Romans 10:17
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
It’s a troubling time. All around us, the world is on course into depths of depravity few would ever have imagined. Humans are generally “good” they say. Yet, you look at the moralistic issues of our time and you can’t help but think, “maybe not so much”. The thing that gets to me the most is the gender issues. It’s disturbing to see that it’s portrayed as something “real”. I mean, it’s in the public square and people are arguing that there are multiple genders and they will not be held to a “binary” view of how they “identify” themselves.
It’s straight up lunacy. It’s a mental disorder and on top of the people who align themselves with this “philosophy”, if you want to even call it that, if you express a belief in biological science, you are the one with a problem, not them. And the scariest thing about all of it is the extent to which they’ve convinced themselves that they’re right. I’ve argued before that I think many of these people suffer from underdevelopment or deep seeded immaturity stemming from a lack of parental guidance, which in large part is constant and necessary correction. Without it, children are allowed to let their imagination run wild and they do things like pretending they’re someone else, a princess, a gunslinger, what have you.
And to be clear, I’m a father who raised two boys to mature adults who themselves grew out of their years of pretending due to my “encouragement” for them to grow up. I also remember my own youth, when exclaiming to my parents at one of the more emotionally charged moments in my teenage years telling them, more like yelling at them through very serious tears, that “I didn’t want to grow up”. They said, “Sorry son, everyone has to grow up at some point”. The thing that strikes me today is that the “point” at which “everyone has to grow up” has gotten older and older.
I left my parents when I was sixteen. Granted, in 1976 that was still probably considered a little early and in actuality, I returned to my parent’s house not long after leaving once I realized making it without their help wasn’t working out so well. But, I was still gone for good by eighteen. Today, 40 some odd years later, 27 seems to be the norm when “children” finally leave the nest. Sure, many things have brought about this shift in what I view as the current “age of accountability”. Long gone are the days when parents took a position of “the sooner the better” in the name of sending their children into the big mean world in the name of continuing their maturation to adulthood.
I say all that to say this: I think the reason this shift in the point children are finally expected to grow up and strike out on their own is twofold. First and foremost, “soft parenting” meaning the absence of “spare the rod spoil the child” type parenting. Second, liberalism and its associated orthodoxy, which pervades the public school system, has led to several generations encouraged to embrace their “inner child” rather than gain an education in preparation for the day when they will be expected to take care of themselves. Between the two, not only are children allowed to let their imagination run wild, but they are outright encouraged to “discover” all the possibilities of who they can “choose” to become. I mean, how perverse is that? We’re talking about children as young as 5 years old being presented with adult subjects like sexuality, homosexuality, transgenderism, 110 genders, and on, and on. The really sick thing about it is the educators who realize how easy it is to persuade young, impressionable school age children to a certain view point who take advantage of their innocence to do just that.
I mean, think about how these things are presented to school age children…
“Good morning children. Ok, now everyone sit down and be quiet. Today children, we have a very fun subject to talk about that I’m sure everyone will enjoy. Today we’re going to talk about human sexuality and all the possibilities to choose from as you grow up…”
Can you imagine? And to make matters worse, you have the soft, progressive parents who are all for it. One only has to look at the fruit these curriculums produce in recent generations to understand the utter depravity of the liberal orthodoxy taught in taxpayer-funded public schools.
A few examples to make my point: Today in the year of our lord 2021, there is an individual being considered for a very high office in the U.S. government who is a man “pretending” to be a woman. When you look at him, that’s right, I said him, you can’t help but see that he is in fact a biological man even though he’s grown his hair out so he can attempt to wear a woman’s hairstyle. He also wears make up and even tries to speak with a feminine voice. As he sits before a senate hearing and is questioned about various things, he expects everyone to pretend along with him that he’s a woman. If that’s not the definition of mental illness, I don’t know what is. The man sits there almost daring anyone to refer to him as a “him” so he can then “act” offended and scold you for not playing along with his delusion.
For me he is a prime example of someone who, in their youth, was led to believe, or taught to believe, “Why, you can be whoever you want to be when you grow up”. “All you have to do is believe…” That’s what it means to pretend. Despite the reality of who you are based on your birth, you can learn to concoct any number of identities for yourself and then live it out fully expecting everyone in your life to play along or else. All you have to do is look at the imagery pervading the internet these days of people who have become caricatures of their true self with that mentality. “This is who I am. This is who I choose to be, who I want to be, and you have no choice but to accept me for who I see myself to be.” “If you don’t, it’s because you’re a homophobe, a transphobic, or whatever”. “It’s your problem, not mine”. Nice little emotional trap.
It is a virtual impossibility to see these deluded people as anything other than someone playing “dress up” and primarily for the purpose of getting attention. That’s what children do when they start “feeling” deprived of attention; they act out in some way, shape, or form in an attempt to draw attention to themselves. If you look at some of the transsexuals, it’s as if they’re trying really, really hard to look like a woman so they can get the attention women get from men. Maybe I’m oversimplifying things and I’m sure I would be told that I don’t understand the first thing about what it means to feel like a woman “trapped” in a man’s body, to which I would say, “yep, you got me there”. “I have no idea what it feels like to convince myself that I “feeeeeeel” like a woman”.
If you consider the progression of this doctrine, it’s understandable how we’ve come to a point where the government of the United States currently under illegitimate leftist/liberal control, is moving to legally recognize these “pretenders” through a proposed bill known as the “Equality Act of 2021 (H.R. 5)”. The Equality Act adds “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as other forms of sex discrimination as put forth in Title VII of the Equal Rights Act of 1964. Can you imagine? People are being forced to pretend along with these deluded people based on their “feelings” rather than biological science that says there are two genders. They’re trying to make it against the law…
The most disturbing thing about all of this is that these people will not “listen” to anyone who would try to reason with them about what they’ve convinced themselves of. They’ve dug themselves in so deep that the only people they are ever willing to listen to are others like them. There’s no talking them out of it. And to try to do so, again, points to you as the one with a problem…
The thing that strikes me about this trait, this characteristic of mentally deranged adults, is they are nothing more than immature children in adult bodies exhibiting the behavior of disobedient and rebellious children. I recognize it because I remember when I acted out in a similar way in my youth and recognized when my children were behaving this way. I also remember what my parents would do when I refused to listen to them. My father would discipline me by spanking me and although I didn’t spank my children quite as much, I still disciplined them in such a way that they would have no choice but to listen AND hear the correction I was giving them.
None of this is new. Scripturally speaking, generation after generation has refused to hear God, to listen to his instruction, to be fathered by His word. The most recent example being the generation of the Jews Jesus faced during his earthly ministry. The same generation of Jews Paul faced after Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and ascension who would not hear the dispensation of the grace of God he preached. The last chapter of Acts, with Paul now in Rome, tells us of this exchange between him and the chief of the Jews in Rome:
Acts 28:23-28
And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into [his] lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and [out of] the prophets, from morning till evening.
And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.
And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word, Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers,
Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive:
For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with [their] eyes, and hear with [their] ears, and understand with [their] heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and [that] they will hear it.
I understand I’ve made a leap here from today’s generations of children in adult bodies not willing to listen to reason related to the biological science of two genders to the generation of Jews that both Jesus and Paul confronted, but there is a correlation. True today as it was then, there is a spirit at work in the world who is the reason people just will not listen to someone trying to offer up something contrary to the way they want to think; to the way they see things, which, in other words, is what they want to believe.
Ephesians 2:2
Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
Children of disobedience today are not much different from the children of disobedience then in that they will not listen, they will not be persuaded, they will not be converted. Like it says in the Acts 28 passage above: …some believed… and some believed not. The phrase “waxed gross” in Acts 28:27 metaphorically means to make stupid…
I listened… And believed. In between these two things is what’s missing in the case of both the typical churchgoer and the typical atheist. Listening, and more importantly hearing, is the starting line if you will. Believing, vis-a-vis having faith, is the finish line. In between is the race. Each of us is in the race whether we think we are or not. We tend to think we have our whole life to sort out for ourselves the matter of God. We assume we have the luxury of time and more often than not, we put it off until a point in our life when time is short leaving us little time to give God his due.
The in-between is where the work happens. It’s the work required to listen to God, to contemplate the historical record put before us as his testimony to the world. To neglect it is to live a life pretending to know. If you’re a churchgoer, you pretend to know that the doctrine you’re presented with each and every week is right. The clergymen delivering the sermon, of all people, can be trusted, without question, to know and understand the true and inerrant meaning of the bible. Likewise, if you’re an atheist you pretend to know that there is no God presuming to know the bible is nothing more than a story of superstition passed down through generations giving it’s followers false hope that there’s something beyond this life when there just isn’t.
This gets to the heart of why I wrote Cows in the Pews and The Atheists Too, because in truth when it comes to the word of God and the work necessary to understand Him, whether you’re in the pews or an atheist, neither one will allow themselves to be persuaded otherwise. You each hold onto your respective positions come hell or high water out of unadulterated carnality that refuses to be corrected. And it’s important to understand that correction and repentance is what it’s all about. Everyone, save Jesus Christ, is faced with the same decision, which is to believe in the God of the universe or not. Most seem to think they can get away with standing on the sidelines assuming that doing so, gets them across the finish line. In truth, all they’ve managed to do is persuade themselves with a self- identified intellect into the positions they hold regarding the matter of God and His truth.
The operative word here is persuade. It’s a simple word with a pretty simple meaning: to persuade, i.e. to induce one by words to believe; to listen to, obey, yield to, comply with. In my experience, I have found very few who are actually open to being persuaded beyond their own imaginings. Maybe it’s my approach. Then again, maybe it’s an innate characteristic of fallen man to always hold to a defensive position, especially about such a deep and probing subject as our soul and spirit, to avoid being found wanting. Which is to say, not many will truly listen to and allow God to persuade them to believe, much less a man preaching and teaching on His behalf, suggesting the utter emptiness that resides between the beginning and end of our life.
I know… Sounds rather gloomy, sad even. The seduction of this world, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, has brought humanity well beyond the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus, the Lord and savior of the world. It’s not surprising to come to the realization that so few choose the strait gate…
Matthew 7:13-14
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide [is] the gate, and broad [is] the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Because strait [is] the gate, and narrow [is] the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
