About That Multicolored Bow...
No.110: June 3, 2022
Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This publication is free, but please consider becoming a paid subscriber to enjoy all my offerings!
Dear Friends,
It has been quite a hectic week around here! Don’t be surprised if this one ends up being shorter than usual. Tomorrow I’m leaving with my wife and youngest daughter to stay for a couple of weeks in the beautiful Canadian Rockies, where I’ll be teaching at the H. Evan Runner International Academy, a worldview and cultural apologetics seminar. There’s been the usual planning, packing, dashes to the store, changing the oil in the vehicle and topping up fluids (Yes, we’re driving), and—oh, yes—trying to polish up what it is exactly I’m going to say when I get there. So, it has been a bit on the stressful side, yes.
This week, in case you missed it behind the paywall—sorry!—I also wrote a lot about guns, which I hate having to do. One thing that is not behind a paywall is a lengthy interview I did with Andrew Sandlin on the topic, and you can read that here. I am hopeful that I won’t have to wade into it again any time soon. I notice that Washington, D.C. is going to perform their normal theater routine of “doing something” without actually doing anything that addresses the problem. That’s not because they lack passion or motivation, but because they lack the ability to do much of consequence. We live in the real world, and in the real world there are no magic wands or Infinity Stones that enable you to just make a wish and have it happen. You can read more about that in the interview.
I do get the sense, and I could be wrong, that I am an outlier in evangelical Christian commentary because I am not a pacifist nor do I have pacifist leanings (not all violence is evil), I support the 2nd Amendment and its rationale, and—perhaps most abnormally—I know a bit about gun culture and its ethos and I do not get scared at the mere sight of an AR-15. I do think I am more informed about the realities on the ground when it comes to private gun ownership than many commentators. Today I heard a Congressman ranting on the House floor: “What? A kid wants a rifle for his 18th birthday! He’s got a problem! We’ve got a problem!” Where I live this is not unusual at all. Kids have been wanting rifles for their birthdays for generations. In my living memory young men drove pickup trucks with rifles slung on a rack behind them. This is not some new development that demands governmental attention.
Anyway, another reason to buy a subscription, I guess! My commentary might be a bit different than the rest.
The Multicolored Bow
I also noted in Wednesday’s Quarter Inch that on May 31st my Apple Calendar was very diligent to flash a notification informing me that “Tomorrow is the beginning of LGBTQIA++ Pride Month!” I have no idea what they expected me to do with this information, other than to wonder what in the world all those extra letters and symbols mean. I looked it up so you don’t have to:
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Transsexual, Transgender, Questioning, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, and the “Plus” signs are for Agender, Demisexual, Genderfluid, Graysexual, Non-binary/Genderqueer, Pansexual/Omnisexual, Polyamorous, Sapiosexual, and Two-spirit.
Please don’t ask me to define all of those terms.
Now, it was just Monday that we celebrated Memorial Day, an entire day set aside to honor and remember those men and women who literally laid down their lives for our freedom and security. They gave the last full measure of devotion. “Greater love has no man than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Got that? There is no greater love than sacrificing oneself for another. And those who literally acted out the greatest love got a whole whopping 24-hours of celebration.
Just days later, a ridiculous kaleidoscope of self-loving, self-worshiping, self-creating, self-gratifying, self-satisfied, self-important, self-mutilating activists are demanding an entire month of our calendar to celebrate their existence. Everyone is on board. Corporate America, the United States Government, mainstream media, schools and educational institutions, Hollywood, you name it. I was watching the game the other night and the Detroit Tigers had the giant “Tigers” logo on the scoreboard lit up in rainbow colors. I assume every ball club is doing that.
What do we value? What does America prioritize? What do we find praiseworthy? The difference between what we do for those twenty-four hours on the last Monday of May and what we are expected to do for the subsequent thirty days is pretty telling, isn’t it?
I realize I’m using strong language, so I’ll make my usual caveat: there is a difference between an ordinary Joe or Jane and an activist. I am going to talk with an individual someone experiencing sex-same attraction or gender dysphoria differently than I do an activist. An activist has a cultural and political agenda, a defined set of goals, and an articulated worldview that can and should be addressed, opposed, and critiqued. And I am here to tell you that “Pride Month” is purely the brainchild of activists. They have succeeded in getting nearly every single institution in this country to demand your celebration—not your “tolerance,” not your “acceptance,” but your celebration—of their perversions. And these people fancy themselves the “oppressed.”
In September of 2000 theologian Peter Jones wrote an article for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled, “Androgyny: The Pagan Sexual Ideal.” This is how he began:
Like the ancient pagan Sodomites pounding on the door of Lot’s house millennia ago, the modern gay movement is gathering at the doors of our churches, our academies, and our once traditionally “Christian” culture, demanding entrance and full recognition.
He went on to explain that the agenda was more than “entrance” and “full recognition.” The agenda was the wholesale undermining and eradication of the sexual binary and the nuclear family. And do you know what? A lot of the evangelical world rolled their eyes. What a hysterical fear-monger! From where I sat, Peter Jones was treated in a lot of sectors like a doddering fool with nothing useful to say. In hindsight, do you think that might have been just a bit of a miscalculation?
The crowds outside of Lot’s door are now huge. And militant. And I am glad that Jones brought up Lot’s house in Sodom. What was Sodom’s sin? Ezekiel 16:49-50 tells us. The very first one is …
Pride.
Now, that is pretty uncanny, isn’t it? Ezekiel follows that up with selfishness and greed, and it ends with “detestable things.” That word, “detestable” (or “abomination”) is a technical term taken from the Levitical law, which uses it to describe homosexual behavior and other sexual perversions.
I cannot think of anything more brazen: they take God’s rainbow, the symbol of his long-suffering patience and his delay of judgment; they then abuse his delay (as though mocking him) and use its symbol to champion every sexual perversion imaginable (go back and read all those terms LGBTQIA++ stands for—they will add more as fast as they can imagine them); and then they call their movement Pride.
This is not about civil rights. This is about religion. And there is simply no room for Christian compromise. To go along with this blasphemy is to join the mob outside of Lot’s house, and we would do well to remember what happened to that crowd.
God’s patience is not unlimited. Make no mistake: that multicolored bow is his, and one day he will rip it out of their hands and fit it with an arrow. An arrow of judgment.
Thank you Brian. Thank you. I will read this to my teenage daughters.
Such a great article! Thank you.