What’s better than a world without sin, sorrow, and death? A world with God. Yes, he will wipe away our tears. Yes, he will heal our wounds and cure our diseases. Yes, he will finally do away with that awful enemy, death. But those blessings, while infinitely great, will be as puddles next to the ocean of having him and being his.
People often describe pivotal moments in their lives as “the day when God turned my world upside down.” Some experience, some conversation, some trial radically reshaped how they viewed themselves, their lives, their relationships, and the world around them. Well, in my sophomore year of college, God turned heaven upside down for me.
I grew up in a Christian home with loving Christian parents, and had been a Christian myself for a number of years at that point in college. I read the Bible and prayed most days. I was part of a faithful Bible-preaching church and was surrounded by mature and intentional Christian friends. I was even doing ministry among high school students, sharing the gospel and discipling them in the faith. And then, in a moment—in a sentence—God suddenly flooded the gospel with new meaning, new colors, new intensity and joy.
To draw me deeper into the gospel, though, God had to first confront me, but it was the sweetest kind of confrontation, the most satisfying kind of rebuke. The sentence tackled me where I sat and has never let me go.
Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. (God Is the Gospel, 47)
Question for Our Generation

The gospel is the way to get people to God. The gospel is the way to get me to God. It was the kind of rare epiphany that is both devasting and thrilling. Devastating, because you realize just how much you’ve had wrong until now. Thrilling, because you have stumbled into a land you’d never seen before, an ocean you’d never sailed before, a favorite meal you’d never tasted before.
God is not just the only way to heaven; he is what makes heaven worth wanting. He is the great meal. He is the wild and wondrous ocean. He is the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:44–46). John Piper presses home the surpassing gift of God himself with a haunting question:
The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there? (God Is the Gospel, 15)
Could you?
Could I? That was the question that turned heaven on its head for me. Could I be content in a heaven without Christ? And if not, if Christ really was what made heaven an eternity worth wanting, why wasn’t I doing more to know and enjoy him now on earth?
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Christians ever identified themselves by inner desires?  Don’t we all experience a multitude of desires we deal with besides sexual ones?  As a single female Christian, it never occurred to me to identify myself related to any sexual desires.  I am not alone.  Among Christians, there are life-long single men and women, widowed men and women, divorced men and women, who have obeyed God’s commandments while remaining celibate during periods of their lives.  Furthermore, they never identified themselves by any desires they experienced during those same periods of their lives.

Dear Dr. Johnson:
I read your USA Today article, “I’m a gay, celibate pastor of a conservative church.”  Here’s a trick for de-scalation.”  My first thought was why would a Christian–—and a pastor at that–—take an issue controversially engaged and involving believers of a specific church and denomination out to the world–—a world that generally mocks Christianity and Christians? A second thought came immediately–— that this is not “de-escalation,” is it?  If anything, it’s a bold escalation bringing an unbelieving world into the church’s business.
Perhaps it’s time someone other than a married man or woman address you due to our mutually-deprived lives in accordance with God’s righteous laws–—deprived but not unfulfilled or unfruitful.  To begin with, you state you’ve been investigated by church authorities . . . because of your sexual orientation.”  As this issue is long-standing and quite public, you appear to miss the focus, that is, your promotion of “gay Christian identity” more so than your inner conflict.  You appear to insist on identifying yourself by desires.  Since when in Christianity’s history have Christians ever identified themselves by inner desires?  Don’t we all experience a multitude of desires we deal with besides sexual ones?  As a single female Christian at 80 years of age, it never occurred to me to identify myself related to any sexual desires.  I am not alone.  Among Christians, there are life-long single men and women, widowed men and women, divorced men and women, who have obeyed God’s commandments while remaining celibate during periods of their lives.  Furthermore, they never identified themselves by any desires they experienced during those same periods of their lives.
Specifically, why would any believer choose to self-identify oneself with a biblically-communicated deviant desire?  Both Plato and Aquinas taught: “It is sexual vice, among all vices, that has the greatest tendency to destroy rationality.  Sexual desire can seriously cloud the intellect even in the best of circumstances, but when its objects are contra naturam, indulgence makes the very idea of an objective, natural order of things hateful.”
Further on in the article, you confess: “I’ve found myself at times curled up in a ball on my office floor weeping.”  You do not define or describe exactly on what basis you wept.  Was it because you struggle with your desires?  Was it because you feel persecuted?  Was it perhaps a combination of both?  What it reveals is that you weren’t “gay.”  You were, in fact, “miserable.”  I haven’t curled up in a ball, but I know what it is to weep before the Lord.  They were times of recognizing sinfulness in diverse areas of my life and God’s many, many mercies and acts of grace in my life for which I knew I didn’t deserve.  We all need to humbly weep over any sinful desires, e.g., lust for power, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life, and more.
Now permit me to specifically address your insistence on identifying yourself as “gay.”  The word “gay” is essentially a euphemism, isn’t it?  It’s “a mild or pleasant word used instead of one that is unpleasant or offensive,” according to the dictionary.  In other words, it’s a cover-up word.  It’s used instead of “deviancy,” “homosexual,” “lesbian,” or even “sodomite.”  It softens something that is biblically very offensive to God.  I can’t remember anyone being willing to call himself/herself a “deviant Christian,” a “homosexual Christian,” a “lesbian Christian,” or “a sodomite Christian.”  Would you be more honest to use any one of the genuine words for what you are claiming?  If you chose the actual word for the sin and sinful temptation you struggle with, would you choose to so identify yourself then as such a believer first, and secondly as a minister of the Gospel? Those terms sound terrible, don’t they?  Well, truth reveals the awfulness of sin and temptation.
I’m sorry if someone or others have hurt you unkindly and unnecessarily.  Many of us have been hurt by fellow believers.  At the same time, we have to do some soul-searching in order to ensure we did not do or say anything that deserved honest, loving, rebuke.  As a pastor, you must be aware that there are many diverse sexually immoral desires even believers struggle against.  So far, none of those are employed to identify one’s Christian faith.  Do you really want that door opened?  If alleged “gay” Christians insist on being so identified, wouldn’t the rest of us feel the need to identify ourselves otherwise?  Do Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican priests need to outwardly identify their sexuality?  Wouldn’t that become a quagmire for the church?
For millennia, there have been single or bachelor pastors/priests.  It did not provoke unwarranted curiosity.  Hopefully, the majority practiced celibacy, not as a sacrifice but as an act of obedience and love for God’s holy law.  The same is true for non-clerical men and women who devoted themselves to God’s holy and righteous moral standards.
Back to bringing the world into this ecclesiastical issue:  Wasn’t it unwise to do so?  Would the Holy Spirit lead you to put fellow believers and your fellow elders into a position to be further mocked and scorned by the world?  Was love the driving force or a desire for affirmation and sympathy by the many unbelieving “gays” and others who will take your article and run with it to hurt Christians who humbly seek to follow God’s commands?
A shepherd’s vocation is to protect the sheep—not to expose them to danger or derision.  It’s not too late for you to rethink and relinquish identifying your faith by an immoral and sinful desire.
I’m just a single Christian woman who has lived a long life accepting all the limitations and proscriptions our most compassionate God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—communicated to the unmarried knowing they represent His love.  But I’ve never felt any need to identify my faith by any desires, especially any morally sinful desires.
Sincerely in Christ,Helen Louise Herndon
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.

Written by Ryan T. Anderson |
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Children who feel deep discomfort with their bodily sex should be treated with kindness, respect, compassion, and love. They need to be protected from bullying, teasing, and any form of mistreatment. But they deserve to know the truth and to be guided to embrace the truth with whatever assistance we can give to help them feel comfortable with their bodies.

Every newborn child is either a boy or a girl, just as every human adult is either a man or a woman. This is a biological reality. Boy and girl, man and woman, are just the age-specific terms for human males and females. Sex for human beings, like all other mammalian species, is binary. And stable. Sex does not exist along a spectrum, nor is it fluid. That’s why activists use different words—gender, and gender identity—to make those claims.
But stick with sex for a moment. The reason we can confidently say that sex in humans (like other mammals) is binary and stable is because there are two ways of being organized for sexual reproduction. What do I mean by that? Organisms are organized. Human beings, like other organisms, are composed of parts—organs—that work together as an integrated unit (a whole or complete entity). The various organs perform various functions, but not in a haphazard or disorganized way. They are, rather, organized. All of us humans—male and female alike—are organized the same way when it comes to our respiratory system and the function of breathing, and our circulatory system and the function of pumping blood. But we are organized differently in one key respect—sexual reproduction. So when we say there are male and female human organisms—people—we are talking about two ways of being organized sexually—that is, in respect of sexual reproduction and the reproductive system.
Sex is not “assigned at birth,” nor at a twenty-week ultrasound. It is identified, that is, recognized, based on the organization of the organism. Sex—in terms of male and female—is determined by the organization of the organism for sexually reproductive functioning. So sex as a status—male and female—is a recognition of the organization of a body to reproduce in a certain way. More than simply being identified on the basis of such organization, sex is a coherent concept based—and based only—on that organization. The fundamental conceptual distinction between a male and a female is the organism’s organization for sexual reproduction.
Why say it’s binary and stable? It’s binary because there are only two types of sexual organization, and their component parts. There are two gametes, two genitals, two sets of reproductive organs, and two reproductive systems. That is, there is sperm and egg, penis and vagina, testicles and ovaries. There is no third genital, no third gonad, no third gamete, no third reproductive organ, no third reproductive system. That’s the binary. It’s stable—rather than fluid—because unlike some other species, the human being does not—indeed cannot—change sexes, morphing from male to female and vice versa. Nor do truly “intersex” people or “hermaphrodites” exist. Yes, there are disorders of sexual development, where someone may develop without a complete reproductive system and perhaps even with vestigial aspects of the other reproductive system, but these people truly are—and they know themselves to be—male or female—that is, their bodies are fundamentally organized for either the male or female role in procreation. Not both, not neither, and not somewhere in between. (For more on this, see Chapter 4 of When Harry Became Sally.)
“Gender Identity” is Gender Ideology
Of course disorders of sexual development are not what is driving modern transgender ideology. When you see someone appeal to so-called “intersex” conditions, it is a red-herring. What’s taking place today is not the question of how to identify sex in cases where it’s not fully formed and thus hard (at least early on) to classify.[1] No, instead a new ideological framework is being imposed, one where sex is said to be merely “assigned at birth” and then something called “gender identity”—one’s inner sense of something called “gender”—determines one’s sex. On such a theory, there is no intrinsic meaning or importance to the sexed body. Instead, subjective feelings determine reality, so that all of us must adopt a “gender identity.” The end result is that identifying as a boy or a girl, or a man or a woman—or both, or neither, or somewhere in between—is what makes you a boy or a girl, a man or a woman—or both, neither, or somewhere in between. That’s the new dogma, rather than boys being immature human males, and men being mature human males; and girls being immature human females, and women being mature human females. We’ve moved from an objective recognition of reality to a subjective assertion of identity—and to ruthless demands that everyone affirms these identities.
But what could determine this so-called “gender identity” as an inner sense of “gender” distinct from sexual identity and bodily sex? The answer is simple: Social and cultural assumptions based on stereotypes. Stereotypes about how boys and girls, men and women, are supposed to behave, what they’re supposed to be interested in, how they’re supposed to look. Some claim that with “gender identity” there’s an inner truth that is “discovered” (and then asserted) while others say “gender” is a self-created “performance.” What is discovered or performed, however, will be the result of cultural assumptions. In this sense, “gender identity” is a social construct. And today, many new “gender identities” are an explicit rejection of the stable sex binary itself: hence the rise of non-binary identities. Indeed, increasingly it appears that many young women are just opting out—rejecting—their femaleness without any real sense of what it is they’re embracing.
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