“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18
Evaluating the LGBT-Pride Movement
Part 1
It’s presently Pride Month, which means that America’s usual suspects have busied themselves with affirmations of the LGBT philosophy. Pride, insofar as the Bible understands it, is sinful as it’s a denial of man’s reliance upon God and need of grace. Jesus Himself taught that he who exalts himself will be humbled (Luke 14:11) and our passage under consideration teaches unequivocally that human pride before God is the path of destruction. It’s certainly a path to ultimate destruction since it rejects God’s offer of eternal life through faith in Christ. But it’s also, as you’ll see, a path to social conflict as well since pride is the act of man playing god – which always leads to conflict.
In Romans we learn that man’s essential sin is that of denying the obvious – which is that God is our creator and sustainer. It teaches that all of us know God because His divine nature and eternal power are clearly perceived through nature. Paul writes that we are, therefore, without excuse for our unbelief. No excuses. More still, although we know God, we don’t honor Him or give thanks to Him for our gifts in life. In other words, mankind’s basic nature is to acknowledge God and give thanks to Him. In refusing to do this – and it is refusal, not confusion – we incur the judgment. The first manifestation of this judgment is the confusion of our thinking and our acceptance of a logically inconsistent philosophy of life.
In other words, our logic and ethics become impaired because we insist, blindly, stupidly, on thinking about life mid-stream, disconnected from the true source of things, which is God. And, because we were made by God to worship Him (acknowledge and be thankful…that is, rejoice in Him always) we turn to idolatry. We turn to the worship – the acknowledgment of and dependence upon created things. So, you see, good things like sex, which God gave us to enjoy within certain boundaries, become used in futile, self-serving ways. The root of all sin is in our act of exchanging the truth for a lie; it’s the insistence upon using our own standards for the rule of right and wrong rather than the living God. The redefinition of aspects of life – especially the role and use of sex – is but a consequence of this reckless and illogical insistence of using ourselves as the standard of right and wrong.
Our rebellious and philosophically ludicrous persistence, against all the evidence to the contrary, that we are our own standard of truth and falsehood, is pride. Did we create ourselves and the world? Did we create right and wrong? Does the world around us reflect our moral character or must we adapt to a transcendent morality that’s outside of us? If every person is the standard of truth, wouldn’t that mean that no standard exists at all? It’s for these reasons – and so many others – that unbelief is foolish. It’s nonsensical and can’t make sense of the basic facts of life.
It’s against this background that we should think biblically about so-called gay pride.
The claim is that gay pride is the promotion (evangelism…remember, it’s a false gospel of self-salvation) of self-affirmation, dignity, equality and the increased visibility of LGBT as a social group. The goal is, therefore, primarily social/political as it’s designed to convert others to their beliefs.
The core problem of man, as the Bible defines it, is sin and death. To this, Jesus Christ came and died for our sins and rose again so that we would have eternal life – freed from the penalty, power and presence of sin in our lives. The problem in life according to the LGBT philosophy is social. Others disagree with them. That’s the heart of it. They aren’t, be clear, advocating for actual equality before the law. In fact, being truth suppressors, they never bother to define what law is, much less equality. They aren’t saying that all people deserve the same protection and treatment from the civil magistrate. Their political ideology is a deliberate vacuum. If they were saying that in the event of crimes committed against them they deserve the same legal considerations as others that would be fully logical and biblical. In fact, the Lord demands that all people have full civil rights insofar as crime is concerned (Romans 13). All citizens, regardless of their beliefs, are to be “avenged” by the civil magistrate in the event a crime is perpetrated against them. This is a blessing from God.
But this isn’t about making sure that gay people can live with the same rights as others – it’s about making others agree with them, and that’s based entirely upon a flawed philosophical/theological framework Christians should understand. All Christians should support the rule of law for all citizens. The civil magistrate is on earth as God’s minister to punish the particular evil of crime, which is that which injures another sovereign image-bearer of God. As Romans 12-13 defines it, self-defense is a right for ALL human beings and in event that it wasn’t possible and someone is a victim of crime, the local government MUST avenge them.
This gets easily confused. The state (civil magistrate) is God’s minister for everyone’s benefit. The state is a form of common grace in that it avenges the interpersonal evil of destruction of personal property, violence, theft (directly or through fraud), rape, and murder. All people under the sun deserve this common grace. This is the only logical philosophy of government too. All others assume that the state has moral powers unto itself and/or sets neighbor against neighbor in some way or another. Therefore, to talk of equality without this as our foundation – as the right to be free just like everyone else, which is free from force and fraud – is nonsense.
To better understand it, unless you could have morally used violence to protect yourself, you have not been a victim of a crime. This is God’s standard and, as always, it’s perfect, loving and both righteous and full of grace. The state, therefore, is God’s minister to punish criminals. It must not try and make men good – that is the job of the church through preaching the gospel. Men will never be made good by law, though law can restrain his evil outbursts. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit through the repentance of sin will make hearts truly good.
So, as you see, the promotion of gay pride, absent a sound moral foundation, leads instantly to the conflict its proponents claim to abhor. All unbelief commits the fallacy of equivocation. It changes the meaning of words mid-stream. To love our neighbor as ourselves is the highest social/political guide but if mankind defines what love is, not God, then he only succeeds in intensifying conflict. Peace cannot come through lies, only truth.
Thus, the insistence that equality will come only if others agree with us is literally the act of playing god. Only God has the prerogative of demanding assent. His moral law, as far as politics and society are concerned, is written on everyone’s heart, and it’s the law of freedom and self-defense. The taking of one’s labor, time, or property, without consent, is a particular evil called crime. All persons on the earth, the Lord demands, have the same right to this standard – for God shows no partiality (Romans 2:11). There is no distinction between people. The only one that counts, as far as God is concerned, is those in Christ through faith alone and those in pride.
Christians aren’t to demand that others agree with them. We’re to preach the gospel, to teach, to persuade, debate, and present reasonable arguments for Christ to all people. Read the book of Acts and see how the early church advanced through these tactics alone. The gospel of Christ must never be advanced at the barrel of a gun or a magistrate’s law or else Christ died in vain. He went willingly to the cross so that we would be saved, you and me. We have no authority to compel others through any means other than preaching, teaching and persuading.
To our gay neighbors, this is a powerful pronouncement they likely haven’t heard. It shows them that God, even in their sin and rebellion, showers them with the gifts of life, sun and rain, friendships and pleasures. It also shows that He provides for their safety and that legal safety from the sinful violence of others is meant so that they might live to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is God’s love toward sinners, which is all of us. True love isn’t using government force and social pressures to compel assent. It’s the gracious and reasoned presentation of the gospel of Christ to all and the commitment to a Godly civil magistrate that sees all citizens as deserving the same right to self-determination. A Christian can lovingly go to their gay neighbor and present the gospel and say, truthfully, without contradiction, that God demands that here on earth we all should have the same rights before the civil magistrate. The believer in gay pride, however, can’t do this with the Christian since they literally insist that disagreement with them is morally wrong and socially/politically unacceptable. The rule is: the one who refuses to allow the other to use his/her mind is always wrong. On this count the current gay pride movement is morally wrong. They aren’t promoting true equality before the law but that others be ostracized and even punished for disagreement. Disagreeing with someone isn’t violating their rights; it requires no self-defense or vengeance from the police and courts. Sharing the gospel is love. That we all live now in this age of grace where we can turn to God in repentance and receive forgiveness of our sins is the greatest love of all. It’s only upon this foundation that we’re all equal. And it’s only upon this foundation – God’s Word – that we rightly see the balance of the church spreading the gospel and the state impartially punishing criminals.
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