If God’s kingdom is already among us, then we should be taking those aspects of creation that don’t yet reflect that reality and transforming them into what they will one day be, by God’s grace and our participation. If the condition of exile is the result of separating oneself from YHWH, then what might a community formed by the presence of YHWH look like? 

Just as the human condition cannot be understood apart from the categories of guilt and grace, it cannot be understood apart from the categories of displacement and placement. Since the Protestant Reformation, many in the church have tended to described mankind’s situation post-fall in legal terms. Yet litigation is far from the only metaphor that the biblical writers employ. In the biblical imagination, sin is the quintessential displacer. When God’s people sin, they are exiled. Seen through this lens, the biblical story after Genesis 3 isn’t just about guilt, it’s about dislocation. It’s not just about atonement, it’s about placement.
In Genesis, exile is a covenantal punishment. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve rebel against God’s explicit instructions and death is the foretold consequence. However, their death isn’t immediate, at least not in the literal sense. First, they are exiled from the garden—this is the consequence of their sin, reminiscent of death in that they’re separated from Eden (i.e., immediate access to the presence of YHWH). The presence of death indicates separation from home. Eventually, exile “became a metaphor for political disenfranchisement, social inequality, and alienation from God,” argues Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor in Enduring Exile. The fallen condition of mankind is one of dislocation.
While the plight of man is to wander, the mission of God is to place. Yes, the Israelites are sinful and deserve no home, but God is merciful and eager to pursue them. Adam and Eve wanted autonomy and ended up wandering. In the book of Exodus, we see the giving of God’s law at Sinai as the conclusion of his people’s sojourn. Insofar as the Israelites respect the theocracy, they can have the promised land as a place to call home. Of course, it’s not only God’s law that implies placement, it’s also God himself. A return to home means a return to immediate access to YHWH—access to the Temple. Furthermore, the return home brings with it an accompanying hope for a future Davidic ruler who will secure the placement of Israel once and for all.
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As we revisit the truths that Thomas Brooks discovered in 1652, let us be reinvigorated by them today. Let us make war with our sin. Let us avoid the veneer of virtue signaling and resist the temptation to tuck them away like poison without dealing with it adequately. Let us flee to the arms of our dear savior for comfort, and let us stand in the power of the Spirit to live differently in the days ahead.

One of the most helpful books I have ever read was Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices by the great Puritan Thomas Brooks. In that book, which is more like a handbook on how to avoid the schemes of hell, Brooks lays out common ways the enemy so quickly entraps us, along with precious Gospel remedies we can employ to avoid the temptations he brings. Last week, we began looking more closely at the first of these devices and remedies and will continue again this week, looking at how Satan paints sin with virtuous colors.
Painting Sin with Virtue Signals
In the deepest recesses of the human psyche, like a balrog sleeping in the depths of Moria, exists an unquenchable torrent of guilt that cannot be assuaged by the putting on of virtues. And yet, the madness of the human condition is this, although we cannot succeed in doing, surely we will try, try, again. In fact, virtue signaling exists to distract from the inherent guilt we all know is festering within us, like a boil ready to unleash its murky contents.
Imprinted upon the sickly soul of man is the unavoidable knowledge that all have sinned and fallen short of our creator’s glory (Romans 3:23). But, instead of reckoning with this Holy God, the brittle soul suppresses this embarrassing knowledge in abject wickedness (Romans 1:18). Faced with the foul pollution of our contaminated character, we pretend we are virtuous because we cannot stand the terror of how sin has mangled us.
This is why Planned Parenthood when referring to the grizzly murder of a million infants per year, uses the benign phrase: women’s healthcare. The human ego cannot bear the horror and culpability of creating the most extensive serial killing ring in human history. So, with euphemisms turned into ad campaigns, they disguise their awful corruptions and attempt to convince the onlooking world that they are, in fact, the righteous ones. And if you do not join them, you are the real monster.
This is why democrats in 2020 were wearing the “I can’t breathe” t-shirts commemorating the death of George Floyd. Because, with a tattered legacy of being pro-slavery, pro-racism, pro-Jim Crow, and the perpetrator of a litany of violence against non-white races, the democrats must constantly play moral whack-a-mole, to forget who they were, and to convince everyone else they are unstained. And should you defy their clever wordsmithing? You will be thoroughly canceled, tossed into a “basket of deplorables,” doxed, and then deemed unfit for polite society. Their guilt fuels their senselessness.
But let us not puff out hollow chests while doing a little conservative jig with the Pharisees. Everyone virtue signals to some degree or another because no one wants to face the dragons hiding within. We cannot, as Christians, pretend that this is just a game the pagans play. When we lie, we paint with the strokes called: “I was only kidding.” When we foment anger, it is their stupidity that causes it. When we are cut off by a reckless driver, we deem him unfit for the road or travel, and yet, when we do the exact same thing, we are the ones who have an excellent reason. Perhaps, the most constant and revolting aspect of our sin is that it is so morbidly hideous that our souls not only scramble to hide it, cloak it, or redefine it, but it also forgoes true repentance in exchange for pitiful excuses and virtue signals. Without Christ, we are truly hopeless.
The Death of Signaling and Dawn of Virtue
Two thousand years ago, the divine author we rejected penned Himself into His own epic, taking upon Himself the weight of the tragedy, His characters deserved. And unlike us, He didn’t participate in the charades or dawn the theater masks (Thalia and Melpomene). He did not feign righteousness or masquerade with contrived or pretended holinesses. Instead, he lived authentically as the God-man before us. Instead of pacifying guilt, which He had none, He assuaged the wrath of almighty God. For His elect, He came so that all who are in Christ could be set free from the toil of shame and misery to live in the glorious freedom of serving Him.
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It is depressing to consider that feminist activists and gay and lesbian writers have frequently been fiercer in opposing this ideology than many Christians, perhaps because they are more accustomed to being counter-cultural dissidents. I am not saying this fight is lost. Not by any means. But if ordinary people do not refuse to participate in this mass delusion, then it will be. I’m not suggesting that ordinary people need to become activists. But if everyday acts of defiance do not become normal in short order, our collective cowardice will ensure that the transgender movement owns the culture for good.

As the post-Christian West convulses with a transgender culture war that is increasingly careening into violence, people still possessed of common sense constantly ask a single question: How did we go from gay “marriage” to the elimination of sex categories overnight?
There are many good answers to this question, of course—historical, cultural, philosophical, and even (or perhaps especially) theological. But the single most significant factor contributing to the wild success of the transgender movement’s cultural blitzkrieg is rarely mentioned: cowardice.
Transgender Dominance
It took decades for the gay rights movement to achieve political dominance. It took less than a decade for the transgender activists who surged behind them to succeed. As Vladimir Lenin once put it: “You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” The trans activists have found mostly mush, and I’m not merely referring to the mind of the American president. And so, they pushed, and here we are. Entire institutions have gone down like dominos.
Trans activists swiftly discovered how effective cry-bullying was, and how quickly people cave for fear of being called names. They realized that despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, they can    blackmail their opponents by accusing them of pushing “transgender children”—a now-exploding category hitherto unknown in recorded history—to suicide. They insist that they are on the “right side of history” despite the fact that they have only a few years on their side and we have thousands on ours. The masses remained mostly mute.
There was confusion, yes. Chaos, certainly. But ultimately, it was the cowardice of millions that gave the gender ideologues the culture: the school boards that backed away from a fight and the medical institutions that swung the doors wide open to butchers and extremists. It was the fear of the parents who were cowed into silence while their consciences screamed. Worst of all are the many politicians who, despite claiming the mantle of conservative, have stood by while legions of children have followed activists into a lifetime of excruciating medicalization at the hands of malpractitioners.
Consider, for a moment, how many of our middle-aged and elderly politicians would have reacted if they were told in the year 2000 that one day they would be championing the right of biological males to enter women’s bathrooms and changing rooms unimpeded, or that they would allow brawny male rapists into women’s prisons, or male athletes into women’s sporting events. Imagine how they would have responded if we told them that within two decades, they would call double mastectomies and castrations for healthy children a “human right.”
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