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Chapter 12: Warfare Strategy (3) – Fixity of Belief & Being
CONTENTS:
PART 12.1: Fixity of Belief – Believe what I believe Focus A not-so-modern demand Conflicts with God Modern Beliefs Turning Consequences The Conflict Summary-Recap
PART 12.2: Fixity of Behaviour – set in concrete? Focus A Unique Offer The false mantra Voices to be heard The Homosexual Question The Transgender Question Back to the Kingdom of God Summary-Recap
PART 12.1: Fixity of Belief – Believe what I believe
Focus: Modern culture warriors demand we think what they think, regardless of the truth. We thus need to think more carefully than we perhaps have done in the past.
A not-so-modern demand: Closed minds come about in a variety of ways. Perhaps it is because of fear, or feeling threatened, perhaps it is because of bad childhood experiences, or maybe even bad life experiences generally, maybe it is because we have wrong or false perceptions about God, ourselves, others or life in general, maybe we feel cheated, the subject of unfair prejudice, or maybe it is just good old-fashioned low self-esteem. In all these ways we can find our thinking locked in, tunnel vision, if you like, thoughts and feelings that overwhelm us. So often, coming out of this and the multiple reasons for it that we've just put up, there is this inner demand to reinforce, “I'm right!” and if you aren't agreeing with me, “You're wrong!”
We seem to be seeing this frequently out there in the public domain today. In an article in the Sunday Times recently a teacher was speaking about the modern difficulties of being a teacher in this environment and they wrote, “Some teenagers would say: “Why can't I be non-binary or why can't I be a boy?” Children seemed to feel emboldened, absolutely certain that there was only correct point of view.” Note the words I underlined, “absolutely certain.” The enemy has been creating a closed-mind mentality.
Jn 11:49 Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, ‘You know nothing at all!
Conflicts with God: This verse shows the leading religious person in Judaism standing out against Jesus Christ the Son of God, categorically shooting down anyone who would hold a contrary view. Now this isn't a strange or unusual phenomena for we see it in Acts of the apostle Paul, or Saul as he was then, definitely working against God by consenting to stoning a Christian and then going on a purge to arrest any Christians he could find (Acts 8:1,3). It took a divine encounter on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-9) to sort him out. But then we find the apostle Peter seriously struggling with his Jewish prejudices as God prepares him to go to Gentiles (Acts 10:9-23, esp. v.14). “No Lord”????
Modern Beliefs Turning: I would now like to quote from ‘The Madness of Crowds – Gender, Race & Identity' by Douglas Murray, who I referred to earlier, who often comes up with a remarkable degree of honesty and integrity. He raises the questions of what we are born with, what we adopt, and how that impacts how others view our difficulties. He calls what we are born with, our ‘hardware', and what we adopt as our ‘software', but listen to his modern argument:
Did you follow so far?
Consequences: I'm not sure he was agreeing with where it is going but he paints the modern picture and continues,
The Conflict: Regardless of his position, what is our response as bible-believing Christians? Before I answer that, note two things: a distinction between ‘attributing blame' and how we respond to ‘failures' (of our perception). Observe first, one of the primary challenges throughout the whole Bible is to face the truth about our failures. Thus we find the apostle Peter preaching, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” (Acts 3:19)
Repentance (a change of mind, attitude, and behaviour) brought the consequence of good change. Now, second, there is an equivalent belief, seen in that verse that when we do repent, God will act to bring the good change. Accepting the belief that, say, alcoholism, is built into genes, locks everyone into what we belief is simply a predisposition, and undermines the incredible work of years of Alcoholics Anonymous and similar drug agencies AND also the very basic tenets of salvation that we can be changed. Yes, we are set in the hardware of our being to have propensity to sin, but God calls us to change AND offers the means to change.
Summary-Recap: Behind much modern conflict is the demand to accept, “I am right! This needs graciously challenging. There is also a trend towards an unverifiable belief that we are hardwired to certain behaviours, which the Bible challenges and God offers freedom from. We have moved from fixity of belief to the possibility of fixity of behaviours.
PART 12.2: Fixity of Behaviour – set in concrete?
Jn 8:36 “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
Focus: There are claims that what we are today is fixed and cannot be changed, but Christianity shows that with God, nothing is ‘set in concrete'.
A Unique Offer: When the world all around us is bickering and arguing about race, gender, and identity, we the Christian community have a unique perspective that says that whatever state we find ourselves in, when you come to Christ we come to one who declared, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners.” (Lk 4:18) Subsequently the apostle Paul was to write, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” (2 Cor 5:17) So much of his teaching in the New Testament pivots around this truth. Christ comes to release us from our old ‘self' and releases us to become a new person. We are NOT locked in to what we once were.
The false mantra: Now I believe we tend to forget this – and certainly it is often not declared in these modern debates, because the modern ideology is that you are what you are born with and for quite large numbers they are born gay, i.e. with a preference for their own gender when it comes to relationships. i.e. we are stuck with what we are born with. (More later). Now we majored on about being concerned for the truth and nowhere is this more wrongly portrayed than in the gender wars. Let me demonstrate.
Voices to be heard: I would like to quote from two influential writers in this realm, first, Douglas Murray, the intellectual, author, and journalist (and self-declared gay) who I have referred to before, who writes winningly and comprehensively on these topics in his book, ‘The Madness of Crowds – Gender, Race and Identity' and then, second, Helen Joyce, Editor of ‘The Economist' in Britain, who caused much disturbance in these quarters by her book simply titled, ‘Trans – Where Ideology Meets Reality' . As Christians we may not agree with the outlook on life these two have, but they are authoritative voices, so we should listen.
The Homosexual Question: We will consider this later as a separate pages entitled, ‘The Homosexual Phenomena' but for the moment I want to focus simply on the subject of fixity – of something being unchanging or permanent.
At one point Murray, somewhat plaintively I thought, said that he found it hurtful when people suggest being gay is ‘just a phase'. Declaring your friend who is gay is going through a phase is in fact attacking what they see as their identity. Asking them sensitively and gently what grounds they have for believing they are gay is, I would hope, different. It seeks understanding. Perhaps we should think more of those distinctions. But intriguingly, despite this comment, Murray goes to some lengths to cover outlooks of whether being gay is a permanent state and produces evidence to show that it is not! (See more detail in the later chapter).
Referring to higher authorities in the world of psychology, he shows that really the experts do not know and cannot agree on the causes of homosexuality, or if it is fixed. But he goes further than this acknowledging that, to use his phrase, there is a ‘one-way street', i.e. that it is acceptable for a straight to declare as gay but if a gay declares they are straight they “will be subject not just to a degree of ostracism and suspicion, but widespread doubt that they are being honest about their true selves.” It is clear that there is a fluidity of feeling and belief and outlook.
The hot-potato subject here seems to be in respect of counselling a gay person who says he wants to be free from his same-sex feelings. It is wrong when it is imposed, let's be clear on that, but if a gay person has arrived at a place where they, of their own volition, have decided they would like help to change, it is an unwise and possibly unrighteous government that would forbid that happening.
The Transgender Question: This fluidity of intent, desire, feelings, and wishes, is even clearer when we consider the transgender world (which we will do in a separate study) and this brings us to Joyce's book, ‘Trans' which is serious reading and not for the faint-hearted.
She declares that the thing that finally pushed her to write the book was meeting a number of ‘detransitioners', (mainly young) people who took hormonal and sometimes surgical steps towards transition (to change their gender physically and emotionally), “only to realise they had made a catastrophic mistake”.
She continues later, “Detransitioners speak of trauma from experimental drugs and surgery, of having been manipulated and deceived by adults, and being abandoned by friends when they detransitioned. I have seen them abused and defamed on social media, accused of being transphobes and liars and of trying to stop genuine trans people getting the treatments they need.”
For the sake of space, we'll pick up more of her comments when we face the subject of transgender properly. The main point she was making here, is not the abuse this group of (largely) young people have suffered at the hands of misguided adults but the reason – they were led down that path because those adults thought they were fixed as ‘young adults' and simply needed help to ratify their 'apparent' earlier feelings. The bigger point is that these young people came to deny their trans feelings, they changed, they were NOT fixed.
Back to the Kingdom of God: The Bible declares we ALL need changing, but the truth is that more often than not, God allows us time to come to that place of awareness and then commitment. Heavy-handedness of other human beings can cause harm.
Summary-Recap: Parts of the world believes and teaches that we are locked into what we feel we are and are upset when that is challenged. Experience shows that feelings are an unsound arbiter of the truth. The Bible and Christ declares he can bring life-transformation. Moreover the evidence of experience ‘out there' shouts loudly against a stance of being fixed.
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