When a person “identifies as” something he isn’t, what he’s doing is telling reality he’s in charge instead. That’s not just foolish, it’s unspeakably arrogant. I’ve written before of transgender bullying. Then it was a man bullying women by claiming he was one. This bullying is different is different: It’s just as real, but more foolish by far. “Identifying as” the other sex means nothing less than telling reality itself, “Sit down. Shut up. I’ll do the deciding from now on.”

I refuse to say I “identify as.” Period. I won’t “identify as” anything. If I’ve said it in the past, I repent of it. If you ask me what I identify as, I’ll give you an answer shows what’s wrong with it, and the best way I know is by playing stupid on you. Like this:
“So Tom, tell, me. What do you identify as?”
“Usually I use my driver’s license for identification.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. What gender and sexuality do you identify as?”
“My name’s Tom Gilson. Didn’t you know that already?”
“Oh, come on, Tom. You know what I’m asking for. I’ll say it again: What gender and sexuality do you identify as?”
“Serious? You mean you can’t tell those things just by looking? I’m standing right in front of you. I have a light complexion, wide shoulders, an Adam’s apple, a beard, a low voice, and a distinct lack of curves. You can see that, right?”
“Yes, of course I can see that. I can also hear you saying you’re not going to answer my question.”
“Exactly. How perceptive of you!”
“It’s okay, though. I’ve got you figured anyway. You’ve told me your choice as clear as if you said it out loud: Cisgender male, straight.”
“Choice? Did you say ‘choice’? Where in the world did you get that from?”
It’s In the “Choosing”
Choice: That’s exactly where “identify as” goes wrong. Virtually every time people say “I identify as,” it’s short for, “I choose to identify as … .” And their choice is either to “be” something they aren’t, or else they’ve chosen to be what they already were, as if their choice explains how they got that way.
Hence my supposed “choice” to be “cisgender” and male. If you’re born male and identify as female, that’s by choice. If you’re born male and identify as male, that’s by choice, too. Everything’s by choice.
Sometimes — though rarely — it’s legitimate to choose. I could choose to identify myself either as an author, a writer, or both. The truth of it depends on whether my work consists more in books I write, or in columns such as this one. In this case I actually do have a choice about it. I really do write books and articles, there really is a fine distinction between “author” and “writer,” and my work lands me somewhere near that line. So it’s a coin toss. Or a choice.
So yes, we have choices. We can choose evangelical Christian belief, or conservative politics, or (shudder!) to be a Yankees fan. And if I’m saying “choice” is the problem with “identify as,” wouldn’t it be okay to “identify as evangelical”?
I think not. Not these days, especially. There are still problems with it, even where choice is real. I’d group those problems under identity politics, language, and reality.
Identity Politics
Identity politics is a toxic mode of civil discourse that squashes complex realities into tiny little categories and calls those categories ultimate. The effects are ruinous.
Take racial politics, for example. The problem with it isn’t that racial issues aren’t real. They are. But identity politics treats race as if that’s virtually all that’s real. Relationships, geography, education, family circumstances, physical and mental health, spiritual beliefs and maturity, and all the other complexities of life may get a head-nod, but no real attention. “Yes, yes, we know about that. Can we get back to the racial question now, please?”
“Identifying as” has a totalizing effect, as if race is all that really matters. The same goes for sexual preference and “gender identity,” both of which have been lifted to near-absolute importance.
Read More
Related Posts:

When we compare the description in Revelation of the millennium with the Jesus’ own descriptions of binding and casting out Satan in the Gospels, one crucial point emerges: this is a work that Jesus accomplishes during his earthly ministry, not later. By Jesus’ two great victories over Satan during his temptation and his cross, Jesus shatters the vice-grip of our Enemy over the nations.

Bible-believing Christians have often disagreed about the significance of “the thousand years” (sometimes called, “the millennium”) that John writes about in the book of Revelation:
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. [2] And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, [3] and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.Rev. 20:1–3)
The big question is not only when this “thousand years” has been/is/will be, but what will happen during this “thousand years.” Notably, John tells us that during this time, Satan will be bound “so that he might not deceive the nations any longer.”
What should we expect from the binding of Satan?
Different Millennial Views on the Binding and Casting Out of Satan
Premillennialists take this thousand years as a reference to a Messianic reign of Jesus after his return, but before the glorification of God’s people in the eternal state. I had a dear, premillennialist mentor who would often remark to me, “I look around the world, and it seems pretty clear that Satan is still loose and up to his old tricks.” For the premillennialists, Satan’s binding cannot come until after King Jesus has returned.
Postmillennialists understand the thousand years as something that will take place after the eventual transformation of society by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, they believe that the leaven of the gospel will so thoroughly permeate our world that “all [will be] leavened” (Matt. 13:33). Once the entire world is brought under the dominion and Lordship of Jesus Christ, there will be one thousand years of peace and prosperity, during which time Satan is bound from harassing God’s people on earth. The millennium comes immediately before Christ’s return, at the conclusion of the thousand years.
Amillennialists see the thousand years as a reference to the age of the New Testament church. The “thousand years” is not a precise amount of time, but, as a large, round number that functions as a symbol for an undefined long period of time. For amillennialists, the key phrase for understanding the nature of Satan’s binding has to do with the definition John gives about the quality of this binding: “so that he might not deceive the nations any longer” (Rev. 20:3).
Amillennialists take this as the essential difference between the Old Testament and New Testament: Satan’s dominion over the nations has been shattered, so that the gospel of Jesus is now drawing people from every tribe, language, people, and nation into his kingdom (Rev. 5:9). Certainly, God drew a few Gentiles into the nation of Israel during the Old Testament. The degree to which God accomplishes this now in the New Testament era, however, is entirely unprecedented.
Amillennialism is my own understanding of the nature of the millennium. In this post, I want to focus on two important texts the help us to interpret the binding and casting out. I will argue that letting Scripture interpret Scripture drives us toward holding an amillennial view of the “thousand years” of Revelation 20.
The Binding of the “Strong Man” (Matt. 12:29)
The first text comes in the middle of the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus gives us some important insight into the progressive conquest of his kingdom into this world:
Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house.(Matt. 12:29)
What, precisely, does this binding of the strong man refer? Brandon Crowe makes a compelling case that it was Jesus’ successfully resisting Satan’s temptation at the beginning of his ministry that marks the binding of Satan. He writes:

Written by Charles B. Williams |
Sunday, June 11, 2023
In these blessings, we find the description of the citizen of heaven (Phil. 3:20–21), and with it, a heavenly pattern, for it marks the man who recognizes that this world cannot truly satisfy and reminds us that true blessedness is not found in the fading pleasures of all that this fading world offers. And it is here that we see the greatest blessing of all: that this pattern makes us ready for heaven, by molding us into the image of the King of this heavenly kingdom.

At the close of every Lord’s Day, the minister is afforded the tremendous privilege of pronouncing the benediction of our triune God on his assembled people: “May the Lord bless you, and keep you . . .” What beneficence! What boon! What bounty! to become the recipients of the divine favor and protection of the Maker and Redeemer of heaven and earth!
But then Monday comes, and once more we find ourselves engulfed in a seemingly endless wave of tragedies, both personal and corporate: an ailing father, a failed engagement, a divided congregation, a people in turmoil. Have the blessings failed? Has God forsaken his people?
Many of us recognize that divine favor is not materialistic, for the Scriptures never promise a life of influence, ease, or pleasure. At the same time, the sorrows we endure can so overwhelm us that we are left feeling confused and helpless. Bearing under the fury of a world that hates us from without, and the terrors of a conscience awakened to the depth of our own sin from within, such circumstances leave us utterly humiliated and exposed to our own inadequacy. And we ask: where is the blessing?
It is within this context that our Savior addresses his own, a people wounded and wearied under the weight of their estate of sin and misery. Matthew recounts to us those glad tidings Christ has brought as he pronounces the inauguration of the long-awaited kingdom, the blessings conferred upon the recipients of that kingdom, and the mode in which such blessings come as we await its consummation.
A Conflict of Kingdoms
The opening chapters of Matthew’s gospel narrate the irruption of the heavenly dawn into the earthly realm of sin and darkness. Against the backdrop of yet another mock Pharaoh comes one greater than Moses, the virgin-born Davidic Son, upon whose shoulders rest the government of an ever-increasing, unshakable kingdom (Isa. 9:6–7).
For sure, the nation had long awaited a deliverer, but their expectations were too small, too earthly. As Jesus travels from town to town, heralding the kingdom’s arrival, the people expect a political Messiah who will expel the Roman legions from their midst, not the demonic hordes. They hold to delusions of grandeur—of earthly power and prosperity—not spiritual liberation. The citizens want a theonomic revolution and festal buffets, while the rulers want only parlor tricks and magic shows. Yet Jesus’s message of the kingdom, summarized in the Sermon on the Mount, proclaims, not simply a better kingdom, but a different kind of kingdom. As Daniel portended, and as Luther recognized at Heidelberg in April 1518, the difference between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdoms of men was not a difference between dwarves and giants, but between light and dark. It was a difference not simply of size, but of kind. It was the difference between heaven and earth. And as this heavenly kingdom has irrupted into the earthly plane, it operates according to a different set of principles. The Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1–12) describe what life as a citizen of heaven looks like here on earth, as that light shatters and scatters the darkness. These blessings take on a particular form, upending Israel’s, and our, expectations.
The Blessings of the Heavenly Kingdom
When we consider the Beatitudes, we must first recognize what they are not. They are not natural dispositions. The great nineteenth century novelists—Hugo, Dickens, and Tolstoy—wrote of the poor, almost as if poverty itself was an unqualified virtue. Today, others do the same, but with respect to particular personality traits. Our Savior, however, does neither. He does not pronounce favor on a particular economic class; nor is he declaring that God’s grace is restricted solely to the morbid, the introvert, or the blissfully naive. Rather, the blessings of the kingdom befall those who have been subjugated by grace and reconciled through the mediation of the Son.
Read More
Related Posts: