Romans 8: Distractions
No matter the situation or context, no matter the “craziness” going on around us, the Christian is that person who sets themselves to still thinking about and focusing on the things of the Spirit. Are there distractions? Yes! There will always be distractions…perhaps it is our focus on God in the midst of distraction which is so necessary for our growth and faith and life.
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
Romans 8:5-6
I first wrote these meditations in the early months of the COVID pandemic when everyone was isolated at home, and it struck me how much I and other brothers and sisters needed to meditate deeply upon God’s word. Essentially, I was attempting to help my church and anyone else who would read these do precisely what Paul says Christians do in Romans 8:5 – setting our minds on the things of the Spirit. Even now, this reminds me of a famous sermon C.S. Lewis preached in Oxford in 1939, right at the outset of WW2 and during the German blitzkrieg where German bombs were continually dropping on England day and night. Lewis, asking what should students do in the midst of such turmoil, when the world was seemingly coming to an end, answered thus:
“The peculiar difficulty imposed on you by the war is another matter, and of it I would again repeat what I have been saying in one form or another ever since I started—do not let your nerves and emotions lead you into thinking your predicament more abnormal than it really is. Perhaps it may be useful to mention the three mental exercises which may serve as defenses against the three enemies which war raises up against the scholar.
The first enemy is excitement—the tendency to think and feel about the war when we had intended to think about our work. The best defense is a recognition that in this, as in everything else, the war has not really raised up a new enemy but only aggravated an old one. There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarrelling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable.
Favorable conditions never come. There are, of course, moments when the pressure of the excitement is so great that only superhuman self-control could resist it. They come both in war and peace. We must do the best we can.”
In essence, Lewis maintains that we should give our minds and effort to business as usual, as best we can. I think this is right in line with what Paul is getting at in Romans 8, verses 5-6. No matter the situation or context, no matter the “craziness” going on around us, the Christian is that person who sets themselves to still thinking about and focusing on the things of the Spirit. Are there distractions? Yes! There will always be distractions – some certainly greater than others. But perhaps it is our focus on God in the midst of distraction which is so necessary for our growth and faith and life. Isn’t this what Paul says in verse 6?
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There is No Pride in Denying Reality or the Image of God in Humanity
Whenever the nature of male and female are attacked or redefined, as pride month and gender ideology do, every Christian must fully appreciate that it is the very image and likeness of God Himself that is being attacked. Pride month and gender ideology attack the image of God. This is no small thing and something no Christian can pretend does not matter, much less support
We are now constantly reminded that June is so-called “pride month” and everyone is expected to take note, happily get on the bandwagon and celebrate accordingly. But how can pride month be starting when last year’s pride month never really ended? LGBT pride has now gone yearlong, literally 365. The ideology is constantly being forced upon us and our children at regular turns. Who doesn’t feel just like this anymore?
Regardless, it must be declared that there is no pride whatsoever in redefining and denying reality. This is precisely what the gender ideology behind pride month and every presentation of its flag does.
Here is the unavoidable truth: Humanity, across the great diversity of human culture and time, exists as male and female. Those are the only two options. Whenever or wherever you met a person, that person is either male or female, and they were born as such. This is certainly not just a traditional, conservative or Christian ideal. It is a universal truth, an objective biological fact.
It was not long ago that leading progressive French feminist philosopher Sylvaine Agacinski wrote assertively and unapologetically in her book The Parity of the Sexes,
One is born a girl or boy, one becomes woman or man.
The human species is divided in two, and, like most other species, in two only. This division, which includes all human beings without exception, is thus a dichotomy. In other words, every individual who is not man is woman. There is no third possibility. … Humankind does not exist outside this double form, masculine and feminine.
This is so obvious it hardly needs saying. And it certainly was not controversial when she wrote these words to her very progressive audience not that long ago.
But pride month and allyship with LGBT ideology demands we all reject this fundamental human truth, something no reasonable person can do.
In fact, they declare this common-sense, basic biological fact not only wrong, but one of the greatest evils of our times: It is transphobic and threatens the very lives of young people. Of course, neither accusation is true. Both accusations are meant to bully us into submission, and they have been quite effective.
“Non-binary” is not a thing. There is no third, fifth, twelfth, or seventieth gender. A woman cannot become a man or vice versa. No one is born in the wrong body. God does not make mistakes. The family and the future of humanity are founded upon male and female. Pride month and the ideology behind it categorically reject all of this.
Everyone who virtue signals their support for pride and the never-ending evolution into oblivion of the pride flag is indicating their opposition to basic human reality.
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Leading Science Magazine Questions Biological Reality of Male and Female
Humanity has never had any real trouble speaking scientifically, truthfully, and factually about what it means to be human as male and female. Never. No one has ever been confused about what those two words mean (and do not mean) until the last millisecond of human history.
We are often lectured, with no small measure of intellectual arrogance, that science is the one sure way of knowing all that is worth knowing. But it is not at all as simple and sure as that. Science cannot answer all questions, by any stretch. Especially the most important ones, like who is God, why do humans seek love, why do we laugh and cry, what is virtue and why does it matter, and why does extravagant beauty exist in the world? Science cannot answer any of these questions. It is not its domain.
But increasingly, we must also not miss the fact that “Science” itself doesn’t always follow science. In fact, sometimes “Science” directly violates science. Another example of this was recently demonstrated in the highly respected scientific journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
In their most recent issue, these editors published an academic letter from two neuroscientists and a biology grad student pushing a false gender ideology in the guise of science. What did these Princeton and Harvard scientists say? Their letter introduces a entirely novel view of male and female.
The first line of their published letter blankly asserts, “Inclusive language around sex diversity has never been more important.” And since, “scientific language directly affects trans-focused rhetoric and policy” they are calling on their peers to abandon the fundamentals of science in favor of just playing along with the lie that that there are more than two sexes or that people can switch genders. Science thought their learned readers would benefit from these two wholly unscientific sentences:
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