Why are we flushing thousands of years down the toilet?

As the President, the Democrats, and their allies in the courts and the media sweep away the basics of traditional marriage, and now the societal foundation of male/female identity, we are left with our heads in our hands, asking “Why?” Why are they doing this? Why would anyone think this is a good idea? What possible motive is behind it?

Some sins and follies we can kind of understand — there’s a kind of rationale behind them. But to legalize gay marriage, to punish opponents of gay marriage, and now to abolish the male-female distinction in bathrooms, changing rooms, and shower rooms. It’s just unfathomable and seems completely irrational. What good can possibly come — and how much evil will definitely come — from putting grown men in women’s bathrooms?

Let’s be brutally frank here — young girls, teens, and women are going to enter a private room, away from security cameras, and take their pants down; and President Obama has just decreed that sexually confused and twisted men be allowed to follow them (or wait for them there) and take their pants down just inches away from the women and girls. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? (And for British readers, believe it or not, American public toilets have about a half inch gap around every toilet door — which I’ve never understood!)

Why would the President and his supporters want to obliterate thousands of years of the most basic distinction of the planet? We’re left shaking our heads utterly perplexed. Why, why, why?

Here are the only reasons I can think of — maybe you can think of more. I’m not saying people will admit to these motives, but if you could see their hearts, you’d read these words. Also, people can have mixed motives; there can be lots of motives involved.

1. Morality: Some people really, really believe that this is the moral and right thing to do, that it’s more ethical to support gay marriage, gay adoption, and boys in girls showers than not to. They say we are the immoral ones for being intolerant.

2. Relativism: Others don’t believe anything is right or wrong (apart, that is, from saying something is right or wrong). So they can’t say anything critical about any critical issue.

3. Fear: They are perhaps afraid of the media monster tarring and feathering them as bigots if they even say, “Perhaps we should pause and think a bit more about this.”

4. Popularity: The corollary of #3. Many want to be praised by the media, they want to be “on the right side of history.”

5. Friends: I’ve seen people do 180′s on these moral issues when they find out a son, daughter, or friend is gay. Suddenly that makes it OK.

6. Personal interest: You’d be amazed at how many gay journalists (even “Christian” journalists) there are who use their positions to promote homosexuality and undermine Christianity without any “declaration of interest.”

7. Conscience-salving: See Gay Marriage is Not About Gay Marriage which argues that gay marriage is not really about the right to marry but rather it’s about social and cultural validation of one’s lifestyle.

8. Revolution: Marxist theory promotes the destabilizing of the existing order so that it is easier to build an alternative vision of the ideal society. Once they’ve nuked the nuclear family, anything can take its place, especially a totalitarian Government.

9. Don’t care: Lots of people think this will not impact them. “Just live and let live,” they say. “You do your thing, they do their thing, and I’ll do my thing.” But, as Erick Ericksen warns, You will be made to care.

10. Distraction: The government often uses these issues to distract attention from bad economic news, terrorism, etc. If they can keep people fighting about lesser issues then they will ignore the bigger issues. See Democrats Talking About Transgender Bathrooms and Global Warming Instead of Real Economic Issues.

11. Elections: The Democrats know that one thing that turns people off conservatives in America is painting them as puritanical and judgmental. It’s no coincidence that the transgender decree has been issued in an election year.

12. Ignorance: Some of the people pushing this in the highest echelons of government and the media are barely out of college. As Victor Davis Hanson put it, it’s the Pajama Boy White House. They have no idea of life, of history, or of the potential consequences of what they’re promoting (see this article for some of the terrible damage being done by the moral revolution).

13. Hate: It’s not so much that they love LGBT’s; it’s that they hate Christians. If I hated God and despised Christians, I’d be an ardent supporter of same-sex marriage and of transgender “rights.” What better way to express enmity against God. His creation order, and His people? Related to this, I’ve heard and read comments from LGBT’s like, “Well, Christians made us suffer for long enough, so now it’s time for them to suffer.”

14. Underestimating: Political leaders think that Christians won’t stand up, they won’t fight, they’ll just roll over, and keep spending their dollars in Target, etc. However, most of them never mix with real Christians and therefore have grossly underestimated their opposition. Ask J C Penney what happened to their profits when they started pushing homosexuality in their commercials. Is it a coincidence that Apple’s profits have dived since Tim Cook started using Apple to promote homosexuality? Watch Target miss its quarterly targets over the next year.

15. God-likeness: Some leaders like President Obama seem to just revel in the exercise of power for power’s sake. There’s a buzz that comes from being able to act almost like God and change so much in such a short time. Why did you do this? “Because I can!”

Until we understand the motives behind these decrees and decisions, we’ll never be able to argue successfully at the deepest level of the heart and mind. And we’ll never get to our knees and pray that the God who holds the king’s heart in His hand, just like the rivers of water, would turn it wherever He wishes (Prov. 21:1).

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How to Criticize a Fellow Christian or an Unbeliever in Controversy | Justin Taylor, TGC
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Faithful and fruitless? | Jeremy Walker, The Wanderer
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Walker Percy’s 1981 Letter to the New York Times on the Con and Doublespeak of the Abortion Discussion | TGC
“There is a wonderful irony here. It is this: The onset of individual life is not a dogma of the church but a fact of science. How much more convenient if we lived in the 13th century, when no one knew anything about microbiology and arguments about the onset of life were legitimate. Compared to a modern textbook of embryology, Thomas Aquinas sounds like an American Civil Liberties Union member. Nowadays it is not some misguided ecclesiastics who are trying to suppress an embarrassing scientific fact. It is the secular juridical-journalistic establishment.”

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Working To Our Capacity Not Others’ Needs

Other people’s needs are unlimited. Our capacity to meet them is limited. That’s the painful tension that we all face, especially those of us in pastoral, counseling, and care-giving callings.

If we plan according to other people’s needs, we will never satisfy everyone, we will never feel satisfied ourselves, and will eventually burn out. No matter how many people we visit, counsel, phone, email, evangelize there’s always more need and there’s always more we could do. No matter the size of the congregation, big or small, there really is no end to the work that could, and even should, be done.

We can work 12 hours days six or seven days a week, and still feel guilty when we go to the gym, go fishing, watch some sport, or just play with our kids.

There is a way out of this though and it involves a mind-shift away from the focus on unlimited human need to our limited human capacity. Let’s take the pastor as an example (although the principles apply to every calling)

If a pastor works according to others’ unlimited needs, he will work a hundred hours a week, never meet all the need, and eventually crash and burn. Or he will work a more reasonable 40-50 hours a week, never meet all the need, and never feel at peace, never have any sense of “I’ve done a good week’s work.” Both lifestyles are miserable experiences.

If he works according to his capacity though, there’s the very real and hopeful prospect that he will meet the biggest needs, work without burning out, and have the great blessing of inner peace over how much he has accomplished each week. Here’s how.

Pastoral Visitation
Every pastor should discuss his personal capacity with his elders. For example, the pastor might look at his congregation and say to his elders: “I have eighty families or eighty homes represented in my congregation. I believe I have the capacity to visit one evening a week and each evening of visitation, if well-planned, can cover two families. That means in the course of each year, I will visit every family or home in our congregation once.”

Sick and Senior Visitation
Then they might discuss the housebound seniors and the sick. If there are, say, about ten seniors or sick people in the congregation at any one time, then perhaps the pastor might propose that he visits them one afternoon a week; and each afternoon he will visit one or two housebound seniors and one or two sick people. These visits will be briefer because more regular and because some of them will be hospital visits. But it will mean that he will visit the sick every week or so and the housebound seniors every month or two.

Evangelism
Depending on the nature of the church situation — church plant or established church — the pastor should set some evangelism targets. Maybe start at even just one or two evangelistic conversations a week. It doesn’t matter where it takes place — over the fence, at the game, in the coffee shop, etc. Even if this is all that is accomplished, that’s fifty or so witnessing opportunities a year.

Committees/Evening Meetings
Pastors are under constant pressure to join committees and attend various meetings in the evenings, most of them very good and worthy causes. I know some pastors who are out every evening of the week for weeks on end without a break. That is unsustainable. I would suggest that the commitment amount to no more than two weekday evenings a month, especially if there is already a midweek meeting in the church for Bible Study.

Lunches and Breakfasts
Perhaps a pastor might talk to his elders and deacons about providing expenses for him to meet members for lunch or breakfast. Again, I could fill every morning and lunchtime if I accepted every invitation or request. Instead, I aim for 2-3 breakfasts or lunch meetings a month. That means over the course of the year I can meet with perhaps 24-30 different people.

Hospitality
How many people could you and your wife have over for a meal every month. One, or maybe two? Maybe one midweek supper and one Sunday dinner? Again, over the course of the year you would be providing hospitality for about 24 singles, couples, or families.

Counseling
Agree an appropriate number of hours a week on counseling problems and discipleship- Maybe 2-3 hours, or one or two people a week.

Sermons
Agree a reasonable number of average hours to work on each sermon. Sometimes it will be less or more, but if they average out at the agreed amount, you can leave your desk with a good conscience.

Prayer
How many people in your congregation can you reasonably pray for each day? Three or four families/homes? That works out at twenty or more a week. Perhaps use the Prayermate App to track this.

Administration
I set myself a time limit on my admin each day. It doesn’t matter how much more I have to do, how many emails are still screaming for an answer, I reach my time limit and say, “Done!”

The Benefits of Working to Personal Capacity

I could go on, but I hope you see the difference it might make, setting yourself various objective targets in these different areas. The benefits are:

1. You work within your limited capacity rather than according to unlimited needs.

2. You have objective measurable targets. For example, 80 homes visited a year, 160 senior/sick visits a year, 36 lunches/breakfasts a year, 24 hospitality events a year, 100 counseling sessions a year, prayed for each individual in the congregation ten times a year, and so on.

3. You can feel a sense of accomplishment as you look back on your week, your month, and your year, and say, “I aimed for x, y, and z, and by God’s grace, I accomplished that.” That should shush your conscience and increase job satisfaction

4. You have accountability with your elders. You agree your capacity and what that looks like practically and then report to them on how it actually worked out. Some adjustment up or down may be needed.

5. If you have requests for visits or a lunch, a committee meeting, or a counseling session, you can look at your schedule and (unless it’s an emergency) say, “I’m sorry, I’ve reached my capacity for this week, but I can fit you in next week or the week after.” The vast majority of cases are not emergencies that need to be added to the week, but routine that can be added to the routine wherever there is a gap

Everyone’s situation is different, and space must be left for exceptions and emergencies, but working according to our limited capacity rather than according to other’s unlimited needs is the pathway to good working habits, efficient prioritizing, God-glorifying productivity, the quieting of an oversensitive conscience, the enjoyment of downtime, and the modeling of a good example of self-management to others.

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One of the Greatest Days of our Lives

I don’t tend to post much about my family on the blog but today I have to make an exception because yesterday we had the enormous privilege of attending my son’s graduation from Marine Corps bootcamp in San Diego. To top it all off, Allan also became a US citizen during a deeply moving naturalization ceremony (first photo). The rest of us hope to follow suit by the end of the year — as citizens, not Marines! Here’s a video and a few photos to give you a flavor of one of the greatest days of our lives.

Allan’s in the middle with the glasses.

And here’s the whole gang, left to right: Joni (14), Shona (?), Allan (20), me (49), Scott (2), Angus (18), and Amy (12).