That was his worship. The priestess would accept the money and apply it in the service of her god and then engage in the sexual act. That was her worship. I know there were variations of this in the Roman world that even a pervert of today would find to be disgusting, but that’s all I have to say about that.
Was this activity restricted to the Post-Flood years though? I have no reason to think that it was. I believe it is entirely possible that the same manner of temple prostitution was going on in the days of Noah just as it happened in the days of Moses (Rev 2:14), the days of Elijah, the days of Paul, and if we’re going to hit home, the days of today’s porn saturation. Temple prostitution has been a thriving business for the enemies of God from the earliest days. After all, hasn’t prostitution been defined as the oldest profession? And what is porn but prostitution that has been recorded for a wider audience?
So imagine with me a young prostitute whose intent has been nothing but evil (Gen 6:5). Oh, she thinks that she is doing a service to the men who frequent her but they have been layering condemnation upon themselves with every visit. Still, she is a pillar of the community! And she knows that the services that she has been providing have all been symbolic. The men have been engaging with her and she has been engaging with them as both parties have sought the approval of the benevolent demon behind it all.
Then one day the demon appears.
Oh, he isn’t red and he doesn’t have horns. As a matter of fact, he looks pretty good. He’s healthy, strong, well-spoken. He introduces himself and convinces her of who he truly is. He is everything she ever wanted. He is who she has been opening herself up to, both figuratively and literally. Then he has a proposition. She could bear him a son. This thing could go from the symbolic to reality in a flash. She knows this isn’t how things are really supposed to go, but this is an opportunity beyond anything she had imagined!
When I hear about the sons of God taking the daughters of man, this is the storyline that comes to mind. I don’t picture rapes or spiritual overshadowings such as how the Holy Spirit came upon Mary. Demons are limited in how they are able to interact with the world, and their attempts to simulate creation would surely require participation from an image-bearer of God. And that participation would make it all the sweeter to one destined for Hell.
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Chapter One: Believing The Bible

If you are in Christ, I am your brother. One day we will meet in glory and we will both be right and wrong about various firmly held beliefs. Keep your open-hand items and give grace in abundance to those who don’t currently hold your conclusions. Their tertiary beliefs will adjust over time, and so will yours. The Christian life is one of transformation that doesn’t stop until our breathing does. If you are not transforming in any way, you are drifting. And nobody ever drifted their way to holiness.

That sounds a bit presumptuous, doesn’t it? In Christian debate, it is not uncommon to hear someone give reasons why their view is the biblical view, inferring that the opponent is unbiblical. This book opens with a chapter that says that the first step to accepting the supernatural realm as defined by the Bible is to be faithful to what God’s word says. That is true in all things, and allow me to begin by saying that everything the Bible reveals is perceived in its own time. I have read through the Bible several times and each time I come away with insights that I hadn’t considered before.
Accepting the supernatural view is the sort of thing that will challenge some of our notions, and it may need to be accepted gradually. And even as grace can be shown to someone accepting it in smaller bites, grace by those who are more knowledgable than me can be shown to those who are considering it with a healthy amount of skepticism.
In my church tradition, there are “open hand” and “closed hand” beliefs. Closed hand beliefs are those that one must believe if they are to be a Christian. Open hand beliefs are ones that you can hold to, but these are not ones that Christians should use to invalidate the Christianity of others. A closed hand issue would include a belief in the trinity or that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. An open hand issue would include most eschatological views or what mode of baptism is proper. You can believe you are right and your brother in sister is wrong. You can discuss it and debate it together. But it is inappropriate for either of you to declare the other reprobate just because they think that many of the predictions Jesus gave in the Olivet Discourse were fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
I say all this to confirm to you that your acceptance of the concepts put forward is not salvific. You may disagree, you may agree but to a different extent. That’s OK. If you are in Christ, I am your brother. One day we will meet in glory and we will both be right and wrong about various firmly held beliefs. Keep your open-hand items and give grace in abundance to those who don’t currently hold your conclusions. Their tertiary beliefs will adjust over time, and so will yours. The Christian life is one of transformation that doesn’t stop until our breathing does. If you are not transforming in any way, you are drifting.
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