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Moral Insanity: California's "Transgendered Student" Bill

8/29/2013

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A Benedictine monk friend of mine, Dom Anthony of Christminster Abbey, occasionally e-mails me articles by a Christian writer named Michael Craven. The man is extremely insightful, so I'm kicking off our blog with a series of articles by him. I hope you find them worthwhile.
                                                                                             By Michael Craven                                                                  Second in a series.

According to Associated Press reports, “California has become the first state to enshrine certain rights for transgender K-12 students in state law, requiring public schools to allow those students access to whichever restroom and locker room they want.” Additionally, The new law gives students the right "to participate in sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities based on their self-perception and regardless of their birth gender” (Emphasis mine).

At first glance you might be compelled to respond in anger or even disgust but when filtered through the lens of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, I submit that we may want to respond differently.

As Paul opens his epistle, he begins with a summary of the “good news,” adding that he is “under obligation to both Greeks and to barbarians … to the wise and to the foolish” to make this good news known (Romans 1:14 ESV). In other words, no one is excluded from the hope of a new life in Christ.

Regarding Paul’s explanation as to why this good news is so urgently needed, he proceeds to describe the general condition of the entire human race. Paul is not addressing a particularly wicked segment of the society, rather he is recounting the ungodliness and unrighteousness of all of humanity who from birth suppressed the truth about God (v. 18) and “did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened”(v. 21 ESV). I must confess that in my Christian life, I have read Paul’s letter—rather self-righteously—thinking he was talking about “those other people.” I have come to see this was incorrect. He is instead giving us a recap of human history and our collective rebellion against God.

It is within this context that Paul goes on to describe the orientation of mankind’s natural inclinations when unrestrained by God, beginning in verse 26 when he writes, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.” Unprecedented in Paul’s writing up this point, he rather unexpectedly chooses homosexual behavior to illustrate the extent of human sin and corruption. Why this particular transgression and not something like any number of violations against the Ten Commandments? N. T. Wright suggests Paul “wants to trace the way in which humans have violated, not simply a ‘law’ given at some point in human history, but the very structure of the created order itself.”

This structure is most apparent in the male-plus-female complementarity that was established at creation (see Genesis 1–3). God made humanity male and female in order that they might work together, with God, to bring the fullness of God’s good creation into being and glorify him. This was and remains his design intent.

Paul’s point is not that there are some exceptionally wicked people out there (for all have sinned and fallen short—see Romans 3:23). Rather Paul is expressing the fact that such clear distortions of the creator’s male-plus-female intention occur in the world indicates that the human race as a whole is guilty of character-twisting idolatry.

The declaration by the California state legislature only serves to evidence this point. Such legislation only reminds us that we are by nature a rebellious people, futile in our thinking, with hearts darkened by sin. This is the inevitable course of our rebellion and it is only the grace and mercy of God himself that can deliver any of us from such futility.

In this case, we must pray for our society and these who remain in captivity and declare that any distortion of the creator’s intent for the male-plus-female structure is degrading to human dignity and undermines God’s intent for boys and girls.

Gender is not the result of “self-perception” but rather self-evident biology and appropriate nurturing of the respective sexes. This isn’t sexist; it’s simply natural! To declare and do otherwise is to promote enslavement to the oppressive and broken structures of this sin-ruined world. It is to this condition that the mission of the church remains fixed by declaring the good news that God is restoring his created order through Jesus the King, who is bringing forth a new kingdom in this world whereby men and women may grow into their full humanity knowing true freedom, peace, and joy!
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KICKOFF SERIES

8/27/2013

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A Benedictine monk friend of mine, Dom Anthony of Christminster Abbey, occasionally e-mails me articles by a Christian writer named Michael Craven. The man is extremely insightful, so I'm kicking off our blog with a series of articles by him. I hope you find them worthwhile.


          Christians in America: Out of Touch and Out of Reach                  
                                                                                               By Michael Craven                                                           FIRST IN A SERIES

According to a report produced in 2013—“Christianity in its Global Context, 1970–2020: Society, Religion, and Mission"—researchers at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, offer a timely overview of the changing demographics of Christianity and Christians’ activities over the past forty years.

In summary, missiologist Todd M. Johnson and his team found that 20 percent of non-Christians in North America really do not “personally know” any Christians. Christianity Today points out, “that number includes atheists and agnostics, many of whom are former Christians themselves and more likely to have close Christian contacts. Without that group, 60 percent of the non-Christian population has no relationships with Christians” (Emphasis mine). This despite the fact that 80 percent of Americans self-identify as Christians.

CSGC research associate Gina Bellofatto notes that small but burgeoning movements have arisen to initiate purposeful interreligious dialogue and community service projects. However, according to Bellofatto, “They're still rare compared to the apparent apathy among Christians about befriending non-Christians, especially if it means reaching across neighborhoods and towns into more ethnic enclaves.”

Clearly, a century-plus of evangelistic campaigns aimed at “getting people saved” has failed to propagate the Christian faith in any meaningful way. Instead, too many churches in America are characterized more by a suburban social ethnicity built around shared values and religious consumerism than any sense of kingdom mission.

Jeff Christopherson, vice president for the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Missions Board, echoed this sentiment in saying, “We hide in our own evangelical ghetto,” and “we go to churches that would only be welcoming to people that think like us.”

This makes sense when understood through the church’s contemporary theology of escapism—this idea that the primary goal of the gospel is to provide one entrance into heaven when one dies. While eternal life in the age to come is indeed a promise of the gospel, the reduction of the gospel of the kingdom to nothing more than this has left the church without any relevance to life in the here and now. By reducing the gospel to the acceptance of a few facts about Jesus, which then determines one’s eternal state, Christianity loses its most powerful claim: that of Christ’s kingdom come to bear upon this world. It is through the rule and reign of God pressed into the world by the people of God, empowered by the Holy Spirit, that sin and all its damage is confronted and relief is found.

This is the story of Western civilization—the world touched by the church in every area of life—where humanity has experienced unprecedented flourishing. Despite our checkered past, Christians have throughout history risen up against countless evils bringing real reform to a broken world defaced by sin.

The Christian church has confronted political tyranny that oppressed God’s creation with the principles of liberty rooted in the imago Dei. The historic church was the first institution on earth to declare slavery unjust, to develop concepts central to individual economic freedom, to provide health care to the sick and dying, to offer humane rules of warfare, to educate the masses, and to establish as virtues the concepts of mercy and compassion. The church didn’t do this because they thought it a good way to win converts. Rather, they understood that the world ruined by sin was being set right by Jesus, the king who declared his Lordship over all the earth, and that to follow Jesus meant sacrificial participation in his kingdom-renewing work.

Without the Christian/kingdom influence of the last two millennia, the world would have remained in its brutal state. To believe otherwise is to be both historically ignorant and to believe that human progress is the natural orientation of mankind.

© 2013 by S. Michael Craven
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August 24th, 2013

8/24/2013

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    Our worship space is a humble but plucky little chapel on our converted porch.  I spend a lot of time pondering, there.
           We're very unimpressive by the world's standards, but so far the Lord has seen fit to drop by most mornings on our Altar, and He hasn't yet complained to us about His accommodations in the Tabernacle.
            Impressiveness isn't what we're about, anyway. We're about prayer, hospitality and working for revival in the Church and in the surrounding culture. The articles here, by myself and others, will mainly deal with that. I hope you find them useful!         

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