Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the Head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
- Ephesians 4:15-16
I don’t know about you, but every time someone brings up “speaking the truth in love” to me, I can’t help but feel a bit of dread. You know… ‘Because I love you, I have to tell you the truth… you need to be more… (or less…).’ I have a huge selection of shortcomings, flaws, and sins from which to choose, all of which are dubious but most of which are enjoyable. Think dessert, for example. ‘Because I love you, I have to tell you the truth… You need to take better care of yourself and not eat those things that harm your body and cause weight gain, like, pecan pie cheesecake.’ Pecan pie cheesecake…
The other day, we were having lunch at a burger joint, and it had pecan pie cheesecake on its menu. Oh. My. Word. My blood sugar went up just thinking about it. I so totally needed a piece of pecan pie cheesecake. How could that possibly be bad? Then my brother-in-law pointed out that there wasn’t a pecan pie cheesecake, merely a pecan pie or a cheesecake – tasty, no doubt, but uninteresting. Alas… Undaunted, when I returned home, I searched for pecan pie cheesecake, and not only did I find several recipes, one recipe had a bonus pecan caramel sauce. That’s sort of like doubling down on sin. Still, coming to a dinner table in the near future…
For the most part, we like our sin. I mean, who would be a glutton if food tasted awful? But if we pack it with sugar and butter, it’s nearly impossible to dislike. In fact, some doctors and nutritionists are saying processed sugar – that white stuff used in baking – is addictive in the same way that narcotics are addictive. Probably so, but it has the benefit of being legal.
A while back, I was with two friends, and when one stepped away, I asked the other if our friend had lost some weight. She replied that she doesn’t notice things like that. That sounds so high-minded and nonjudgmental, so accepting and open-minded, and it would be except for the fact that morbid obesity dramatically alters both quality of life daily and life expectancy in years. The least loving thing is to ignore self-destructive behaviors in those we love. I want to be careful here because we are not called to judge others, but we must judge between what brings life and what brings death. When Jesus said we are not to judge, He didn’t mean we should lose all moral sense of right and wrong. Rather, you and I are in no position to judge another’s salvation and relationship with Christ.
That is an important distinction to make and an important distinction for us to keep forefront in our minds. We are living in a time and place in which everything valued by popular culture is the opposite of Christian faith, or conversely, Christianity stands in opposition to contemporary western values and beliefs. In and of itself, that is an odd condition because western civilization was and is shaped in profound ways by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A tree doesn’t live if its roots are destroyed.
Even so, there is actually very little we can do about occurs at a national and civilizational level. We have a vote, but that’s a single vote among tens of millions. Yes, I know that Donald Trump promised a “Christian Visibility Day” in response to Biden’s “Trans Visibility Day” on Easter Sunday (which can only be understood as an intentional insult to Christians). But politicians do not ordain the visibility of Christ. If we want Christianity to be visible, then we need to be visibly Christian in our lives and in our interactions with others. We must reflect Christ in holiness and virtue, in compassion and love, and our lives must be lived in accordance with the Truth, that is, in accordance with Christ Himself and all that is revealed in Him, through Him, and from Him.
The question for us is: how do we live as outsiders in our nation? Here, I want to make an obvious point that we often overlook. If Christianity is true at all, it must be true for all. If it is true for all, then it is also true for you and me. In other words, it doesn’t matter what everybody else believes. What matters is what is true. If you believe your salvation comes through Jesus Christ, that He is Lord of all and the Son of God come into the world to save, then you must also believe that is true for everyone else. We have been lulled into convenient complacency with the privatization of faith by accepting that we should not impose Christian belief on others. The only people who have said that are people who want to be free of religion and religious belief. But if Christianity is true, then life comes through Christ, and all other choices lead to dead-ends and destruction. We are witnessing that shattering of human flourishing in the pursuit of nonsensical ideas and unchecked desires.
As I write this, we are a week into “pride month,” and as Christians, we are all over the map in our response to it. We are supposed to be compassionate and accepting, but we are also supposed to be moral, although we have advanced a lot since Jesus’ time, so the moral good may be different now, but we’re not sure, so maybe we don’t know what’s right now, except that children should be left alone, unless maybe children really do feel strongly about whether they’re boys or girls or maybe something in between, if children have such an awareness, do they? These are the chaotic claims of our national discourse permeating a thin veil of Christian thought and belief.
The most obvious thing to point out is that the essential flaw in the human character is pride. That is applicable to every human being, meaning we cannot point at others when we also suffer the same flaw. What we can do is not celebrate our sin. The fact that the entire LGBT+ movement is based on pride reveals its inherent rejection of God, and more specifically, the celebration of what is contrary to the human body is a rejection of God as our Creator. American culture is saturated with a naturalistic or materialistic view of life in toto, and the idea of being formed intentionally by a Creator and being conformed to the will of the Creator is – wittingly or not – completely foreign and repugnant to a great many people today, especially young and youngish people. Regardless of what one wishes to believe, what matters is what is true.
This cult of transition is deeper than some sort of perversion. The idea of hating who one is, is rooted in the sinful nature. In other words, there is nothing new about wanting to be someone entirely different. What is new is the medical and pharmaceutical technology that allows a person the pretense of changing of who he or she is. It is science’ answer to salvation. In Christ, we are made new, and the eternal hope arising with Christian faith is the new creation we are in Him. For all that is wrong, our Lord sees a person of great dignity and majesty beneath the distortion of the sin in us. When we understand this desire, then we can have compassion for those who want to be someone else, and we can – as Christ does – love them as someone desperate to get away from a self they hate, even as we know the truth: that isn’t possible. The changing of the body to become someone else only gives the illusion of transformation because one’s DNA is not changed. DNA is the basis of all biological life, and changing the replicating DNA that sustains life simply isn’t possible. Indeed, experimentation in significant altering of DNA (genetic engineering) is proving to be difficult and often with unpredictable outcomes.
But more to the point is the fact that, no matter what one does to the body, it is a superficial and physical effort to change a deeply spiritual problem. Whatever is done to change the body, the soul remains darkened within, starving for care and acceptance and emitting a sense of misery that is healed only by the love of God poured out in our hearts. Nothing will ever be enough until the broken and empty soul is met and filled by its Creator. Like the father of the prodigal watching for his return, so does our Father look eagerly for those who are living enslaved in a foreign land wishing they could eat as well as the pigs.
Responding to our current generation is complex because we need to see people who are so loved by God that He sent His Son to give His life for them, but we also need to see people who have no knowledge of the soul and its demands. If that capacity within us yearns for God, but we do not know from whence the yearning arises nor believe there is a God Who can answer it, then solutions to our pain becoming more and more macabre and destructive. This has always been true because this is the human condition.
The reason I think it is so important for us to compare human beings in the image of God in contrast to human beings in the image of monkeys is two-fold, the most important being the utter nihilism of human life lived as a mere animal, sentient and conscious, but just an animal. It is a hopeless and meaningless life. Equally, however, is the fact that the theory is not true. The evidence is not there. The more one learns about new developments in microbiology, cosmology, and such, the less plausible evolutionary theory becomes. Essentially, we have all been taught a theory that lacks evidence but opens a pathway away from God, and in the rejection of God, human life becomes a caricature of its intended dignity and majesty. Meanwhile, people celebrate complete freedom from God by becoming utterly enslaved to the passions that destroy them. How do we not see that as an evil? I’m not calling people evil, though no doubt some are, but I am saying our tolerance of what is false and our willingness to accept the harm that lies do to everyone are evil. That is what evil looks like.
As my friend “loves” so much and with such an open mind that she ignores our mutual friend’s self-destructive eating habits, so also is our society so “loving” that it doesn’t matter how many people self-destruct in misery. We can enjoy a facile self-congratulatory blindness to enormous suffering by telling ourselves are being “loving.”
God sent His Son into the world to save the world. Specifically, He came to destroy death and to give life. We are not loving others when we love them to death. From the heart of Christ given to us and by His Spirit Who dwells within us, we are called to love others to life. Running through every aspect of contemporary American life are the overarching themes of purely physical existence without God and falsehood, lies, and death. What stands between the complete destruction of our current generation and life is Jesus Christ. As His disciples, as children of God, we are tasked with the responsibility of holding tight to truth and of loving too much to accept the destruction of life and good.
When we love, let us love truly, so we do not love people to death. Rather, may we so abide in Jesus Christ that we love people to life.
In Christ –
Rev. Elizabeth Moreau
© 2024
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