Thinking About Pride

In case you forgot, the month of June is “Pride Month” in the United States. At the time of my writing this, we are about halfway through this year’s iteration. Of course, you haven’t forgotten, because the culture won’t let you. Most celebrities, successful businesses, and social media platforms use this month to remind you that there are people living as homosexuals, bisexuals, pansexuals, transsexuals, and many other kinds of “sexuals” of which you’ve never heard. The list of varieties constantly grows. It’s no shock that people are living these lifestyles, but what is a more recent advent in history is the publicly-funded celebration of them. Even living north of I-90, we are not entirely removed from the reach of Pride Month. If you squint, right at sunset, you can see the lingering haze of the rainbow in most directions around us.

Let me begin by describing what I believe is a common experience for many Christians. Pride Month comes along, and the world gets painted with a giant rainbow brush. Many Christians think along these lines: “I sure don’t like this Pride stuff. I definitely don’t approve of it personally. But since it’s only for one month, I’ll just grin and bear it. I’ll probably shop less for the next 30 days, keep to myself, and just ignore it. It will all be over soon.” And so we go about our business, trying to ignore what is so blatantly being pushed into every corner of society. This is similar to a child trying to avoid the neighborhood bully. He takes the long way home (a slight inconvenience) to avoid becoming the object of the bully’s wrath.  

This sort of attitude and plan of inaction may have sufficed in the early days of Pride, but what about today? The tactics and force of the Pride movement have dramatically increased over the past decade. We now have men dressed as women reading books to children in public libraries. We have tax dollars paying for rainbow-themed crosswalks. We have biological men being called “Woman of the Year” by media outlets. Some states have passed legislation that takes the authority of parents away when their children want to mutilate and poison their own bodies in the name of Pride. Government school administrators are forced to navigate who can use which bathroom and whether to lay out litter boxes for students who claim to be cats (I’m not joking).  

The point is, we aren’t in the 1950s anymore, or even the 1990s, for that matter. The plan of “take shelter for 30 days” doesn’t seem to be slowing the spread of Pride or its influence in our communities. We are all faced with the events and consequences of Pride Month. Some people find their solution in a sentiment like this: “Why should I even care? It’s a free country, right? As long as it doesn’t affect me, I should just mind my own business.” You could think that way, but I want to contend that if you are thinking about Pride in the way I just described and if you profess Christ as Lord of the universe, you are being terribly inconsistent. I am contending that Christians must think about Pride Month in a Christian way. Even by my saying so, you’ve already unearthed one of my presuppositions for writing this: there is a Christian way to think about Pride Month. By implication, there are non-Christian ways to think about Pride Month, and Christians should want to avoid those.

The chronological answer goes something like this: since 1999, under the leadership of President Clinton, the month of June has been federally sanctioned as “Pride Month.”  Going further back, the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s was a momentous time, “liberating” people from historic sexual norms and paving the way for the road we’ve taken right down to today. We could continue to trace movements and events back, decades at a time. The modern Feminist movement has had a part to play, as has the Enlightenment overall, but let me hike clear back to the headwaters.

In the first verses of the Book of Genesis, God says that he made everything (Gen. 1:1). Everything that exists was his idea, and it all belongs to him. This is a foundational, Christian belief. Those first verses and chapters also explain how people ended up in the mess called sin that we are in. Satan, the deceiver, is an angel made by God who sought his own glory and rebelled. Seeking to disrupt God’s plans for humanity, he enticed our first parents (Adam and Eve) to sin against their God. He did this by convincing them that God was, essentially, holding out on them, and that they would not be truly like God until they broke the one rule God had given them. This is known as the fall of man, and ever since that fateful day, all people have been born into a default posture of sin and rebellion (read Romans 3 and Ephesians 2 for more on this).  

It is no surprise, then, that many sins today follow the same pattern, including sexual sins. God provides for people, giving them what is good for them, but people believe the lie that God is holding out. Ultimately, they think, we people know better than God, and so we rebel. For example, Scripture says that God made people male and female (Gen. 1:27-28, Mark 10:6), and that his design for people existing as one of the two predetermined genders is very good. God also says that it is good for a man to sexually desire his wife, and to not desire anyone else, including other men (1 Cor. 6:9; Rom. 1:26-27). When someone lives as a homosexual, then he or she is ultimately saying that God does not know best. They are saying that God’s plan is not good. “God does not own me, so I will take command of my own sexuality, body, and identity,” the line of thinking goes. Similarly, when a woman, who has been a woman her entire life, wakes up one day and decides she’d rather be a man, she is ultimately saying that God does not know what is best for her. “God apparently made a mistake and now I have to clean up his mess through hormones and scalpels.” See how the sexual sins highlighted by Pride follow the same pattern as the original sin? Not much has changed since then. To sum up, deviating from God’s plan for sexuality is not wrong simply because it is icky. It is wrong because it is, fundamentally, an act of rebellion against a holy God and his good plan for people.

Looking at the big picture, the whole notion of a Pride Month is a celebration of what the Bible calls sin. It is sin because it pushes back against God’s good design and plan for people, making a mockery of what he has called good. Since Christians have been bought and paid for by God through the blood of Jesus Christ, we must love what he loves and value what he values. This is why Christians must call any form of sexual deviancy what it is – sin.  

At this point, you may be upset that I’ve called the practices celebrated by Pride “sexual deviancy.” I am well aware of the strength and severity of the language I am using. That’s intentional. I’m also aware that many of us have very close connections, whether they be familial or otherwise, with people caught up in the Pride world. Please remember that we do no one any favors if we ignore or accept sin.  

Proverbs 24:11
[11] Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. (ESV)

Sin pollutes us. It corrodes us. It enslaves us and ultimately destroys us. Sin is far too serious to brush aside and replace with an excuse like, “But they are so happy together.” More than this – when a sin becomes so widespread that it is federally sanctioned, protected, and celebrated, Christians have an obligation to bring the word of God to bear on a nation’s sin with a crystal-clear call to repentance (Mat. 28:18-20).

Here are four actions Christians can take (and not just during the month of June).  

Be Selective With Your Support
A simple and obvious method to take a stand against sin is to stop funding it. Be more selective with your choices. Where you allocate resources is always important. Now is a great time to research and support Christian businesses that have not bowed the knee to the Pride gods. “But I can’t really make any difference, can I?” Yes, you can. Just ask the owners of Target and Anheuser-Busch. A boycott is not a one-and-done solution, but it does send a message and may help turn the helm of the culture back toward sanity. If this sounds superficial, please remember that the Bible says that reducing the footprint and influence of wicked people is a good thing.  

Proverbs 29:2
[2] When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan. (ESV)

Speak Up
You can stop buying your goods from anti-God companies, but that does not solve the problem of a hard heart in rebellion against God. Be ready to speak! The Pride world does not need us to be squishy Christians who roll over and force a smile as our neighbors and loved ones march toward judgment (that would actually be terribly unloving). Love rejoices in the truth (1 Cor. 13:6), and so we must tell people the truth if in fact we love them and want to see them brought into the salvation and freedom only available in Jesus Christ. We must stand on the unchanging, life-giving Word of God, proclaiming the seriousness of sin and the abundant grace and redemption available through our Savior. Christian, now is a great time to read your Bible and be ready to repeat its truths to others. The most important thing that someone caught up in Pride can hear is this: God made people to know him. Sin has distanced us from God. Jesus has dealt with our sin and offers pardon and life to all who trust in him.  
Who will tell them? Why not you? 

Pray 
Christians are commanded to pray for all people, even up to the highest tier of our government (1 Tim. 2:1-2). God can and does change wicked, shriveled hearts. If you are a Christian, that is because, at some point, God set his affection on you and granted life where there was only death. We are walking, talking testimonies to the power of God to win his enemies over into his family. Pray for that neighbor, that sibling, that child who is lost in the lies of the Pride world.

Go To Church
Never forget the principle that worship is warfare. The culture of a city, state, or nation will always be downstream of what the people worship. Christian, this last call to action is simple yet profound: find a church that teaches the Bible and give yourself to it fully. God does amazing things through the simple, regular means of grace that occur when his people gather in obedience to worship him and serve one another. His church will persevere. His church will grow. His church will outlive every remnant of Pride. His church will be welcomed into the New Heavens and the New Earth, where sin will not follow.
 
Ephesians 3:10
...[10] so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. (ESV)