Well, it’s June again. And despite some of the rollbacks of the last couple of years, “Pride Month” is still very much a thing.
It took them decades of plotting and working to make it happen, and so it’s probably going to take some time for us to make it stop happening.
But just saying we will not stand for the culture of LGBT+ism won’t be enough to turn the false rainbow tide.
We have to get over our aversion to standing FOR a pro-family culture.
“What aversion?” you might ask. “We’re pro-heterosexual marriage and believe a man is a man and a woman is a woman.”
To that I would say, we have settled for a bare minimum.
When I say that marriage should be prescribed as normative, the comments section floods with people pointing to Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 to make the argument that there is no normative path—disregarding that the vast majority of humans were made with desires that can only be filled in marriage.
When I say that we should be encouraging young people toward preparing themselves for and pursuing marriage in early adulthood, Christians push back by saying either they can’t be ready by then or should spend their early 20s pursuing other experiences.
When somebody has one kid too many, it’s not uncommon for church members to be the quickest to make passive aggressive comments. “You know what causes that, right?” “You guys are done, right?”
When you describe a masculinity that is anything other than emasculated “servant leadership,” many immediately write it off as domineering and unChristlike.
When you read Bible verses about women having a quiet and gentle spirit and submitting to their husbands, caveats start flying to gut the verses from any actual, practical application.
Until this changes, we won’t have a complete response to Pride Month.
You can’t beat something with nothing. You can’t win a culture war without a culture (and yes, you’re in a culture war whether you want to be or not).
Similarly, you can’t say “Not that” without prescribing a “This.” People are always moving in one direction or another. We have to have a direction we’re recommending. Yes, it will require a broad brush, and yes, there will be exceptions.
This is obviously not about shaming those who have yet to find a spouse, those who are divorced, or those who are unable to have children. In fact, they are the exceptions that prove the rule of the goodness of marriage and family.
There has to be a normative picture to pursue, and ours should come from the Bible
We don’t do this because it’s a path to success. We do it because it’s right—but not coincidentally, what is right is also a path to success.
Good, godly men married to good, godly women raising children to be faithful is the backbone of human society, all the way back to the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1:26-28). That’s exactly why the other side’s most sacred “values” are abortion, homosexuality, feminism, and transgenderism.
We cannot answer those positions with neutrality toward childbearing, indifference toward marriage, weak complementarianism, and a lack of clarity on masculinity and femininity. A thin Gospel that does not offer a positive prescription of what the average Christian ought to be and do is not Biblical, and it will not be able to stand in the face of degeneracy.
To that end, I recommend that churches join in with states like Tennessee in celebrating a Nuclear Family Month. Preach on manhood, womanhood, marriage, and childbearing. Speak of the goodness of God’s design for marriage, and the blessing of children.
Let the church know that the family is to be celebrated because God gave it to us for the purposes of solving our loneliness and giving us the unit we need to take dominion over all the earth (Genesis 1:28, 2:18).
Being against evil is great. But being for good at the same time is even better.
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Notes
This week we posted what has already become our most-watched episode in the 4 and a half year run of Think Deeper Podcast! Check out our interview on Non-Institutional churches of Christ here
For more on Pride Month, see these entries from previous years
