“Who am I to impose my beliefs on someone else?” has become an increasingly prevalent attitude among Christians, especially young Christians, as seen in recent data indicating a growing acceptance of the LGBT movement among Evangelicals. According to political scientist Paul Djupe, 90% of Evangelicals believed their religion forbade homosexual behaviors in 2007. By 2020, that number had dropped by almost 30 percentage points. According to another researcher, this is especially prevalent among young Evangelicals, with roughly 50% of Evangelical Christians between 18-35 affirming same-sex marriage in 2018. Alongside of this trend, many young people in the church have adopted a deeply secular attitude and treat Christian faith as simply one belief among many. Because of this, they increasingly see standing up for biblical teaching on sexuality as “imposing” their beliefs on others.
Christianity is not simply one belief among many equally valid options. The world is not a neutral space. As Abraham Kuyper put it, “There is not a square inch in all of creation over which Christ, who is Lord of all, does not declare, ‘Mine!’” God reveals himself both in Scripture and in nature, and what he reveals about himself and his handiwork in nature is in harmony with what he reveals in Scripture because God is consistent and does not change (Numbers 23:19). This means that we can and should expect to see nature affirming what the Bible teaches about sexuality, and we should point others to the way that nature affirms biblical teaching on sexuality and the family.
Biological sex is not an invented idea, but a recognition of biological reality. Saying that children need a mother and a father simply acknowledges the fact that only a union between a man and woman can bring children into the world and that there is no other arrangement that comes close to promoting a child’s wellbeing in the same way. Insistence that men cannot become women and women cannot become men is not bigotry, it is simply a matter of recognizing that every single cell in a man’s body contains male DNA and every single cell in a woman’s body contains female DNA. No amount of sex denialism, in the form of hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery, can change that. The LGBT agenda is not just at odds with the Bible. It’s at odds with natural revelation that all of us have access to. Attempting to live or to build a society in a manner that is at odds with reality can never lead human flourishing. And when we see our neighbors trying to do this, it is not loving to remain silent.
Ryan T. Anderson recently pointed out that the response to the LGBT movement is frequently framed as a battle of religious freedom. While religious freedom is one of the issues at stake, and a very important one, it is not the only issue. “How about the damage being done to young people's bodies and minds?” asks Anderson. “Or the privacy and safety and equality of girls, when boys who identify as girls can share female-only spaces…? How about the ability of doctors to practice good and honest medicine? Or the rights of parents to find the best care for their kids?” These concerns, he points out, are not only a matter of religious freedom.
The sexual brokenness of our fallen world exists but we can’t let it become the norm. We do not love people by lying to them or by validating the lies they are telling themselves. We must boldly and compassionately communicate the truth to a broken world, and we cannot do that without first loving the truth ourselves.
Christians must embrace the goodness of God’s design and boldly defend it, knowing that the created order also proclaims this truth. It is troubling to see the denial of created reality and biblical revelation on sex and gender gain so much traction among young people in the church.
Like so many of their peers, these young people have mistaken the collective mass delusion of our culture on matters of sexuality for the way things really are or should be. The church is largely at fault for this massive mistake. We have failed to raise up a generation of Christians who so thoroughly understand and respect God’s good design for sexuality and marriage that all worldly alternatives are revealed as shoddy substitutes. We must right this wrong by showing the love and goodness of God’s design in robust ways, always being ready to defend biblical truth in a world that has bought into lies.
