May 7, 2015 (TheRadianceFoundation.org) — We’re peculiar creatures. We want meaning but leave meaning wanting. We exist by design but deny design exists. We demand love but demand that Love stay silent.
Contradiction courses through our veins. We bleed inconsistency, yet even with multiple wounds we simply slap on band-aids to cover our soul’s lacerations.
And we wonder why healing is elusive. So instead, from this condition of brokenness, we create more brokenness. Language becomes our victim. We change it to bandage our fractured state. Love becomes “tolerance.” Discernment becomes “judgment.” And conviction becomes “hate.”
Our culture is obsessed with a savior—self—that cannot save. As more and more bow at the altar of Narcissism, our meaning, our design, and our understanding of Love go up in flames.
Meaning is powerful. And where we derive that meaning is crucial. The recent Baltimore riots exemplify how finding meaning in pigmentation only divides us. Martin Luther King Jr. knew that the civil rights battle was first fought on our knees in relentless prayer. He understood that the Gospel gave our lives meaning and a righteous cause to fight for true equality and freedom.
It wasn’t mainstream media that led the charge for civil rights. That institution had to be led by those who understood the unwavering power of Faith, the transformational power of Hope, and the unstoppable ability of Love to break down any division. Just as during the abolition of slavery in this country, men and women of God refused to allow the dehumanization of God’s creation and the oppressive dictates and deception of the State to go unchallenged.
Our right to Life does not belong to Caesar. Love does not belong to Caesar. Marriage does not belong to Caesar. Our sexuality does not belong to Caesar. Our hope does not belong to Caesar.
Mainstream media, in its typical dereliction of journalistic duty, has been celebrating the “heroic transition” of Olympian Bruce Jenner from a man to a man deeply confused. Never mind the incredible irony of LGBTQ advocates rejecting the biological reality of binary gender yet affirming it when one wants to “transition” from a man to a woman or vice versa. Even conservative Rick Santorum has capitulated to the cult of transgenderism, saying of Jenner: “If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman.” I can say I’m Asian, and even believe it with all my heart; it doesn’t make me Asian.
Bruce Jenner will never biologically be a woman, yet too many are fine with treating our genitalia like accessories that need to be swapped out to match a different outfit. Santorum apparently doesn’t agree with the former chief psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Paul R. McHugh, who says transgenderism is a “mental disorder” and that “sex-change” is biologically impossible. McHugh also indicates that the suicide rate of “transgendered” people, who’ve gone through the drastic “reassignment surgery” is 20 times higher than non-transgendered people. Where’s the compassion in any of this?
What exactly are we affirming Mr. Santorum, mainstream media, and churches across America? More importantly than ignoring McHugh’s documented medical evidence is ignoring the essence of salvation—becoming a new creation. When we discard the possibility of God transforming any life or any situation, we’ve given the Gospel reassignment surgery.
Last week, as The Radiance Foundation joined Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council, Heritage Foundation and others at the Supreme Court to rally defenders of natural marriage, there was one person among the crowd who stood out most powerfully to me. It was a young woman holding a bright yellow sign that read: “I was Queer. Then I found Jesus.” I thanked her for her vulnerability and the message that put the whole day into context: no amount of rallying can mask the brokenness many feel in the rejection of our design. People like her (and there are many) are immediately silenced by the monolithic LGBTQ activist movement who cry “hate” to silence debate.
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As Christians, we are called to love God with all of our hearts, all of our souls, and all of our minds. When we do this, we dare to let our soul orientation overcome any other identity that denies who and what we were created to be—new creations that glorify God. When we follow this command of Christ’s, loving our neighbors as ourselves is the natural outflow.
Our culture is hurtling into a genderless, hopeless, and meaningless society, but we can stop this self-inflicted destruction. We could reclaim what it means to love and show how that love can restore brokenness. We live in a world in desperate need of redemption. The question is: When will the people of God feel the desperate need to reveal and reflect the Source of that redemption?
