We really ought to appreciate how overt the religious themes in the ad are. Humans sacrifice and perform good works in order to placate an angry deity. Modern neo-paganism has rarely been as well-represented in such a short video. I half-expected one of the employees to slaughter a ram on top of an altar of MacBook Pros. But the divinization of nature, the condemnation of religious hypocrisy, the works of supererogation, the appeasement of the goddess—all of these underscore that beneath many of our public policy debates are fundamental religious differences about the nature of God, sin, humanity, and atonement.

It’s mid-September, which means another annual Apple Event has come and gone, complete with the new iPhone 15 and Vision Pro, a new spatial computing device. But what grabbed the attention of many last week was Apple’s five-minute Mother Nature ad.
In the ad, a group of Apple employees nervously await the arrival of a peevish and snappy Mother Nature, who is dropping by for the annual corporate responsibility review. Mother Nature expects the same old empty song and dance, in which corporations make grandiose promises about reducing their environmental impact only to offer superficial efforts while kicking the can down the road.
However, over the course of the ad, sharp-tongued Mother Nature slowly softens as she realizes that Apple is in fact “doing the work” and making real progress to reduce their impact on the planet (even though, as Apple CEO Tim Cook says at the end, “there’s still a lot more work to do”). The ad closes with the sun emerging from behind a cloud and a dead plant coming back to life as Mother Nature approves their progress and the employees sigh in relief.
While some Christians might want to condemn the ad, I, for one, would like to express my (limited) appreciation for it, and invite my fellow Christians to do the same. Why, you ask? Let me count the ways.
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The efforts we make show results by God’s workmanship. Peter reminds us that whatever adversity we are experiencing, whatever hardship we are enduring, whatever suffering we undergo, God has not lost sight of the plot. It’s all part of His plan, just as it was for His Son in His mission as Messiah. 

elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit (1 Pet. 1.2)
We can endure suffering much better when we know there is a purpose behind it. We actually make appointments with suffering when we schedule a visit to the dentist for a radical procedure that will involve needles, drilling, and general manhandling of our mouths.
That is what Peter is telling us when he speaks of sanctification of the Spirit. He is reminding us that God is at work in us as His children through the hardships of life to grow us in holiness.
Holiness lies at the heart of sanctification. We are holy and called to be holy. We are distinct from the world that walks to the beat of its own drum and are called by God to live in a manner that reflects our belonging to Him.
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At its heart, Pride Month is a month of deception. LGBT activists are deceiving people into believing pride is a virtue, that sexuality determines identity, and that LGBT activities are family friendly. There is nothing further from the truth. Only Jesus can give identity, direction, and purpose to a world of sexual confusion. 

We’re approaching the final week of ‘Pride Month’ — a growing shibboleth of our secular age. Corporate firms are one-upping each another to virtue signal how woke and inclusive they are. Retail stores are parading the rainbow flag to boost sales.
From a Biblical perspective, there are remarkable parallels between Pride Month and idol worship under King Nebuchadnezzar II. Just as the Babylonians were mandated to worship the golden image, LGBT activists demand that we pledge allegiance to the rainbow flag. While the stakes aren’t as high as they were under Nebuchadnezzar, there are real risks involved in refusing to bow the knee.
If my suspicion is correct, most Australians are not particularly concerned about Pride Month. In fact, many are beginning to feel uncomfortable with how politicised and intolerant the LGBT movement has become. In response, many people have flocked to culture warriors like Jordan Peterson for answers.
While figures like Peterson are insightful and worth listening to, their answers are ultimately psychological rather than spiritual. They don’t acknowledge that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only truth that sets people free. It is only the grace of God in the person and work of Jesus that gives answers and hope to a world lost in sexual confusion.
What follows are three of the lies paraded during Pride Month, along with the gospel answers Jesus provides.

Sexuality = Identity

Pride Month declares that you can find your identity by looking inward. It is proclaimed that you can discover your identity by exploring your sexuality. The modern self is defined by sexuality. This explains the insistence within the LGBT movement of identifying people as ‘gay,’ ‘trans,’ ‘lesbian,’ and so on.
The great tragedy in such thinking is its reductionism. It shrinks a person from being an intelligently designed, unique, and beautiful image-bearer of God to the mere product of sexual instincts (cf. Gen. 2:17). Is there anything more animalistic than reducing a person to the sum of their sexual desires?
Contrary to Pride Month, our identity is not self-generated; it is given to us by our Maker. The Bible makes clear that humans were created to magnify the glory, beauty, and majesty of our Creator. Indeed, there is no other creation in the universe that was made imago dei. Furthermore, the good news of the gospel liberates us to find our identity in Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, as the Westminster Confession of Faith 15.5 states, Biblical repentance is for specific sins. In an age when national repentance is used as a smokescreen for our own guilt, we must face the reality of our rebellion against the Creator. We must name our sins, yet not be named by them. This is especially relevant in a time when identifying some believers as ‘gay Christians’ has become commonplace.
There is nothing more enslaving to a child of God than to identify them by their sin. Any adjective placed before ‘Christian’ — whether it be ‘same-sex attracted,’ ‘anxious,’ or ‘adulterous’ — enslaves a believer and legitimises their sin. It denies their identity as a child of God, freed from the bondage of passions.
There is nothing more liberating than for a Christian to know their sin has been dealt with fully and completely. To be a Christian is to have one’s life hidden with Christ in God, and to be defined not by our sin, but by His perfection and glory (Col. 3:3).

Pride = Virtue

Arguably the chief lie of Pride Month is that pride is something to be celebrated. According to God, pride is a vice to be restrained. Pride is not something to be paraded; it’s the parent of all other sins. It’s the cesspool from which all other wickedness flows (Gen. 3:6). Pride not only destroys a person’s relationship with God; it ultimately consumes the person themselves (Prov. 16:18).
In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis wrote this of pride:
“It was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the completely anti-God state of mind” (Book III, 8.)
Puritan Jonathan Edwards spoke of pride in these terms:
“Pride is a person having too high an opinion of himself. Pride is the first sin that ever entered into the universe, and the last sin that is rooted out.”
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