Fortunately for us, Satan lacks self-control. He can’t keep anything within reasonable proportion. He can’t be content with transing just some of the kids. He must trans all of them. He must destroy every human body on the way to devouring every precious soul. And so, eventually, all the confused speech becomes such a deafening cacophony of lies, that all the “surgical racism,” whatever that is, will be seen for what it is—total and complete evil.

“I hate this book,” said my child, removing an earbud.
“What book?” I asked.
“The Screwtape Letters,” he replied.
“Oh yeah,” said another child. “That’s the worst. Get out of my head, Dr. Lewis. You Don’t Know Me.”
Except he does though.
I wanted something light and fluffy for today, since I have so much to do and so little time to do it. But then a dear friend sent me this long rant by Andrew Sullivan, who afflicted himself by reading Judith Butler’s latest book which he describes as “decipherable” but “inelegant.” He takes this new readability as a hopeful sign, that the tide of gender confusion and insanity is perhaps turning. Butler, and that extraordinarily wicked person, Andrea Long Chu who made a case for the transing of children in New York Magazine, are not relying “on the media, the government, and the courts to impose their ideas by fiat” but are taking their arguments to the general public. This must represent some measure of desperation. The release of those WPATH files combined with the airtime de-transitioners are getting in places like the New York Times indicates that there is plenty of work to do to convince both lofty academic and humble normie to persist in doing “the work.”
I am not entirely persuaded about the hopefulness of this shift, but I was delighted to hear what is happening, in general, to the entire “community” that persistently attempts to find their essential identity in anything related to sex. In the words of Sullivan:
That’s why the Trevor Project, the massively-funded TQ+ organization, now tells troubled young gay kids that a gay man is defined as someone who has sex with biological women as well as with men. A gay man is not attracted to the same “sex” but to the same “gender” and that now includes biological women. Trevor has abolished homosexuality! It’s why woker-than-woke Grindr, formerly an app for gay men, is now full of straight dudes with profiles that say “NOT INTERESTED IN MEN just don’t bother,” “I don’t like men,” “Str8 4T”, “do not message me if you’re cis or a man,” “Fems and Them No Men,” “No gay men u will be blocked,” and “Im straight not gay.” Just another part of the straight “queer” community.
In the postmodern world where we invent reality hour by hour, depending on how we feel, being gay now includes heterosexual sex — and by far the biggest group in the “LGBTQIA+” umbrella are bisexual women in relationships with straight men. At some point, gay men will wake up and realize that they have abolished their own identity — indeed merged it into its opposite. But they have another tea dance to get to and another Instagram vacation pic to post. Most are pathetically uninformed, or programmed by tribal insecurity to follow the queering herd.
All my children, not just the two aforementioned, are binging on Lewis right now. If I made up a drinking game for every time I heard “C.S. Lewis” or “Tolkien says,” around here I would have to be locked away. Instead, I’m just folding laundry and eating cheese, and listening to them argue. No matter what I’m reading or thinking about, eventually, I’m going to end up back in Narnia or St. Anne’s. 
Read More
Related Posts:

Those who pray for no more than they can handle will find joy and comfort in even modest achievements, for they will know and trust that God has given them what is for their best and withheld from them what would be to their harm. 

I know many who long to make a mark in their field. I know writers who long to get that first contract and publish that first great novel. I know musicians who yearn to get noticed and get signed and get recorded. I know speakers who are convinced they could make their mark if only they could be invited to that first conference, deliver that first keynote, inspire that first audience. I know and admire many such people and often find myself rooting for them.
Yet even as I cheer them on from the sidelines of their lives, even as I attempt to encourage them as much as I’m able, there is one prayer I encourage them to pray amidst all their longing: “God, give me only as much success as I can handle.”
It has long been my observation that most people can handle failure better than success. If failure tends to spur innovation, success tends to breed stagnation. If failure tends to occasion humility, success tends to engender pride. If failure tends to stimulate dependence, success tends to generate self-reliance. I have seen people who seemed to be making great strides in godliness, great advances in upright and holy living, until they achieved success and gained acclaim. It was then that their progress seemed to screech to a near halt or even to reverse itself. When they gained the thing they had longed for, they lost the progress they had labored for. I have seen far more people ruined by success than by failure.
The reason is simple enough: Their success outpaced their sanctification. The level of their accomplishments rose faster than the growth of their character. Their vocational achievements came at the cost of spiritual achievements. They gained more success than they could handle and it led to great harm.
Read More

The fact that the session views as “attacks” the criticism that Memorial Church and Greg Johnson have received, since hosting the 2018 Revoice conference, is very telling. It’s telling because it reveals the session’s mind set as being highly defensive of its position, instead of being open to counsel from Christian brethren. It also shows why Memorial’s session has not moved from their theological error despite all their prayer and fasting.

We have read the report that the congregation of Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, on November 18, 2022, voted by 92% to withdraw from the PCA. This was recommended by their session and agreed to by their pastor, Greg Johnson, who indicated that he will be leaving with the congregation.
The article noted that the session informed the congregation that their recommendation was coming “with a mixture of sorrow and hope … after fifteen months spent fasting, praying, waiting, consulting and listening.” The reason for withdrawing, the session explained, was “continued attacks” from within the denomination which were distracting the church from its mission.
The session’s statement is troubling to me. They claim to have spent fifteen months “fasting, praying, waiting, consulting and listening,” but still seem to have ended up with the same erroneous views as the ones they started with, namely, approving and promoting Revoice ideology in the church. Where is the repentance for, not only introducing the sinful impurity of Revoice into the PCA, but also violating the principle of maintaining peace in the church, by creating years of conflict trying to justify themselves. All their praying and fasting seems not to have had the corrective effect it should have had. Could that be because what they were praying for was not the will of God?
The fact that the session views as “attacks” the criticism that Memorial Church and Greg Johnson have received, since hosting the 2018 Revoice conference, is very telling. It’s telling because it reveals the session’s mind set as being highly defensive of its position, instead of being open to counsel from Christian brethren. It also shows why Memorial’s session has not moved from their theological error despite all their prayer and fasting. I believe that on this particular error, their minds are locked into what Paul describes in Romans 1 as truth suppression, where they’ve become futile in their thinking.
Critics have not been on the attack, but rather have been seeking to persuade Johnson, his session, Missouri Presbytery, and any others holding similar views, by speaking the truth out of love, in an effort to halt the slide into liberalism and return the PCA to the truth. There has been a noticeable movement in recent years of PCA slippage downward in a progressive direction. This has been led by progressives in the PCA who take an approving stance toward homosexuality, gender identity and other such priorities. Their support, even celebration, of Revoice is proof of that.
The Bible commands us to “speak the truth in love” (Eph 4:15), which is what critics of progressive views and actions are seeking to do in the present conflict. However, you can’t speak the truth in love, without having the truth. Truth comes first, then you can speak it in love.
Progressives reverse the biblical sequence when they, in loving concern for homosexuals, seek support in Scripture for teaching that agrees with their pre-conceived beliefs. Matthew Vines’s book, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships, is a case in point. Note that starting with homosexuality, Vines seeks to show biblical support for it. He argues that homosexual orientation and committed same-sex relationships are consistent with a “high view” of the Bible and evangelical Christianity. I believe he is badly mistaken about that. There simply is no biblical teaching supporting the LGBT agenda; the reverse is true. Revoice doctrine on homosexuality is constructed to meet the need; but being constructed opinion, it isn’t biblical, and it isn’t true, objectively speaking.
PCA progressives are simply repeating and extending the same discredited biblical arguments as Vines did in their efforts to justify the Revoice movement, and in their opposition to conservative efforts to restore the PCA to biblical soundness, after some serious slippage in recent years.
Progressives appear to be post-modernists. As such, they have a fluid, subjective view of truth and reject the concept of absolute truth. They receive the Revoice doctrine subjectively as “their truth” even though it’s been refuted objectively as false. Francis Schaeffer used to distinguish objective truth from post-modern, subjective truth by calling the former true truth, in contrast to the false constructions of “my truth” or “your truth” or “their truth.” The post-modern view is aptly foreseen by the prophet Isaiah (59:14) as truth stumbling in the streets, and by Daniel (8:12) as truth cast to the ground.
Thus, when progressives seek to speak the truth in love to homosexuals, they are speaking “their truth” to homosexuals, not “true truth.” You can see the big problem here for progressives, because it’s never loving to speak falsehoods to someone to whom you are trying to express loving concern. It’s like quoting Ephesians 4:15 to say: “speaking falsehoods in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”
Obviously, that’s bafflegab. It’s perverting to God’s Word and actually unloving to homosexuals. Yet that is what progressives get by starting with what they think is loving concern for homosexuals and then looking for supporting Scripture truth, which they can’t find because it isn’t there. They have to resort to post-modern hermeneutical gymnastics to construct their own truth. Hence, unsound Revoice doctrine.
The real sorrow here is that Greg Johnson and the elders of Memorial Presbyterian Church seem blind to the realities of Scripture, and bent on continuing to pursue the destructive course they’ve been on. Since they have refused to repent and desire to persist in error, it is no doubt best all-around that they withdraw the PCA.
Douglas B. Ostien is a member of Chestnut Mountain Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) in Chestnut Mountain, Ga.
Related Posts: