Quodlibet
Unattractive Truth
J. K. Rowling is a strongly professed feminist who is now squandering her popularity by putting forward the mad notion that there are only two sexes. But who is to teach such people for whom feminism seems good—merely egalitarian fairness—that transgenderism is the next logical step in what can only be a program? For while sexual egalitarianism is in essence denial of the male, transgenderism adds to this denial of the female, so closing the circle, now revealed as simple hatred of the human race, and so ultimately a denial of Jesus Christ come in the flesh by which we are to test the spirits to see if they do or do not come from God. This program is spiritual, an assault on both nature and reason, and hence we can recognize it clearly as the activity of the demons we abjure and rebuke as evil without entering into dialogue with them, a dialogue they will not enter except on their own terms.
But who is to teach this when most of the churches are busy making as many craven accommodations to this Spirit as they can, in the name of not making the gospel unattractive in their efforts to "reach people" for "Christ."
Christians have in this generation, whether they know it or not, passed from an age of apology to an age of witness (a sort of church-historical backward movement)—a point I tried to make with some vigor at the last Touchstone conference, and was challenged on by a professor of apologetics. But this did not come simply from my imagination. It was prompted by Hans Boersma, who in First Things wrote that his best students found themselves completely at sea when they contemplated the task of preaching in the modern world, for there was no longer any firm point of contact at which people raised in and imbued with the culture's present frame of mind could understand reasoned explanations of Christianity. The way I put it was that "the apologetic dove has nowhere to land," so that now we must rely (as we always should have relied) on "the foolishness of preaching" to reach those who can be reached.
There will be a division, the beginnings of which we are seeing now, between those who adhere to a program of trying above all things to make the gospel attractive to reason and aesthetic stimulation in order to "grow the church," and those few who understand, resolving to preach the Truth no matter what it does to the size of their congregations.
S. M. Hutchens is a Touchstone senior editor.
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more from the online archives
25.4—July/August 2012
The Corrosive & Far-Reaching Fallout of the Sexual Revolution by Anthony Esolen
14.6—July/August 2001
Three Bad Ideas for Women & What to Do About Them by Frederica Mathewes-Green
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