The World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) was established to advance gender ideology as the scientific and professional viewpoint. Any health professional with a different viewpoint is speaking against the professional associations if they give voice to their dissent. Thus, the professionals that distressed parents will turn to will likely recommend the denial of a child’s true sex as the proper treatment.

Gender ideology, the basis of transgenderism, was the topic of two presentations at the recent Southern Evangelical Seminary’s Apologetics Conference in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Jay Richards, Director of the DeVos Center for Religion, Life, and Family at the Heritage Foundation discussed the philosophy itself, while Christian apologist and author Frank Turek, President of CrossExamine.org, discussed its radical inconsistencies and disastrous consequences.
The Fracturing of Marriage and Sex
Richards said that the sexual revolution is “a fracturing of things that are meant to go together.” Today, the dominant culture in practice and law and rhetoric is pulling apart what God intended to go together, and thus “all sorts of bad things are unleashed.” What is pulled apart is “the organic unity of marriage, sex, and the sexual act and childbearing.” Sex and childbearing are held together in traditional Christianity. The sexual revolution pulled these things apart, not only intellectually, but also technologically. Indeed, Richards maintained that the sexual revolution was not possible until the advent of the birth control pill, which made practical the separation of sex and childbearing. He compared this to the Protestant Reformation and the printing press. Advancing the Bible against prevailing religious doctrines and practices was greatly facilitated by the new availability of Bibles and literature supporting the Reformation.
In our day, the smartphone has had a dramatic impact on social relations and behavior. Technology likewise enabled a worldwide shutdown of society in 2020. With the separation of sex from childbearing, marriage is seen more as an affectional relation than the basis of procreation and a family. A 50-state enactment of unilateral (or no-fault) divorce followed. This made a marriage contract easier to break than a business contract. People take these changes “for granted,” but they were “unprecedented though for most of Christian history.” The deregulation of sex resulted in an increase of unwanted pregnancies, which led to a demand for legal abortion, which the Supreme Court decreed in 1973.
These changes, Richards said, were not only in the United States, but worldwide. The coupling of people in marriage “only makes sense” if there is understood to be a “complementary nature of male and female,” and that as a basis for procreation and a family. Without this basis, there is no reason why two people of the same sex might not marry each other. But once same-sex marriage was decreed, “the logic of monogamy fell apart.” There is no reason why a relationship not focused on the union of male and female need be only between two people. Indeed, without the union of male and female being essential for marriage and the family, the way is open to attack the division of humanity into males and females. After the Obergefell decision in 2015, it was as though “everybody had a memo” to start talking about transgenderism. The sexual revolution is “the logical outworking of an original revolutionary idea that was enabled by technology.”
Richards said that there is a difference in people’s ability to comprehend these changes based on age. Baby boomers and “gen Xers” find these changes “so discontinuous” with the world that they knew “that we tend to not quite get what’s being said.” On the other hand “gen Zers” have “sort of been steeped in this stuff.” Young people from many public and even private schools have been “bombarded” by gender ideology for some time, and the new ideas do not seem as strange. Indeed, gender ideology is taught to young children not yet able to read. This is truly radical, because, Richards said, among the things a young child needs to know to “navigate reality” are “the difference between an adult and a kid, and the difference between a boy and a girl.” Because the difference between male and female is so basic, it is important to “queer” or destabilize the beliefs of young children to further the objectives of self-determination and moral autonomy.
Many teens today follow social media “influencers,” who sensationalize the ideas of gender ideology. Early adolescents disturbed by changes to their bodies or psyches are vulnerable to the valorizing of transgenderism, and its basic claim that their bodies are at war with their souls. They are told that with pills and surgery their bodies can be made to conform to their sense of self. This has resulted in a massive increase in the number of minors presenting with “gender dysphoria.” This he defined as “the intense sense of distress and discomfort with your sexed body.” It is not really a false belief about one’s body, but only discomfort with the body one has.
Both sex and gender are several hundred year old words, but starting in the 1960s, academics and other theorists of sex began referring to the biological difference of male and female as sex, and its psychological and social aspects as gender. But this distinction was then replaced by gender ideology as it currently exists, which denies biological sex and distinguishes between “sex assigned at birth” and “gender identity.” Gender identity is supposed to be the “internal sense of our gender.” But this definition defines gender in terms of itself, so that it has no objective meaning. It is claimed that sex based on body parts or structure is only a “social construct… associating certain body parts with stereotypes, called sexes.” The determination of sex when a child is born is thus only an arbitrary assignment. Although it strains credulity to believe that sex determination based on body parts is arbitrary, this is in fact what is being maintained.
Read More
Related Posts:

Ultimately, this oracle of King Lemuel’s mother could be summed up as three warnings against the improper use of authority.  I have previously covered the topic of authority in some detail, describing how God gives us authority for the purpose of obeying Him and caring for the people He has entrusted to us.  Therefore, if we disobey Him we are acting outside of our authority.  This oracle tells us we must use our God-given authority to ensure justice and righteousness rather than abusing it on personal pleasures.  We must approach our responsibilities with sobriety, not allowing any substances or distractions to compromise our ability to make wise decisions that benefit those God has placed in our care.  Finally, we must overcome any temptation to ethical compromise that gratifies our own desire.

The words of King Lemuel. An oracle that his mother taught him: What are you doing, my son? What are you doing, son of my womb? What are you doing, son of my vows? Do not give your strength to women, your ways to those who destroy kings. It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted. 6 Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.
-Proverbs 31:1-9, ESV

When looking for leadership lessons in Scripture, I doubt Proverbs 31 would come to mind for most people.  Most Christians associate Proverbs 31 with one thing: its description of the excellent wife.  I did refer to that description in my leadership paper when discussing what the Bible teaches about women in leadership in the workplace, but aside from that its application to leaders in general is not immediately clear. In truth, the description of the excellent wife is the second of two sections of Proverbs 31.  The often-overlooked first nine verses of Proverbs 31 are an oracle about how to approach the responsibilities of kingship, but it can be applied to any type of leadership.  In addition to political leaders (Romans 13), God has appointed husbands to lead their homes and fathers assisted by mothers to lead their children (Ephesians 5:22-6:4), pastors to lead local churches assisted by deacons (1 Timothy 3, 1 Peter 5), and supervisors to lead in the workplace (Ephesians 6:5-9).  But since leadership is really about influence, everyone can lead in informal ways, which means that Scripture’s exhortations for leaders are applicable to all of us.  Therefore, leaders in all walks of life would be wise to heed the warnings of this three-thousand-year-old oracle. 
Before we can apply this oracle to leaders in general, we need to understand its context.  Proverbs 31:1 describes this as the oracle of a certain King Lemuel that was taught to him by his mother.  There is debate over who this Lemuel was.  Some think it was another name for Solomon while others believe he was a foreign king.  Regardless, it is clearly something that this king was taught this oracle by his wise mother to help him remember the most important aspects of being a king.  As such, she likely taught it to him from a young age, and the fact that it is recorded in Scripture as his words rather than hers shows that he remembered it well, so her lesson was effective.  Earlier in Proverbs, Solomon exhorts his son to not forsake his mother’s teaching (Proverbs 1:8, 6:20), and this son clearly did that by learning this oracle well enough to remember it and seeing it as important enough to pass on to others.  And since the Holy Spirit inspired this like all others passages of Scripture, we know that it was recorded for our instruction (Romans 15:4), so this oracle is just as much for us as it was for this mysterious king.
A Call to Caution
The oracle begins with a single phrase repeated three times in verse 2: “what are you doing?”.  Before looking at this phrase, it is important to note that each time it appears in verse 2, it is followed by a statement of affection from this mother to her son.  Thus, it comes from a place of great love care from a mother who wants what is best for her son, which motivates her to warn him of potential pitfalls of kingship, so she repeats the phrase “what are you doing?”.  This phrase is used by Moses’ father-in-law Jethro before the latter offered his wise and necessary advice (Exodus 18:14).  It would also be used later by God to question why Elijah had fled to Horeb (1 Kings 19:9,13) and by Nehemiah when rebuking the returned exiles (Nehemiah 13:17).  When we combine this with the statement that no one can ask that question of God (Ecclesiastes 8:4), it is clear that this statement is a precursor to correcting bad or unwise behavior.  Undoubtedly every mother has said this phrase countless times when her children are deviating from wise behavior.  The exhortation is for the child to pause and consider his or her actions, so that is what this mother is telling her royal son: stop and consider your actions. 
This is important for all people but especially for leaders.  The more powerful and influential leaders are, the more likely their words and actions are to have unintended consequences.  An off-handed comment can be taken as direction that the leader never intended, resulting in wasteful effort by subordinates trying to do what they think the leader wants.  Regardless of the level of leadership, every leader makes decisions that affect other people.  Growing up, my pastor would frequently say that there are only three things that are eternal: God, His Word, and people.  Leadership roles are temporary, but every leader is entrusted by God for a time with caring for people who He made in His image.  Therefore, it is of utmost importance for leaders to stop and consider the affects their decisions might have on those people God has entrusted to their care.  Scripture is clear that leaders will have to give an account to God for how they cared for the people God entrusted to them (Ephesians 6:9).  But the more important application for leaders is to stop and think of the ethical implications of their actions, which is what the rest of the oracle is about.  Leadership is about making decisions, which puts leaders into a position where opportunities for ethical compromise will arise, which leads to the first specific exhortation of this oracle.
Do Not Give Your Strength to Women
This mother’s first exhortation is for her son to avoid giving his strength to women (verse 3).  She even goes so far as to say that this is what destroys (literally “wipes out”) kings.
Read More
Related Posts:

The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament. The Lord’s Supper is a divine gift meant to declare and seal to us, Christ’s church, His great promise of the gospel of a crucified and risen Christ. Receive the sacraments with gratitude, and rejoice in the gospel given you in and through them.

A slight correction from last time. I read Heidelberg 65, which is important to this series, but I referenced it as Heidelberg 66. I apologize for the confusion.
Heidelberg 65 asks, “where does . . . faith come from?” Great question. Believers want to have faith and a stronger and deeper faith. How do they get that? Heidelberg 65 answers, “From the Holy Spirit who works it in our hearts by the preaching of the gospel and strengthens it by the use of the sacraments.” Aren’t you glad for the gospel of a generous and powerful God? You don’t have to muster up the faith yourself, you simply receive grace from your God, and He builds your faith. You need preaching like you need regular meals if you’re going to have strength on your pilgrim journey to heaven. Additionally, the Holy Spirit strengthens your faith by the use of the sacraments. You need the Lord’s Supper like you need regular meals if you’re going to endure your pilgrim journey to heaven. So then, let’s ask the question: What are the sacraments?
When you hear the word “sacrament” what do you think of? Maybe the word sounds Roman Catholic to you, but it’s not a word reserved for Romanists. The word “sacrament” has been used in the church for a long time. The Protestant Reformers used the word.
According to Webster’s Dictionary 1828, the word “sacrament” comes from the Latin sacramentum meaning an oath, the root being sacer or sacred. Additionally, ancient writers used sacramentum to describe a mystery. But in the history of the church, the word “sacrament” was used to refer to visible signs and seals that communicated the gospel of Christ. Heidelberg 66 defines sacraments as follows:
The sacraments are holy, visible signs and seals. They were instituted by God so that by their use He might the more fully declare and seal to us the promise of the gospel. And this is the promise: that God graciously grants us forgiveness of sins and everlasting life because of the one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross.
So, several things can be said about the sacraments. They are holy, visible, signs, and seals. It’s right to say the sacraments “were instituted by God.” Man didn’t invent the sacraments; God gave the sacraments to man. What does God intend to do through the sacraments? God intends to “more fully declare and seal to [His church] the promise of the gospel.” So the sacraments are declarations and authenticating seals of the gospel of Christ to Christ’s church. The sacraments represent God’s promise to us His church. What’s the promise? The sacraments signify and seal the gospel promise of God to us. Here’s the promise: “that God graciously grants us forgiveness of sins and everlasting life because of the one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross.” It’s really, really important to understand that the sacraments are God’s gift to His church, a gift through which He communicates the gospel and its benefits to them. The sacraments are not gifts that the church gives to God. The sacraments are not a response to the gospel per se, they are the gospel being given by God to His church as they obediently receive them.
Read More
Related Posts: