Continued review of (Dis)Ordered by Rev. Christopher S. Esget.
Immanuel LCMS Fairview Podcast
Bible Class - September 15, 2024
This is an interesting thing that happened last week. I don't remember exactly what day it was, but the Pope Francis to children in Singapore, all religions are paths to reach God. They are to make a comparison like different languages, different dialects to get there. But God is God for everyone. If you start to fight saying, "My religion is more important than yours. Mine is true and yours isn't, where will this lead us?" There's only one God and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christians. They are different ways to God. Does that sound like the voice of Christ? No, it doesn't. It really doesn't. It's a very, very sad situation that the Pope said. This is why, yes, in Lutheranism, and Lutheranism says the Pope, he sets himself up in the house of God, and purports to speak on behalf of God, and he's going to spew stuff like this, unfortunately. You can't really spin this one too well. There's been no that I know of. There's been no take-back, no maya culpa because he's the Pope. He can't and he won't. Here we have the leader of the largest Christian denomination in the world saying that there's no point in listening to him. Remember how we talked about how you argue in apologetics or how you discuss. How you defend the faith is a lot of times you will use people's accusations like saying, "Remember that little slide I had last week." People saying, "Oh, there's no truth." You ask them back, you say, "Well, is that a truthful statement?" Also, too, for the Pope, why do we need to listen to him? Why do we even need to listen to the Pope and what he says right now if all paths lead to God? Why do we need to listen to that very statement at all? They all arrive at God somehow. What he says is kind of self-defeating. It's unfortunate, but this was a big, big, big part of the Reformation as to why we don't follow the authority of the Pope, the office of the Pope. Babylon B had this, of course, we can always trust them to bring up something good. That's the wrong one. I can never remember how to pull that up. The Babylon B put up a slide or a news report that says the Pope is going to, in the season of politics, the Pope is going to debate Jesus on whether Jesus is really the way the truth in the life, so in this political season with various debates and arguments, debates about debates, that was well timed. The Pope, we do say the Pope is the office of the Antichrist. Lutherans aren't the first ones to say this. It was being said and realized even before the Reformation, but the Lutherans are one of the first ones to actually use it as one of our foundational confessions in the Book of Concord that we confess that as long as the Pope says things like this, he's proving himself to be in the office of the Antichrist, but people will say, "Look at all the nice things he does." So that, unfortunately, is a reality. Did anybody else hear this or say this? Oh, sorry. You have a question or a statement? [inaudible] I don't know, that's a good question. But they were teaching contrary to the gospel. Yeah. So I don't know if they would have said something so brazen, but there were certainly plenty of other things to find fault with that are just as bad and contrary to the gospel. Because at the heart of it, that's what that is. It's an attack on the gospel. And however you attack it, whether it be all roads lead to heaven or, hey, this road of good works leads to heaven, it's both an attack on the gospel, but I don't know if they were so brazen as to say that. That's pretty bad. It does seem like another step. Yeah, as they say, well, that escalated quickly. Okay, so after that bit of good news, but it is kind of fun. I do kind of smile when the devil makes it pretty obvious. When he rears his ugly head and it's pretty easy to sit back and just kind of say, "Yeah, there it is," and then to rejoice and give thanks to God for the truth of the gospel, the clearness of his word that Jesus doesn't mince words. He says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Jesus, he isn't trying to confuse us, but indeed makes it very clear. Okay, good. Any last other thoughts on that? Well, they say when you start, you have to start with a joke, right? So let's see. What did I have? Oh yeah, here's my joke for the day. What is your idea, see y'all are of the generation that had the dating, what is your idea of a perfect date? He answers, "D-D-M-M-Y-Y-Y-Y, I find other formats a bit confusing." Sorry. Okay, there we go. I got one or two sympathy laughs, I'll take it. All right, what is your idea of a perfect date? Yes, causing pain and suffering. Just remember, today I quote from James where he says, "Suffering perfects your faith," even when it's bad pastor jokes. All right, so on to our topic at hand, we did sort of start bleeding into transgenderism and chapter six, responding, right? This is the point of this chapter is responding to transgenderism. How do we as Christians, as you can see in these questions, yes, it is a little crooked, you're not drunk, it's okay, I apologize for that. The question about this chapter, why is it important to be truthful? What are the various truths, you know, the various ways truth is used? How should we approach conversations with people whom we disagree with, okay? So here's the introduction on page 93, chapter six is where we start today and we'll see if we get through chapter six and seven. Page 93, the introduction, responding to the transgender revolution. A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is. You see that footnote 50, this is a quotation from Luther in a work called the Heidelberg Disputation. He's putting against these two theologians, a theologian of the cross and a theologian of the glory, how you approach life, how you look at theology, we'll talk about that in just a moment. Never in the history of the world have we needed brave people to call things what they actually are. A social contagion has spread through the West, causing children to mutilate their bodies and receive hormone treatments with drastic consequences. How did this happen? How can Christians respond, are you willing to call a thing that it actually is, irrespective of the consequences? Dude looks like a lady. Throughout history, people who identified at least some of the time as the opposite sex were not unknown. The term in use since 1911 transvestite related particularly to clothing as the words vestment, you see that there and the word trans, changing, the moving, the changing of your vestments. Popular music recognized this part of the community with songs like Aerosmith's 1997 hit. Dude, looks like a lady. And then Lola, the 1970s song by the English Band the Kings, caused no little controversy in describing a sexual encounter between a man and a trans woman. So how's that to start? This even, what are some of the, or as maybe as you read through the chapter or maybe you've read some of this, does it go earlier than that? This idea of transgenderism, or changing your gender, your sex trying to, yeah, what's some of the earlier ones? You got to see y'all nodding your head, yes, what's your proof? I don't know if some of you have heard some of this stuff before, but there was, right? We hear about in ancient and classical history, in ancient history, part of the worship of some of the false gods and some of the false temples, the idea was to ascend, to get away from your body and the distinctions between male and female. And they actually did do castrations and things like that as a pagan ritual. To be unisexed, right, or to be no sex at all was the part of your journey of escaping the needs of the body. So actually some of these ideas of transgenderism are very, very old and it's tied to pagan civilizations. So as a civilization becomes more pagan, or is pulled from its pagan roots, this idea rears its ugly head. So as Christianity is pushed to the side or not even there, it seems to be the case that when pagan notions, pagan ideas begin to take over, that transgenderism shows its head as a popular or an acceptable way to grow as a person or to grow spiritually. So it goes even further than the 60s, the 70s, some of these things that even the author points out, that this is not an uncommon thing. And as he talked about in previous chapters and even this chapter 2, a lot of it begins from doubt, right, and the uncertainty of who you are. And the wrong encouragement, the false guiding, the lies that people are told that are going to help you, what do we want to call it, reach self-actualization. If I can use psychology, psychological words. Okay, how so? I mean, it was man and man, one and one, and it was just... Yeah. I would say, Sodom and Gomorrah was more kind of what he's talking about in previous chapters about just doing whatever feels good, doing what you want. I see kind of your connection that in this act of sex, it doesn't matter if you're a man or woman, he'd mentioned that in the previous chapters quite a bit. And I think you're right, that sort of behavior, that sort of acceptance, working from that perspective, will lead then to, hey, I'm not finding satisfaction in this sexual act with whoever this person or animal is. What else could I change and try to find my true self? Try to find, as we might say, happiness. So maybe, I don't know, it's a good question, I don't know that I would say transgenderism was a problem there, but this forsaking of God's ordered life for sex definitely plays a part in it. I mean, it could, because there's a possibility it could have started with that, I mean, you know, men dressing up, the women, women, and the China changed to be men, and... Yeah, it used to be something you could do for fun, right, and it was funny, right? Who is it, one of the comedians now, Will Ferrell, right, do you all remember Will Ferrell in the '90s, he, was it the '90s or the 2000s, he dressed, you all remember what he did on Saturday Night Live, Janet Reno? See, this stuff just robs us of so much joy, he dressed up as Janet Reno, right, and now Will Ferrell says, I'll never do that again, right, be out of respect for transgender people, and it just steals everything. Yeah. Yes, that's another one, the UNIX spoken of as the UNIX, right, in their service to royalty. There are multiple reasons for that, so that they couldn't reproduce, yep, yep, they wouldn't be tempted, and there wouldn't be any questions as to who the child of these royal women were. I looked it up and it says that the earliest is 200, 300 BC and a Galli priest in, I don't know how to pronounce this, it was an ancient Greece and the Roman Republican Empire wore feminine clothes. Oh, just the clothing aspect. Yeah. So just bringing that up, it's just not something that's new, but the point I want to make and to say is that as a society strays from truth and statements of truth strays from Christianity, these things are going to happen more and more. If you look on page 94, then a couple of things that I underlined that I thought were interesting, a reminder, what is meant by existentialism there on the top of page 94? Recognizing, he makes this point, the author and the first paragraph on page 94, recognizing that the path to this point began long ago with existentialism involves understanding that the current transgender moment is the capstone of a centuries-long project. The path to this point began with existentialism. Does anybody recall, does anybody have a definition for that word? Do you remember how the author defined that? He referred back to chapter one, existentialism means your existence is proved by what you want, by your happiness and by what you want. That's why people can say, "When you don't recognize my preferred pronouns, you are murdering me because they believe their very existence is in what they declare to be true. They tie their personhood, their existence to what they desire." And that's the devil's goal, right? The devil is to get us to be convinced that I'm identified by my sin. I can't shake it. That's who I am. I'm a sinner. That's all I'll ever be. The devil wants us to believe that false statement and the Lord, Jesus Christ, says, "No, you are a saint. You are my child. I have cleansed you of your sins, your sins do not identify you. Your desires do not identify you. It is what Jesus has done for you." So he says, "Yes, this transgender movement begins with existentialism when we begin to identify ourselves according to our desires and what I want." This is why nobody wants to be a cowboys fan these days because I can't believe I'm going to say this. It ties you to being a loser because they haven't won the Super Bowl. And for a cowboys fan, that's not good. But nonetheless, this idea, this year's our year, right? It's that part of the cycle. We them boys. We're one and oh, this year's our year. We'll pray for you, brother. I wanted to make sure, as you read this, that word existentialism didn't trip you up. Not that you need to have that word and throw it out this week as you talk to your friends and whatnot. But just remember that this is a long project. The devil is very patient. I've heard this phrase also being used for alcoholism and drug use. In particular with alcoholism, I've heard it stated this way, that alcohol is very patient. That in many regards, it doesn't wrap you. It doesn't get its claws in you right away. Alcoholism isn't something that just, boom, one day you're an alcoholic, it can be. But in general terms, what happens, what leads to alcoholism? A consistent, slow, general reliance on alcohol to treat your problems. And I think this touches, I think this can touch too, I talk in the sermon a little bit about mental illness. I also think that this can also be the case for us if we fall in love, if we start to like dark and sad things. I'm not saying every case of this, but if we do not have joy in our life, if we do not intentionally, this is one of the beautiful things about the Christian faith that we've seen. That we've seen the gospel. It's not necessarily that every song is a happy birthday song. There's a recognition, this recognition of sadness in what sin has done into our world. But if you fall in love with that sadness, if that's all you focus on, you can start to push yourself toward what we might call some cases depression. That you don't get any gospel and it pushes you to desperation. We Christians, we are people of joy. We are people who love the Lord. We acknowledge our sins, but we also know that we have a joy that doesn't depend on how we feel each day. We aren't existentialists. Our joy is based on a historical fact of Jesus Christ raised from the dead, ascended to God's right hand, and you are baptized, and nothing can take that away. As the author is pointing out here, this transgenderism thing is very patient. It didn't just jump on us all at once. It was a long process. The devil is very patient. He waits, he waits, he waits. Sometimes he jumps, like when Jesus laid himself out to be crucified, the devil jumped, and they crucified Jesus. But other times, the devil sit back and just waits and is patient and lets things go and go and go. So that first beginning to see this, as he calls it there on page 24, I thought the beginning of this was pretty good, if you can't tell. The transgender movement is a capstone. This is a capstone. This is something that a lot of work and a lot of, we Christians have been taken advantage of. We want to be kind to people. We want to love them. The devil is going to use that against you. You are whatever you feel is that existentialism. As we keep going along, another thing I wanted to point out, let's see, ah yes, at the top of page 96, this I think is very helpful as well, that the proponents of transgenderism say if you are a boy who doesn't like sports, if you are a boy who's not rough and tumble, then you must be trapped in the wrong body. And how have we approached that, does the author say in the past, what do we say about that boy? The boy. Yeah, yeah, I'm coming at it from the other side, I'm making you use your thinking boxes. Yeah, he said it from the perspective of the girl. But with a boy, right, we would have said, oh, he just, he's a, well, we would make fun of him. We'd call him a sissy. Or, you know, we would say, hey, he just, he doesn't like sports. It doesn't mean he's a girl, right, and the same with the tomboy, right, the girl who, who doesn't like necessarily girly things. And I've heard numerous students get a lot of relief from this. That right now, it is almost a default that they are told over and over again, if there is any hint that you don't like these masculine things, if there's any hint, you don't like these feminine things, you must be transgender. That's the solution. That's society's answer. It's not, well, you're, where you accept you as you are, it is, nope, this, you, you are, what do they tell them? I mean, it's the ultimate form of bullying. What do they tell them? You're not worthy. You're in the wrong body. Keep going. You're a, well, okay, maybe nerd, a, what, a failure. You are a mistake, right? And that's what I put here with an asterisk. I said, this is the ultimate form of bullying, that you are a mistake and we are going to fix you. You're going to do what we say, whereas, now, now, take this, take this as it is. So, I've touched on this a little bit with shame, right? And how in our society, there is no shame. I touched on how sometimes shame can be beneficial, can be good, right? We Christians, we experience shame on a regular basis of our sins. We stand here on Sunday morning and say, we are sinful and unclean. Is there a good place or a proper place for bullying? I don't want to call it bullying, but that's the word I'm going to use. We are taught to be so afraid of it, right? We are taught that bullying is just completely out of the question. It's wrong. Hazing, right? And the university level, hazing. Right now, if you haze, boom. Your life is ruined. Is there any positive to what we might categorize as bullying or shame? Do you think? Yes, but I think that it's not a on purpose, obviously, I wouldn't want anyone to bully my child. But at the same time, I know that growing up, having gone through that, it made me stronger. And so, we believe that God can work all things together for the good of those who love them, then we should believe that even with something like that, which is meant for evil, that he can use. Yeah. We're Joseph's brothers, bullies. Yeah. And we get that very statement. You meant it for evil. Yes, we don't hear me wrong. Bullying, and if you say, oh, I'm not bullying you, I'm just, you know, strengthening you. Right? When it's used as an excuse, it can become deadly and dangerous. However, what are we finding out now with another school shooting? And some of these things happening. Some of these, some of these kids were into weird stuff. Some of these kids were into things that in the past, their fellow students would have said, hey, you're doing something really strange. You're being very odd. And they, and there was kind of a camaraderie in this quote unquote what we now, we just categorize everything as bullying now. And so in the past, now I'm not an expert, I'm just saying here that if we want to see bullying, right, this transgender thing is an act of bullying. Now granted all the other things I've been bullied, I preached a sermon on it one time, and I had friends calling me after they listened to it online, emailing me saying, who was it? You know, who was it? I had another, I had another, somebody else, he texted me and said, all right, whose knees are we going to go break? He said, we're older and wiser and have more guns now. Yeah. I was going to say, not with the word bullying, but like shaming or calling people out. So I prefer to use that, a good example would be like sexual looseness and immorality. You know, my grandparents didn't, I was female even though it works both ways, if a girl like slept around, she was, you know, the society in general called her out, like she had to hide that, like she would be ostracized and it wasn't a good thing. Whereas it started changing over the years and now like having worked with a lot of people who were, you know, teens and twenties, it's not only are you not allowed to say that their behavior is bad, that it's almost like a badge of honor against even female friends now, whereas something to be, you know, like crazed, even the way they term like, I don't want to cash feelings, I'm just trying to have fun. Yeah. And it's all toward this idea of approving of lies, you know, approving of lies, approving of falsehoods, telling people they're worthless, right, however that takes place, right, and even if, you know, even if you mean well, we have to be very cognizant of this and that danger. Yeah. Very good. Yeah, Matt. I mean, I think the other side of bullying, you know, besides building character and strength and kind of keeping, you know, folks that, you know, are doing things that we would have made fun of them for back in the day and track. And it also keeps the bullies in check because eventually somebody stands up to them. Yeah. And today that doesn't happen because, you know, there's zero tolerance for everything. Yeah. And so. Yeah. Yeah. And friends. Yeah. Friends standing up. Together. Jessica. Yeah. I was just going to say, I just, I remember being back in high school. And I guess more of my kids had categories and things like that and there was this guy kid. One of my classes, which is fine, I was born with the Alicia Silverstone. But I remember he, he was like, all black, and one day he wore this cross upside down. And what ended up happening is I went up to him and he thought I was kind of stuck up at first, but I started a conversation with him. And we ended up becoming friends and at first he had laser eyes like he was going to kill me, but he was pulling. You know what I mean? Yeah. He wasn't fitting in. And we became friends and like, I remember seeing he worked at Taco Bell and like he was like, so happy to see me, he came to the front and was like, my whole family was like, what? [laughter] Who is this guy? I'm like, how do you supersede this? Yeah. You need that being really nice. But I think he was very hurting. But I don't think, I'd be surprised if those conversations happen any more easily. Right. The kids, it's just like you stay away, you judge, whatever. And it's just that the opportunity for conversations, I don't know what are there. Excellent story. Yeah. And that's the point of the chapter, isn't it, to think, to answer these questions on how can we use the truth, how can we approach people to speak the truth, some smart person said to speak the truth in love. And that's one of the things that this chapter I think did good, to cause us to pause and to think about. Okay. Since we continue on, and going through this, page 98, he didn't define this word. I know you've heard it being thrown around. You are all cisgender, right? And cisgender, that prefix cis is Latin. You see he says there cisgender is a novel term invented in the late 20th century through gender studies. The prefix cis, though, is Latin. It's been around for a long time. The prefix cis just means on the side of. So transgender means you are trans, you have moved from the side of your physical body. Cisgender means you are on the same side as you physically present, as you physically show. So whether that be, how do you judge that, whether it be by your body parts or by your chromosomes, cisgender just means you're on the side of your physical body. So that's where that term comes from. I was kind of curious, he didn't really define it that well. But because then on page 99 he's got that self-expression of gender. This is why some of my friends, I thought they were pastors, I thought they were strange because they refused to use the word gender even 15 and 20 years ago. They would not use the word gender. They will always ask what sex are you, instead of gender. Because gender is something that was redefined, invented. Now to say what is your gender, that means well, if you're asking what their gender is, that means it's something that can be changed. Sex could be the same, I guess. But when you use and ask the term what sex are you, that actually in some ways ties it to sex. That's kind of why people shy away from it. But sex, in regard to male or female, doesn't leave any room that gender intentionally, they intentionally use the word gender to show that it is fluid. Oh yeah, I know, I started reading that paragraph on page 99 and I was just like okay, that's enough. And I just went to the opposition to parental rights, irrevocable desecration. Okay. Well then. Yes. >> And I'll look this time back to this in my book on page 95 where it's talking about the change in language. And that he said that it's natural to naturally, that females that are about to give birth are called pregnant women. And I would submit to you that that's true. However, not all females who are getting ready to give birth are women. A ten-year-old is not a woman, a eleven-year-old is a woman. And so when we're talking about identities and the implications of all of these things, I guess I'm asking a certain-- >> Yeah. >> What I would say is we would categorically say a girl is a woman if she's able to give birth. >> And why is that? >> Well, I mean, if you don't agree with it, that's okay. I'm just saying, because it's tied to a physical concrete, what sort I want to use, biological operation in the girl when she gets her period. And she's a woman. >> Yeah. Then we'd hear-- >> Now, now we would say she's a young woman. We would say, hmm, this young woman, yeah, this is-- well, we would say it's immoral, it's wrong. She is not married, right? But she is a woman. That doesn't mean she's-- >> So what does that mean for me, for boys? What is there? Where is there? If this is true for female, then what is true for male? >> That's a good question. I would tie it to marriage. The scriptures seem to say, a man, right, a man shall leave his father and mother and be cleaved, right, to his wife and the two shall become one. Moving it back into Old Testament Israel, you were under your father's authority until you got married. I mean, the fourth commandment still applied. But now you were, if we want to use the term, a man, right? That's what I would say. I mean, if you don't want to-- if people-- I mean, if we want to tie it to a biological thing for women, yeah, when they can give birth. But with chest hair with men. But you know, with a man, you know, when you-- I mean, there are some men, right? I mean, we can't tie it to a number age, just like with women, we can't. But what is it when he-- I don't know, how would you define it? >> Don't-- well, just because there-- so you're telling me that the little girls around here that are having their periods with those children are women, even though they're not pregnant. >> Why not? >> Yeah. >> Why not? >> How old was Mary? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Yeah. >> We're treating our children very poorly in the way that we say that men are not men until they're 35. We say that women are-- they can go do whatever they want. And they're not adults until they're 35 or 25 or whatever. If we treat our children like babies, they're going to stay like babies when, like, I treat my daughters as young women, and that's how I expect them to act. And that's what we're training them to be. And I think it's really dangerous when we're like, oh, you know, that 18 year old, just a kid, okay, well, actually, no, they're not just a kid. They need to be treated like a young man and a young woman, and we have to be the example of that, and we have to train them up in that way. We can't just keep treating them like little kids. >> Yeah. I think he brought that up. He brought that up, and I mean, if men don't have a sort of biological reality that then we can call them men, I mean, I don't have a problem with that. I would seem to put it more on looking at some of the sort of biblical examples and talking about it. And yeah, part of this chapter, I think it was in this chapter, where he does talk about or was it another book I was reading, that aspect that Anna brings up, where he talks about insurance and we let our children perpetually be children and not hold them accountable and not have responsibility. We'll stop there. This is all part of stepping back and considering this and saying that we in the Christian faith, we in the Christian church, indeed, no matter what society says, however they define things, we have a clear path given to us by God's word that society is going to define things so they can take advantage of the weak and the unprotected, the weak and defenseless. It's always been the case. The devil is always doing that, and he's going to use it with people who are like with the pope, right? He's going to use people who smile and have a lot of respect and regard. The world admires them, thinks they're okay, and the devil is going to do that. So how do we as Christians stand up to that in speaking the truth and in love? So contemplate those questions. Then next week we get into the race aspect of it, the race relations as the title of chapter seven, race and culture and seeing that now and the questions for that are going to be on page 122 talking about CRT, DEI and all those fun acronyms. Okay, let's close with prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we give you thanks that your son Jesus Christ came as true man, that the divine indeed was in one man, true God and true man, so that we may not be misled, so that we may not be led into doubt about the certainty of our salvation, that our salvation is assured outside of us, that we are saved because of the faithfulness of Jesus. Grant us to cast away all doubt and anxiety and to trust what you say to us, that we are your children, sanctified, justified, washed clean and dressed in a white gown, that we stand before you purified. Grant us to receive joy from this, dear Heavenly Father, that your Holy Spirit would strengthen us to give a witness and a testimony in a world that's gone mad. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.