Lux Lucet

The Pride flag is raised for the first time at Cincinnati City Hall, June 21, 2019.  Photo by: Dwayne Slavey.

“Today is about saying that we are in this fight for civil rights and social justice and that love is love is love is love.”

    – Cincinnati Councilwoman Tamaya Dennard

When I was growing up, way back in the day, the sixth month of the year was known as June. It was a without a doubt one of my favorite months. School ended for the summer – yes, we had to go to school into June – the weather was beautiful and I had three glorious months do pretty much whatever I wanted.

But all that has changed over the years. June has largely been wiped off the calendar and replaced by something called Pride Month. Now when considering just the name itself, Pride Month, this ought to give any Christian reason to be skeptical of it. Pride is not a thing commended in the Scriptures. In speaking of the wicked men of his day, the psalmist wrote, “Therefore pride serves as their necklace.” In Proverbs we read, “Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate,” and, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Luke records for us Mary’s words, “He [the Lord] has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” Writes the Apostle John, “For all that is in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – is not of the Father but is of the world.”

Clearly, pride is a concept at odds with the Word of God. But these passages do not exhaust what the Bible has to say about pride and its related concepts.

Writing to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul said of the enemies of Christ that their, “glory is in their shame.” These enemies of Christ were guilty of doing what the Prophet Isaiah had warned of, calling good evil and evil good, putting darkness for light and light for darkness. In the things of which they should have taken shame, in these they instead found honor, praise and enjoyed an excellent reputation among men.

When thinking about contemporary applications of this principle, that is, taking pride in that which should bring shame, it is hard to find a better example than in the many assertions of pride in the homosexual lifestyle made both by homosexuals themselves as well as by their supporters.

Now it doesn’t exactly take a theologian of the caliber of Martin Luther or John Calvin to understand what the Bible has to say about homosexuality. The Scriptures condemn homosexuality and homosexuals in the strongest terms. There’s really no debating this point, although some have tried.

But despite the clarity of the Bible on the issue of homosexuality, American society’s view of it has undergone such a profound change in just my lifetime that it constitutes a most extraordinary revolution.

To give you just one example of what I mean, consider the quote at the time of this post by Cincinnati Councilwoman Tamaya Dennard. The occasion for her remark was an event held outside Cincinnati City Hall where, for the first time ever, the Pride flag was raised. The event received a good deal of coverage in both the local and national press.

According to this report from a local television station, Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, echoing the remarks of Tamaya Dennard, said that life is too short to prevent people from loving each other, the decision to fly the flag by Cincinnati City Council was unanimous, and Pride flags also were flown over six Hamilton County buildings as well as Cincinnati City Hall.

Cincinnati based Proctor & Gamble was a major participant in the Pride parade, sponsoring several floats.  This is the same company that a few months back had no problem attacking men for their so-called “toxic masculinity” in a hectoring, lecturing ad campaign for Gillette, one of the firms many consumer brands.  In P&G’s twisted world, heterosexual family men are problematic, but drag queens are awesome and above reproach.

 Cincinnati Pride Parade – Business Hates America

Following Friday’s aforementioned festivities at City Hall, Saturday brought with it Cincinnati’s annual Pride parade. Not satisfied with merely flying a flag, Cincinnati’s homosexual community and their supporters literally paraded their glory in their shame through streets for all the world to see.

Not that there’s anything particularly unusual about this in 2019. Many cities have Pride parades, so Cincinnati is hardly alone in this.

In reviewing pictures of the event, I was struck by how deep corporate support for the homosexual agenda is. In some respects, this is not surprising. My former employer, for example, used to make a big deal out of Pride Month with the company intranet cheerily asking “How will you celebrate Pride Month?”

But still, growing up during the 70’s and 80’s as I did, I’ve managed to retain this idea, at least in the back of my mind, that corporate America is somehow a bastion of rocked ribbed, practical, conservative thinking that would never go in for celebrating Gay Pride.

Perhaps that was true then, but it’s certainly not true today.

The list of companies sponsoring floats and marchers in the parade read like a Who’s Who of Cincinnati business. Many other local businesses sponsored booths of one sort or another at the event.

In this I was reminded of something John Robbins wrote a number of years ago.

One of the reasons, a secondary reason, for the decline of freedom and civilization is that those persons and organizations in society that have the greatest responsibility for the intellectual climate that prevails in any culture, and I am thinking of three types of organizations – churches, schools, and businesses – are often rotten to the core. Let me begin by mentioning businesses first.

Take one small but typical example of what corporate America is doing to subvert civilization and freedom. IBM sends its middle managers to Armonk, New York, Westchester County, for training. One of the highly paid consultants that IBM hires to train its managers is a fellow named Ted Chiles, a practicing boasting, haranguing homosexual who hates Western civilization and the religion that created it, Christianity. Chiles is very politically correct. Now variety is the spice of life, but too much variety, variety of the wrong sort, is lethal. One does not put cyanide in the salad dressing.

For decades, corporate America has been subsidizing those who hate America, capitalism, freedom, truth, and Christianity. One thinks not only of the great foundations that bear the names of industrialists such as Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, and Pew – foundations that have funded anti-freedom and anti-civilization enterprises and ideologies for decades – but one think also of existing corporate structures such as IBM, AT&T, and Disney. Why, you may ask, do I mention Christianity? The fact that you may ask indicates the severity of our problem, which is much deeper than economics or politics. It is the failure of conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals to recognize the depth of the problem that explains the failure of their efforts to preserve freedom over the past 50 years. To quote Ed Opitz, “the remedy must go at least as deep as the disease.” Anything less will not do (Robbins, “Rebuilding American Freedom in the Twenty-First Century“).

In their foolish attempt to appear “woke” by catering to homosexuals and to those who support their agenda, the businesses that sponsored and participated in the Cincinnati Pride Parade are showing their contempt for America and did their part to destroy the very civilization which birthed them and upon which their future depends.

The danger the LGBTQ agenda poses to civilization is such that even feminist and self described “transgender being” Camille Paglia recognizes the problem. In a remarkable 2015 interview, she noted that the rise of transgenderism in the West is a symptom of decadence and cultural collapse. Said Paglia, “Nothing…better defines the decadence of the West to the jihadists than our toleration of open homosexuality and this transgender mania now.”

During the same interview, Paglia, an author and social critic, went on to say, “I was always drawn to late or decadent phases of culture. Oscar Wilde [Wilde was a flamboyant British homosexual in the late 19th century] is one of the great exponents of that in the late 19th century. He’s one of my strongest influences from my earliest years. And I found in my study that history is cyclic, and everywhere in the world you find this pattern in ancient times; that as a culture begins to decline, you have an efflorescence of transgender phenomena. That is a symptom of cultural collapse.”

Paglia’s view of Western celebration of the homosexual agenda is much different than those on Cincinnati’s City Council. Said Paglia, “So rather than people singing the praises of humanitarian liberalism that allows all of these transgender possibilities to appear and to be encouraged, I would be concerned about how Western culture is defining itself to the world. Because in fact these phenomena are inflaming the irrational, indeed borderline psychotic opponents of Western culture in the form of ISIS and other jihadists, et cetera.”

Now Paglia is no Christian, but her comments about homosexuality, transgenderism and their tolerance, indeed celebration, in the West are far closer to the mind of God than many professing Christians.

God Is Not Mocked

God is not mocked. If the West continues on its current path – and barring a second Reformation or the return of Christ in the very near future, it seems likely that this will be the case – in the opinion of this author all of us in the West – believers and unbelievers alike – are going to get a good, hard practical lesson in what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote about the wrath of God being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Indeed, the nations of the once Christian West already are being destroyed, not only by the homosexual agenda, but also by crushing personal, corporate and governmental debt, central banking, creeping neo-feudalism, stifling government regulation, loss of personal freedom, oppressive taxation, low birthrates, political correctness, migrant invasions, Islamification, the widespread acceptance of vulgarity, violent crime, globalism and cultural Marxism.

Apart from a radical change of heart, even the fractured remains of the West will continue to crumble and will at some point, perhaps in the not too distant future, cease to exist. Writing about Ephraim, the Northern Kingdom, the Prophet Hosea commented, “Aliens have devoured his strength, but he does not know it; Yes, gray hairs are here and there on him yet he does not know it.”

As the Bible tells us, Ephraim never learned his lesson and was carried off into captivity when Samaria, the Northern Kingdom’s capital, fell to the invading Assyrians in 722 BC.

What Are Christians To Do in 2019?

So just what are we Christians to make of all this? Are we to retreat into our bunkers, huddle up and wait for the end to come? In a word, no.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his hearers that they were the salt of the earth and the light of the world. I once had a Sunday School teacher remark on this passages that to be salt and light is really the job description of a Christian. Wise words, those.

As Christians, we are to teach the world what the will of God is, both in word and in deed. This means proclaiming the whole counsel of God, the law and the Gospel, reproving, correcting and instructing in righteousness. It also means living in a way that is consistent with our profession.

One area where reproof, correction and instruction is needed the most right now is LGBT agenda. It is imperative that we Christians call homosexuality what it is, gross sin, and warn those who practice it that they will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Just as important is the need to rebuke those who facilitate the homosexual agenda. Mayor John Cranley, Councilwoman Tamaya Dennard and the others on the Cincinnati City Council who supported the raising of the Pride flag are liars and are leading men and women to hell by endorsing and encouraging their sinful, homosexual lifestyle. The same goes for the businessmen – the owners, executives and employees alike – who planned and participated in the Pride parade. They are guilty before an all holy God of encouraging a sin that he calls an abomination.

But however terrible his wrath, so great is his grace to those who call upon his name. One of the biggest lies of the homosexual movement is that those trapped in this sin are forever stuck in it and cannot change.

Wrote the Apostle Paul, “Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you.”

A few things to note. First, homosexuals and sodomites – the difference between homosexuals and sodomites is the difference between and passive and an active male homosexual, Paul uses very pointed language here – are not the only sorts of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God. Take thieves and drunkards for example. Do we say that a thief was born that way and can never change? How about a drunkard? There are thieves who stop stealing and drunkards who stop drinking. What about fornicators? Can fornicators stop fornicating? Of course they can. If thieves can stop thieving, and drunkards can stop drinking and fornicators can stop fornicating, it stands to reason that sodomites can stop their sodomizing. This is not merely implied, but stated directly by Paul when he writes, “and such were some of you.” Note the past tense.

Now if God can so work among the Corinthians to whom these words were first directed, can he not do so today? Or has the arm of the Lord been shortened, so that he no longer can save homosexuals from their sin?

Of course God still saves thieves, drunkards, and homosexuals in the 21st century! And he does so in the same way he did in the first century. How does he do this? Paul continues, “But you were washed, but your were sanctified, but your were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”

Homosexuals are saved and cease from their sin in the same way all Christians have always been saved and have come to cease from their former sins, through faith, that is to say, belief in the Lord Jesus Christ alone.

The good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is that he has done the work that sinners never could do for themselves: He perfectly kept the law of God. When sinners confess with their mouths the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in their hearts that God raised him from this dead, Christ’s righteousness is credited, reckoned, imputed to them and God pronounces them righteous in his sight. This includes even the vilest offender.

As Christians, our job is to be salt and light. This means, in part, preaching the law that condemns and Gospel which saves. It does not mean healing the wound of hell bound sinners slightly by telling them nonsense such as “love is love is love is love.” God forbid that we should do so.