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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The problem is paying homage to Christianity while denying the truth of its teaching.  That is what public intellectuals like Jordan Peterson or Douglas Murray do.  Even when you find Peterson speaking positively about the Bible, it is as a Jungian who reduces the Bible to a grouping of myths that represent archetypes found in all religions.  Biblical stories are mere allegories for Jungian psychology.  Similarly, Christians have become all too familiar with conservative politicians who speak highly of the Bible but show no saving faith. This is worse than the radical left.

This week, David French said he will vote for Kamala Harris to teach conservatives a lesson.  The lesson has something to do with Trump and cultural Christianity.  That means it has something to do with conservative Christians thinking the Bible should influence politics.  
How should the Bible influence the political realm in our day? Even asking that question is enough to have a liberal call you a white nationalist. That shows us that the radical left is out of the debate.  Any serious thinker knows that our beliefs affect our culture, and just as not all beliefs are true, so also not all cultures are equal.  The radical left tells us they also believe cultures are not equal because they continually insult Christian culture and say it is fair game for attacks and destruction.  
Serious Christian thinkers know that we live in a pivotal age.  The next few centuries will depend on what happens now. Just as the Peace of Westphalia formed the modern state and shaped the modern world, so too we are now deciding if Christianity and the Bible will have any influence on America at all.
It’s been some time since we had a political leader who could show the difference between true and false religious beliefs. It’s been some time since we expected a political leader to be able to do that. We’ve had presidents who will say they are Christians of one denomination or another. Sometimes, they give us cause to doubt them. But our public face since WWII has been that religion is a personal opinion, and we can’t know the truth of the matter. 
I believe that it is in response to this that conservative Christians are attracted to Trump and defending cultural Christianity.  Trump defends the idea that America has done good in the world and is worth protecting and preserving.  Almost all, if not all, of what he wants to preserve are the contributions of Christians.  Christians are so used to being the accepted whipping boy that this approach is refreshing.  However, I believe that the defense of cultural Christianity is a losing strategy, and I suggest we can do more than defend cultural Christianity and the Bible as a great book of Western Civilization.  We can do more even within the existing pluralistic society and be consistent with the First Amendment.  
Christians know we live in a pluralistic society, and we value the First Amendment. Neither of those things changes the formative role of the Bible in American history. The Bible teaches us that creation declares the eternal power and divine nature of God so that unbelief is without excuse. The United States was founded on such beliefs about creation. The Declaration of Independence rests its arguments on foundational claims about God and man by relying on natural theology.  Our system of checks and balances recognizes that humans are sinners and cannot be given too much power. And the First Amendment protects our right to rational debate and evangelism, and affirms our need for church.  
The radicalism of the French and Communist Revolutions says that humans are basically good and can build a utopia through merely materialist philosophy.  They teach that man is at his best without church, God, or redemption.  The radical left today also pushes those same ideas, which are contrary to the American founding philosophy.  The radical left has become such a clown show (late-term abortion, fear of homophobia, infinite genders, “whiteness” scare, DEI, and so much more) that it would be funny if it weren’t deadly serious.  In contrast to that pandemonium, any coherent Christian praises cultural Christianity.  
However, to defend cultural Christianity simply as the best of Western Civilization won’t work.  It promulgates a longstanding problem that is responsible for how we got into this mess in the first place. 
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What Charnock does that is so impressive is that he does not simply argue for an uncaused cause, designer, or moral governor, but he argues for God the Creator. He gives us a full definition of God and then uses individual arguments to prove each attribute. Charnock shows us that God is a Spirit. He argues for the incommunicable attributes of God (infinite, eternal, and unchangeable) and also that God is good, just, merciful, etc. His definition of God is like what is given in the Westminster Shorter Catechism Q4.

If you only read one book about God’s existence, it must be Charnock’s The Existence and Attributes of God. There is renewed interest in a Reformed Scholastic like Stephen Charnock due to a new two-volume edition of that work edited by Mark Jones. This is an important contribution because Charnock interacts with previous thinkers like Plato and Aquinas and critically appropriates their philosophical or theological insights when strategic. And yet, Charnock makes his own valuable contributions to our knowledge of God, further reforming the Scholastic tradition utilized by the Reformed Orthodox of his day. A look at his footnotes shows that he was familiar with the critical contributions to this subject and that he made his own contributions and corrections to previous thinkers. I believe this is the most important book about God’s existence and needs to be read by every Christian.
At a personal level, I was pleased to see this renewed interest in Reformed Scholastics like Charnock. I relied on Charnock in my Ph.D. dissertation and for what became my book, The Clarity of God’s Existence. I cherish an older copy from Baker from those student days. When a skeptical professor asked me who gives arguments to show it is clear that God exists, Charnock was at the top of my list. I began with him and then moved on to the challenges of theistic arguments from thinkers like David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Although living before them, Charnock provided the seeds of what grow into answers to their attacks on reason and the knowledge of God.
What Charnock does that is so impressive is that he does not simply argue for an uncaused cause, designer, or moral governor, but he argues for God the Creator. He gives us a full definition of God and then uses individual arguments to prove each attribute. Charnock shows us that God is a Spirit. He argues for the incommunicable attributes of God (infinite, eternal, and unchangeable) and also that God is good, just, merciful, etc. His definition of God is like what is given in the Westminster Shorter Catechism Q4.
His method corrects mistakes of previous theistic arguments. Rather than giving one argument and then concluding, “this is God,” Charnock gives us arguments for each part of the definition of “God.” He demonstrates that God is Spirit, he demonstrates the incommunicable attributes, and he demonstrates the moral attributes of God. In each case, he has given us an argument we can evaluate for soundness.
Atheism
Charnock begins with Psalm 14:1. Throughout the book, we find his reliance on the Psalms, and this is a reminder to us of how precious they are and the many arguments they give us to know God. The fool says in his heart there is no God. No one seeks God, no one understands, and no one does what is right. Atheism is without excuse. It is not an intellectually or morally defensible position. And yet it is at the core of the human condition. “None seek” means “noneseek.” Although humans might view themselves as doing their best in pursuing God, the truth is that in their postlapsarian natural condition, they are not doing so. No one understands or knows God as they should. Charnock makes the problem of God’s existence an existential problem for all of us. It cannot simply be a fun puzzle or challenge. Each of us must answer before God for our own failure to seek and understand.
Charnock defines three kinds of atheism. He says:
There is a threefold denial of God. 1. Quoad existentiam; this is absolute atheism. 2. Quoad Providentiam, or his inspection into, or care of the things of the world, bounding him in the heavens. 3. Quoad naturam, in regard of one or other of the perfections due to his nature (24).
Today, when we say “atheist,” we usually mean a materialist. We mean a person who says that only matter exists and that matter has always existed. There were ancient materialists like Democritus and there are very obvious contemporary atheists like Richard Dawkins. But this also means those who deny the existence of God, the Creator, who brought the universe into existence rather than existing alongside it from eternity, as Plato and Aristotle taught. It also includes the pantheist who denies the existence of God the Creator by saying that “all is God.” We can call these the dualists (both God and the universe exist without a beginning) and the monists.
His second definition of atheism makes this a much larger group and is more like what I call Biblical Atheism. This is the atheist who denies the providence of God. We find such a one described in Psalm 73:11 or Psalm 94:7. Here, too, we find Aristotle. Although Charnock will use vocabulary and insights from Aristotle in his theology proper, he is willing to criticize the philosopher for not using reason to understand the providence of God. He, like those in the Psalms just mentioned, posited a God that does not see and does not rule. For this, he was without excuse. This is also the Absolute of theologians like Tillich and being itself in Heidegger. Just like it is clear to reason that God exists, so too it is clear to reason that God rules and is sovereign.
His third definition pertains to the denial of particular parts of the definition of God. For instance, the open theist denies that God is unchangeable. Or the anthropomorphite denies that God is infinite. Both of these are usually the outcome of a failure to understand the so-called problem of evil. Here, Charnock points us to that highest and ultimate end: the knowledge of the glory of God. God rules over all things for the revelation of His glory. And our highest end is to see this glory revealed in all of His works. This both provides a solution to the problem of evil and also a teleology for all of the events of our lives.
He also discusses practical atheism, which brings atheism home to each of us. Practical atheism means living as if there is no God. It is living as if God is not real. Charnock tells us it is ungrateful contempt of God. Such a person could say the right words and claim to hold to the right theories but live as if there is no God. In fact, the way it normally works is that a person is living this way, and when called to give an account of their lives, it is then that their mind casts about looking for an intellectual defense. This is the condition of self-deception that then gets shared with others as self-justification. Atheism is an attempt at just such self-justification.
Charnock tells us the biblical solution, also knowable from general revelation, for practical atheism: the fear of the Lord. All understanding begins here. We are not able to get away with intellectualizing our belief about God and not having it affect our lives. Such a condition exhibits a lack of the fear of God. Even in the prelapsarian state, we would have a fear of God as the reverence and awe due to the sovereign Creator. But postlapsarian, when we come to understand our condition in unbelief, not understanding God as we should have, we are aware of our sin and the holiness of God. We know our just condemnation. Atheism is an attempt to solve this burden by denying it is real. It is a false remedy that, in the end, brings ruin.
He says, “Let us labor to be sensible of the atheism in our nature, and be humbled for it.” It is contrary to reason. “The unreasonableness of it concerns God. It is the high contempt of God. It is inverting the order of things; a making God the highest to become the lowest; and self the lowest to become the highest.” We attempt to make ourselves god and deny the true God. It is the original sin and it is the sin that each person commits. The atheist exalts himself and calls God a liar by saying he is seeking, but there is not enough evidence of God.
Practical atheism is the denial of the law of God. That law begins by commanding us to love God.  This law is written on our hearts, meaning it is the very nature of things.
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