You’ll Never Change Anyone’s Mind about God
In Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples the night he was betrayed, he told them that we testify. But we are not alone. The Spirit testifies along with our testimony (John 15:26–27). “The Spirit of truth,” he said, “will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment” (John 16:8, 13). Yes, we must prepare ourselves to give an answer (1 Pet. 3:15). Yes, we must engage opponents with gentleness and patience (2 Tim. 2:24–25). Yes, we must reason with others and explain and give evidence (Acts 17:2–3). But the Spirit is the one shouldering the burden of bringing others across the finish line. Not us.
I want to tell you why you will never be able to change anyone’s mind on the truth of any spiritual issue.
This may sound strange coming from someone who has given his life for the defense of the true story of reality—the biblical story—and who, for nearly half a century, has worked to persuade critics that Christianity is worth thinking about. But it’s true. I have been powerless.
There’s a reason for what, at first glance, appears to be my personal ineptitude. I want you to consider what the biblical record says about our opposition—that is, the forces arrayed against us.
The devil, commanding spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places (Eph. 6:12), employs demonic schemes to deceive the whole world (Rev. 12:9), blinding the minds of the unbelieving so they might not see the light of the gospel (2 Cor. 4:4). Thus, “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).
Paul tells Timothy that those in opposition to the gospel are in “the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:25–26). He therefore tells Timothy not to be quarrelsome, but to be patient and gentle with his opponents, “if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare.”
Did you notice something about that last passage? God is the active agent who clears away the deceptive demonic fog and brings people to repentance, not us. That’s why Luke says of Lydia, “The Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul” (Acts 16:14).
-
Do You Know What Your Child Is Being Taught about Sex?
This isn’t simply about teaching your students to have a healthy view of their bodies and sex. It’s about teaching your students to view the world in a specific way. This is a worldview issue. Teen Talk plainly says the curriculum’s foundational operating principles include core values “like pro-choice, feminist, sex positive, 2STLGBQ+ positive and using an anti-oppression, decolonizing lens.”
“The future of sex ed has arrived,” declared the headline of an article I recently read. The author went on to discuss changes that have been made to public school curriculums affecting students as young as eleven. The article is four years old.
Fast forward to today. The future is here, and it’s not good. My local board of education adopted a comprehensive sex ed curriculum, Teen Talk. It was touted as a big step forward in educating our public school children. Upon review, I learned the curriculum normalizes questionable sexual ethics, including teen abortion, same-sex intercourse, gender fluidity, and more. This issue isn’t limited to my neck of the woods either. Thirty-nine states mandate sex education. Nine of them mandate that “discussion of LGBTQ identities and relationships be inclusive and affirming.”
There are two main issues here. The first has to do with what’s being taught. The second is the role government schools play in raising your children. Let’s first look at what these new sex ed curriculums teach.
There is some helpful information taught—for instance, discussions about mental health, teen suicide, and self-harm are profitable. However, anything beneficial is undone almost immediately. For example, some teach masturbation and sex as two activities to help distract your student from things like stress and anxiety. This kind of teaching doesn’t help your student deal with the pressures of life. Sex is not a drug or a solution to problems. It is not therapy, and in many cases it only complicates life. Even worse, when we view sex this way, people become a commodity, a means to an end, a temporary relief from pain, objects to be used for a quick fix. Not human beings. Not persons of infinite value and worth.
There’s more. This isn’t simply about teaching your students to have a healthy view of their bodies and sex. It’s about teaching your students to view the world in a specific way. This is a worldview issue. Teen Talk plainly says the curriculum’s foundational operating principles include core values “like pro-choice, feminist, sex positive, 2STLGBQ+ positive and using an anti-oppression, decolonizing lens.”
This shouldn’t surprise us.
Read More
Related Posts: -
How do We Encourage and Build Up the Church?
Hearing people singing the songs heartily, praying earnestly, sharing testimony of how the Lord has been at work in them, these will all encourage other believers. Nothing encourages your elders more than seeing you grow in maturity and Christ-likeness. This is the ultimate fruit of engaging with the Word, engaging with the church, engaging with the commands of Christ.
1 Thessalonians 5:11 exhorts us, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, to ‘encourage one another and build each other up’. But what are the key ways to encourage and build up other believers in the church? Here, in no particular order, are a few ways.
Show Up
It’s hard to encourage people when you are never with them. In fact, if you are continually away from the meetings of the gathered body, far from encouraging and building up the body, you are actively discouraging it. It is so disappointing when the preacher stands up to share God’s Word and people aren’t there because they couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed or they had better things to do than worship the living God and meet with his people. These things are a major discouragement. One of the key ways you can build up and encourage the church is by showing up to things.
Engage Heartily
Showing up is absolutely vital, but engaging in what is going on when you are there is similarly encouraging. Of course, some of your engagement will depend on your particular church setup and liturgy. But in our church, we have participation from the congregation in the prayers, the songs and our time of testimony.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Barbarism in the Name of Equality
Written by Christopher F. Rufo |
Tuesday, September 5, 2023
If biology, human nature, and traditional ethics are seen as impediments, rather than as guides, then rational restraints no longer remain on what can be done; the only real limitation is the imagination. And the human mind, untethered from moral limits, can conjure up nightmares. The surgeon, armed with a scalpel and a genital-nullification robot, becomes the new arbiter of human nature.The debate about transgender medicine is shifting. Legislators in 20 states have recently passed bills to restrict transgender medical interventions, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital surgeries, for minors. And the tide of public opinion appears to be moving against “gender-affirming care,” a euphemism for child sex-change procedures not supported by the evidence and that often cause devastating consequences. Preventing such procedures for patients under age 18 has to be the baseline.
But opponents of gender medicine should not celebrate prematurely—the battle is far from won. And while restrictions on such procedures for minors are essential, more scrutiny should be focused on a lesser-known practice: “non-binary” surgeries for adults.
Curtis Crane is one of the doctors leading this movement. Crane is a University of Iowa and Dartmouth College-trained urologist and plastic surgeon who specializes in transgender medical interventions, including experimental non-binary surgeries.
In 2015, Crane received a flurry of publicity as an innovator in vaginoplasty, which involves castrating and creating an artificial vagina for “male-to-female” patients, and phalloplasty, which involves creating and installing an artificial penis for “female-to-male” patients. He boasted of a one- to two-year waitlist and claimed to have one of the highest volumes of transgender surgeries in the United States.
Since then, business has boomed. Crane operates clinics in San Francisco, California, and Austin, Texas, employs a team of five doctors, and conducts procedures on more than 1,000 patients per year. As part of this caseload, his practice has veered into the disturbing new territory of non-binary surgery, which includes castration, eunuch, and nullification procedures, which Crane describes as the process of “removing all external genitalia to create a smooth transition from the abdomen to the groin.” Crane has also designed and performed hundreds of non-binary surgeries in which he fashions together both male and female genitalia for a single individual. That is, he creates an artificial penis for a woman, while retaining her vagina; or creates an artificial vagina for a man, while retaining his penis.
Crane recounted the story of performing his first non-binary genital surgery in a question-and-answer session for potential patients. “In the beginning of my practice, within the first year, I’d say, I had a trans man come to me, and he wanted a phalloplasty, but he wanted to keep his vagina,” Crane recalled.
Read More
Related Posts:
