“False teachers strive more to win over men to their opinions, not better them in their [Christian walk].” False teachers want you to forget that the sin of homosexuality is rebellion against the creation ordinance (which is the same sin leveled by letters of the alphabet soup, LGBTQ). Rebellion against God’s created order, which he calls good, isn’t erased because the person committing this sin is someone you love.

Dear Mr. False Teacher,
Permit me to write boldly to you. You have repeated your shallow shibboleths in sermons, blogs, and conferences, and you have tried very hard to pretend that secular society is a neutral playground, a marketplace of ideas where Christianity is welcome to flourish.
You punt for nuance every time and have made every clear teaching of the law and gospel a grey area of ambiguity.
You have sought the middle road on every issue: gay marriage, transgender normalization, Black Lives Matter, and abortion.
You always seek the third way.
But it’s getting harder for you to persuade your flock because some of them see that a raging spiritual war has washed out the middle road and the third way.
I believe that you are at a crossroads.
So let me put it straight: if you are a true Christian who has fallen into some bad theology, I’m throwing you a rope. Why not grab it?
Your rhetorical strategy was to yield the moral language to the left–using transgender pronouns, normalizing all things LGBTQ+, and generally asking, “Did God Really Say?” anytime biblical clarity came with a cost. Maybe you tell yourself that you mean well. Perhaps you truly believe your innovations are better than God’s word because you fancy yourself more merciful than God. You and your friends redefined the biblical concepts once foundational to all Christians, like being born again, forsaking sin, and finding liberty in Christ.
By redefining biblical words through secular definitions, you almost persuaded yourself and others that:

Being “born again” meant coming to grips with your personal truth.
“Forsaking sin” meant not offending unbelievers with God’s word.
“Finding liberty in Christ” meant doing whatever your feelings dictate.

Believe me. I understand your dilemma. Let’s not forget that I once promoted garbage ideas, such as “pronoun hospitality,” and garbage aphorisms, such as “homosexuality is a sin, but so too is homophobia.” I repent before God and men. Christians “repent of their particular sins particularly,” as the Westminster Confession of Faith XV.V teaches. As God’s Word says, “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:7-9).
Perhaps you think I am exaggerating the problem?
Did you miss the federal government program that puts LGBTQ+ in all government schools as part of an anti-bullying mandate?[1] But instead of warning your flock of danger, you told them that “Love is Love,” therefore, the Christian’s responsibility in the government schools is “Love, Don’t Leave.”  (Way to go using an aphorism instead of the Bible. It’s catchier; you can say it around unbelievers without offending them, and you won’t risk bringing God into the equation.)
Did you miss that after the State of Tennessee passed a law protecting minors from self-mutilation under the Frankensteinian umbrella of “gender-affirming surgery,” the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice leveled a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee?[2] Did you catch that? My friend Andrew Branch put it best: “It’s official: A 14th Amendment claim by the federal government over castrating minors.”
And although by now you are likely “feeling triggered” –as your peer group likes to call it–I suggest you man up, Mr. False Teacher, because Mr. Thomas Brooks would like to have a word with you.
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The church in America has taken a major hit.  In the PCA, homosexuals stand in some pulpits every Sunday as teaching elders.  The church’s response to Covid-19 was pathetic.  After the original panic period, most churches in America continued to close their doors and prevented the people of God from worshiping together as a congregation.

Christianity was once the dominant religion in America, and Christian morals had a major impact on all of our cultural institutions.  Americans had faith in the integrity of these systems.  That time has ended.  As Christians slept, most of these institutions were secularized over a period of years.  However, many Christians appear to be clinging to these institutions and have made idols out of them.  But the idols are falling down one by one.  The Wizard of Oz is fake. Consider the following.

Democracy – The idea of America as a Constitutional Republic has inherent in it an element of democracy (rule by the people). The people still elect representatives. We were told that democracy makes life safe for the people and guarantees freedom.  This became the American gospel.  However, this idol is quickly falling down.

First, we can no longer trust in the voting system that puts people into office, no more than we can trust in people to vote for godly men to serve in these offices.  The federal government is mostly ruled by bureaucrats who are not elected.  Wokism has taken over the White House and old white men like me are declared to be racists – enemies of the State. The Supreme Court has no law higher than itself, and it finds in the Constitution the legitimacy of both abortion and homosexual marriage. The Wizard of Oz is fake.

Public Schools – I was raised in the public schools in the 50s and 60s of the last century. As a covenant child, my parents could send me off to school with confidence that their Christian world-and-life-view would not be contradicted by my teachers.  The principal of my high school was an elder in my local church. Today, Critical Race Theory has become the underlying curriculum of the public schools.  Teachers are under the dominion of hegemonic unions such as the National Education Association (NEA).  Parents who protest before school boards are now put on a potential domestic terrorist list by the FBI at the direction of the Department of Justice. The Wizard of Oz is fake.
Military – A calling to serve this country in the Armed Forces has always been considered an honor. After the debacle in Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the legitimacy of that honor went on trial.  Now the military is on a witch-hunt to purge its ranks by expelling anyone who voted for Donald Trump.  We must never forget that when the people become the enemy of tyrants, that the military becomes the most powerful weapon of tyrants against the people. The Wizard of Oz is fake.
Media – The days of Walter Cronkite are gone, even though probably behind the scenes, all was not well in those days either. The media has become a ministry of the State. Disinformation must be censored. Fake News is real.

Even Fox News is disappointing.  Recently, I watched political conservative Tammy Bruce, who is a self-declared lesbian, critique the plight of NCAA sports where men who identify as women are taking over women’s sports.  She herself identifies as a man in the boudoir, but it’s wrong for a male to identify as a female in a college swim meet.  Incongruity has become significant even on the political right.  The Wizard of Oz is fake.

Corporations – Intersectionality has taken over the universities in America. Free speech is dead.  Label a man who identifies as a woman by the pronoun “him,” and you will be fired rather quickly.  Most corporate boards are filled with graduates from these universities.  Americans used to respect the success of corporations who were founded by men who risked so much.  Neo-Marxist equality is now the religion that rules Big Corp. Free-enterprise America is now taken up the mantle of this new righteousness. The Wizard of Oz is not real.
Church – Finally, the church in America has taken a major hit. In the PCA, homosexuals stand in some pulpits every Sunday as teaching elders.  The church’s response to Covid-19 was pathetic.  After the original panic period, most churches in America continued to close their doors and prevented the people of God from worshiping together as a congregation. Attendance in most churches is down at least 20% from pre-covid days.  This appears to be permanent.  In conservative denominations, wokism is gaining ground every day.  I know people who have quit the church and who will never go back. They believe that The Wizard of Oz is fake.

I’m sure much more could be said.  I guess that most readers would expect me to say that all we can do is trust in Christ, for he is not an idol, and he will never leave us nor forsake us.  Well, this is true!  However, Christians are in for the fight of their lives, and what we need to do is begin preaching the Lordship of Christ over all things.  We must be ruled by Christ alone and not by Caesar.  We must believe that God’s kingdom will come, and we must have confidence that we will see his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  As long as the Holy Spirit is on this earth, cultural transformation is possible.  As the American idols fall, a Christ who rules over all must be our message to those who have put their hope in false gods. The Wizard of Oz is fake, but the Kingdom of God is real.
Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.

If you haven’t thought through this issue before, I want to encourage you to consider studying it. It shouldn’t scare us to think through the wisdom of our Confessional heritage. Rather, it should–at the very least–cause us to ponder the rationale and explanation for Westminster’s interpretation of the second commandment. Wherever you land on this issue, this much we can agree upon: We should all strive to understand the Second Commandment more faithfully, to reaffirm the sufficiency of Scripture in all of life, to avail ourselves to the ordinary means of grace and to strive for undivided worship.

No, the Westminster divines weren’t intentionally attacking The Jesus Storybook Bible; but they probably would have taken issue with the pictures of Jesus.
I serve on the Theological Examination Committee for the Presbytery in which I minister–which means, among other things, that I help examine candidates who sense a call to the ministry. Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed an increasing number of candidates taking an “exception” to the Westminster Standards’ interpretation of the Second Commandment, mainly due to the interpretation of the use of “images” in worship.
A good place to start when considering this issue is to look at what the Second Commandment actually says? In Exodus 20, we read,
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments (v. 3-6; cf. Deut. 5:8-10).
The Westminster Divines interpreted this by affirming, “The second commandment forbiddeth the worshiping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in his Word” (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 51). The Westminster Larger Catechism similarly teaches:
“The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and anywise approving, any religious worship not instated by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshipping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them, all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever, simony, sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed” (Q. 109).
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