Join us for our sixth annual worldview conference featuring Dr. Michael L. Brown and Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon at the Village Church of Barrington!

WHEN: March 7, 2020

TIME: 10:00 AM – 3:30 PM

WHERE: Village Church of Barrington
                   1600 E. Main St, Barrington, IL  60010

COST: $20 per person and $50 per family

Michael L. Brown is the founder and president of FIRE School of Ministry in Concord, North Carolina, Director of the Coalition of Conscience, and host of the daily, nationally, syndicated talk radio show, the Line of Fire, as well as the host of the apologetics TV show, “Answering Your Toughest Questions,” which airs on the NRB TV network. He became a believer in Jesus in 1971 as a sixteen year-old, heroin-shooting, LSD-using Jewish rock drummer. Since then, he has preached throughout America and around the world, bringing a message of repentance, revival, reformation, and cultural revolution.

Robert A. J. Gagnon is Professor of New Testament Theology at Houston Baptist University. Previously he was a tenured Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, teaching there for 23 years (1994-2017). Before that he had a one-year position as Visiting Professor of Religion at Middlebury College in Vermont. He has a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. His main fields of interest are Pauline theology and sexual issues in the Bible. He is a member both of the Society of Biblical Literature and of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas [Society of New Testament Studies]. He is also an ordained elder at a Presbyterian Church (USA) in Pittsburgh.

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Register Below or call the IFI office at 708-781-9328.

Please join the Illinois Family Institute for our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year we are featuring two well-respected and fearless Christian theologians who will help us better understand and better respond to the ever increasing corrupting influences in our culture. You do not want to miss this special event with Dr. Michael L. Brown and Dr. Robert A.J. Gagnon.

Summit Ministries defines worldview as “a pattern of ideas, beliefs, convictions, and habits that help us make sense of God, the world, and our relationship to God and the world.” Ligonier Ministries defines worldview as:

A person’s worldview represents his most fundamental beliefs and assumptions about the universe he inhabits. It reflects how he would answer all the “big questions” of human existence: fundamental questions about who and what we are, where we came from, why we’re here, where (if anywhere) we’re headed, the meaning and purpose of life, the nature of the afterlife, and what counts as a good life here and now.

Everyone has a worldview, and, sadly, even many Christians have a flawed worldview that falls short of God’s perfect standard. It is tragic to see how the incoherent ideology of humanism has captured the hearts and minds of many Americans and is destroying lives and families. Far too many Christians are ill-informed or misinformed on the issues of the day and consequently are buying the destructive lies the culture is selling.

We must work to correct our thinking and align it to the Word of God. It is vital that we intentionally pursue worldview training for ourselves, for our children and for our grandchildren.

Please join us to be become better informed about pernicious cultural trends and how we must respond.

2020 IFI Worldview Conference
Saturday, March 7th at Village Church of Barrington
1600 E. Main Street, Barrington, IL 60010
$20 per person / $50 per family / Lunch is not included.
Group pricing is available! CLICK HERE to Purchase your tickets online.

Morning Sessions: 10:00 AM —12:00 PM

Session 1: Dr. Michael Brown: “The Culture of Death: Abortion, Contraception, Euthanasia, Pornography & Childlessness”

Session 2: Dr. Robert Gagnon: “Is ‘LBGTQ’ Pressure Beginning to Crack the Evangelical House?”

Afternoon Sessions: 1:00 PM — 3:00 PM

Session 3: Dr. Michael Brown: “The Role of Christians in the Public Square”

Session 4: Dr. Robert Gagnon: “How to Make the Christian Case Against Homosexual Practice & Transgenderism”

Q & A Panel with our special guests: 3:00 PM

CLICK HERE to Purchase your tickets online.

Click HERE for more information about our speakers and a printable flyer.

Read more:

Why Worldview Training is Vital

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The “trans” cult argues that biological sex is unimportant and always, in every context and activity, subordinate to “gender identity,” which is constituted by subjective, internal feelings about one’s “maleness” or “femaleness.” In the “trans” mythology, “gender identity” has nothing to do with biological sex. Therefore, a human with XY chromosomes and a natal penis can be a woman if he so conceives himself to be. If he dreams it, he is she. No need to get rid of any appendages because women can have penises.

One of these mythological women–“Jessica” Yaniv (sometimes Jonathan) emailed esthetician Marcia da Silva, owner of a home-based salon in Canada who provides Brazilian waxes for real women. The mythological woman–complete with the anatomical accouterments of real men–requested a Brazilian wax around said accouterments. The owner of the salon refused because she was neither comfortable depilating nor trained to depilate hirsute dojiggers. You probably know what happened next.

Yaniv, the mythological woman, pirouetted right down to the Human Rights Tribunal in his stilettos to file a complaint against this woman for discriminating against him based on “gender identity.” This is the 16th female esthetician–“almost all of whom come from minority backgrounds”–against whom he has filed a complaint. He managed to extort $2,500 from one young, single mother who paid him to have the complaint dropped.  According to the Post Millennial, “Fighting JY’s discrimination complaint all the way through to a hearing would cost each esthetician between $20,000-30,000 or more.” But isn’t it sexual assault when a man forces a woman against her will to touch his dojigger? What does the #MeToo movement think about this?

But there’s more. The perverse Yaniv who fancies himself a woman and wants to force women against their will to wax his private parts also wants to help minor girls with their menstrual pads and tampons and wants to rent a public pool for a topless pool party for “LGBTQ” persons between the ages of 12-24. His request to appear before a Township Council asks for,

permission for LGBTQ2s+ organizations to be allowed to host an ‘All-Bodies Swim’ at… civic pools… for all people aged 12+ where these events will be restricted to LGBTQ2S, and individuals will be permitted to be topless (at their leisure), in compliance with the laws of Canada and where parents and caretakers will be prohibited from attending these events as it’s considered safe and inclusive.

Wait, the event is “inclusive,” but he wants to exclude parents? Hmmm…

As Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon has written about Yaniv’s complaint, “This will be compulsory in the U.S. if the “Equality Act” (so-called) is signed into law.” The Equality Act would change the definition of “sex” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include “gender identity,” thereby legally prohibiting recognition of sex differences anywhere and everywhere. Further, it explicitly nullifies religious liberty protections.

I wonder, will those who claim Christian bakers should be forced to bake cakes for homosexual anti-weddings argue that Muslim estheticians should be forced to wax the nether regions of mythological women?

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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Written by Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon 

In a blog post titled “‘Fairness For All’: Smart Politics, Or A Sellout?” (Dec. 13), Rod Dreher, senior editor at The American Conservative,  reports a defense of the recent decision by the boards of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to support “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” “federal antidiscrimination law in exchange for religious liberty guarantees written into the same law.” The defense was made by “a prominent conservative Evangelical political strategist who works at both the national and state levels” and whom Dreher calls “Smith.” Rod himself professes to be unsure about the whole subject; an uncertainty that appears to be fueled by his usual belief that voting Republican changes nothing.

The substance of the defense is essentially born of naïve utilitarianism, overlaid with a veneer of high rhetoric about standing up for the “rights” of LGBTQ persons. In effect: We are losing the battle over human sexuality in the culture so, while we still can, let’s cut a deal with proponents of all things “gay” and “transgender” that gives us something in return. They will (allegedly) recognize our good will and then become favorably disposed to protect our “religious liberties” in both the short- and long-term.

The problem with the argument is that it amounts to a policy of appeasement with sexual extremists who advocate (from our perspective) a grossly immoral sexual policy and have never exhibited a “we’ll stop here approach” before. It is an appeasement that requires us to sacrifice our basic principles to get some statutory assurance that can easily be retracted by legislative vote after a full-court indoctrination surge, predicated on the new law, overwhelms remaining resistance. In addition, it is an appeasement that provides only the narrowest of exemptions for religious institutions while throwing under the bus the vast majority of Christians who work and live outside those institutions.

It requires us to sign our own persecution warrant by conceding on a federal level that homosexual practice, “gay marriage,” and sexual mutilation surgery are (as Houghton College President Shirley Mullen, who sits on the boards of both evangelical organizations argued in a position paper) “basic human rights.” Elevating these high acts of sexual immorality to the status of “human rights” in turn slanders reasoned moral arguments against such acts as virulent prejudice akin to racist views.

It gives jurists and legislators the ammunition they need to dismiss any remaining Evangelical resistance to a program of coerced indoctrination and enforcement as inconsistent residual bigotry rather than an instance of rational moral conviction. As Lydia McGrew has pointed out,

[T]his could sabotage any attempt to get an even clearer baker/florist, etc., religious liberty ruling from the Supreme Court in a subsequent case…. A *federal* law enshrining “public accommodations’ non-discrimination rules for sexual orientation could be just what would influence someone like Kavanaugh and possibly others to reverse course rather than going more clearly in the direction of the Masterpiece [Cake] ruling.

Once Evangelical “elites” support special “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” legislation they have conceded (whether they know it or not) that a man having sex with another man and a man subjecting himself to voluntary castration and adopting a female persona are honorable life decisions deserving full government promotion and support.

When the Czechs were compelled to give up the Sudetenland in the Munich Agreement of 1938 in exchange for a contractual assurance of German respect for their sovereignty, they gave up the most defensible and defended part of the country, relying solely on the “good will” of someone who had shown absolutely no previous interest in respecting territorial boundaries. LGBTQ advocates won’t be rounding us up in concentration camps to be gassed, to be sure. Yet they will continue to press for the elimination of every last vestige of “homophobia” and “transphobia” in society by every and any legislative and judicial means. By their own rhetoric they will still regard as hateful ignorant bigots on the level of the Klu Klux Klan, all the more given new federal “anti-discrimination” legislation from which we now seek immoral exemption.

Evangelicals who think otherwise are foolish in the extreme, giving our enemies the club with which to beat us and then taking them at their word that (for the moment) they won’t beat us with it. Then why give them the club in the first place?

According to Smith, “pluralism is about accommodating deep difference” and that requires Evangelicals to “accommodate sexual minorities” and to acknowledge the latter’s “rights.” It is evident already in Smith’s own language that he has given up the store. He has appropriated language of “minorities” and “rights” previously associated with the cause for African American civil rights and applied it to the “LGBTQ” agenda. By definition, then, any resistance to that agenda is “heterosexist” and “cis-sexist.”

Race is about an intrinsically benign, non-behavioral, and immutable facet of human existence. Don’t confuse rhetoric rightly used to support the cause of racial justice with rhetoric that promotes desires (however innate) to do things at fundamental odds with one’s biological design. Contrary to what Smith claims, it is not part of the “common good” to provide special rights for such behavior that will invariably lead to severe state indoctrination and attenuation of both freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion (whatever exemptions we are briefly granted in the law by LGBTQ powers for our detestable prejudices). Smith says that “gay people have a right to be wrong.” They already have that right. What they want is the right to compel others to do things that violate conscience.

Pluralism has its limits. Would Smith apply the same argument to Evangelical hostility against polyamory and adult-consensual incest (these too involve “sexual minorities” and questions about “rights”)? In a pluralist society must we eventually accommodate these “deep differences” too once there is a societal push for such acceptance? How could he possibly argue otherwise given the fact that moral logic predicates opposition to such behavior on a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations and the integrity of a biologically based sexuality, an opposition now surrendered in the public sphere?

Homosexual practice and transgenderism are not “run of the mill” sexual offenses. They are extreme sexual offenses that attack the very foundation of all sexual ethics. The CCCU and NAE want us to promote legislation that honors and protects such behavior and provides the legal reasoning for coercing acceptance in the whole population.

Smith even admits that LGBT activists believe that

Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 dealt a powerful blow to their hopes…. Now they have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and Justice Ginsburg aged and frail. LGBT strategists believe that the likelihood of litigating their way to preferred policy outcomes is low under this Court.

Then Smith argues that, despite this perspective, our cause is hopeless because Trump and a Republican-led Congress haven’t done everything in two years. He completely ignores the fact that we haven’t lost federal ground in the sexuality wars and are on the road to strengthening materially our position vis-à-vis the Court without having to surrender our moral convictions in the public sector.

Smith assures us,

I don’t think they’re doing it as a bad-faith stalling tactic.

How ridiculous. Every political example points in the direction that LGBTQ activists will continue their inexorable pursuit of stamping out homophobic and transphobic prejudice (so-called) by all means necessary. These Evangelical appeasers have the “innocent as doves” demeanor down but not the “wise as serpents” part. California moved from outlawing sexual orientation “change therapy” on the part of licensed clinicians for minors to five or six years later making a concerted effort to outlaw it for adults on the part of pastors where an exchange of funds is involved. LGBTQ politicians will push their agenda to the bitter end.

Once we abandon the moral conviction that homosexual and transgender immorality are not “human rights” requiring state promotion, we have no basis for opposing our further persecution. Bigots (in the thinking of LGBTQ activists) are not entitled to exemptions in the long run for a bigotry that harasses “sexual minorities” and induces suicide attempts. LGBTQ activists won’t think us to be any less bigoted because of our surrender. They will simply view us as conviction-less and unprincipled bigots who deserve what is coming to them.

Most galling of all is that Smith even cites the Golden Rule to justify his position:

In Smith’s view, in a pluralistic society like America 2018, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is a good rule for religious liberty advocates and gay rights supporters alike.

Jesus didn’t formulate the Golden Rule to provide special legal protections for, and promotion of, immoral behavior. He formulated it to encourage us to act in the best interest of others rather than to engage in vengeful behavior as a response to wrongs committed against one’s self. Since no true Evangelical can possibly believe that self-dishonoring homosexual behavior and attempted erasure of one’s biological sex are positive goods in the best interests of the practitioners, no Evangelical can support the kind of legislation that the CCCU and NAE are now endorsing.

With this kind of reasoning on the part of Smith, it is little wonder that he wants to remain anonymous.

Robert A. J. Gagnon is Professor of New Testament Theology at Houston Baptist University. He has a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. His main fields of interest are Pauline theology and sexual issues in the Bible. He is a member both of the Society of Biblical Literature and of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas [Society of New Testament Studies]. He is the author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001; 520 pgs.); co-author (with Dan O. Via) of Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003; 125 pgs.); and, as a service to the church, provides a large amount of free material on his website dealing with Scripture and homosexuality.

I was part of an extended Facebook conversation with Chuck Colbert, a homosexual journalist from the Boston area who graduated from Notre Dame University but has renounced his Catholic faith and converted to Reform Judaism. He expressed virtually every fallacious claim that homosexual ideologues everywhere express—claims that conservatives should be prepared to refute. In the service of helping to equip IFI readers for such conversations, here are some of his claims (in boldface) followed by rebuttals.

1.) “Jesus said nothing about gay people.”

First, Jesus also says nothing about pedophilia, incest, rape, polyamory, sadomasochism, voyeurism, or infantilism. Are we to assume that Jesus, therefore, approved of these types of acts?

Second, arguments from silence are considered weak—if not fallacious—arguments. Anyone who has as much academic training as Colbert claims to have should know that. The fact that Jesus says nothing on a topic tells us nothing about what he thinks on that topic. We do know that Jesus said this:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 

Jesus does not abrogate any of the transcendent, eternal moral prescriptions and proscriptions found in the Old Testament.

2.) “There are more than a few biblical scholars who interpret the passages [about homosexuality] much differently.”

Not until the last quarter of the 20th Century did a single scholar in the history of the church interpret any passage in Scripture in such a way as to imply God approves of homosexual activity. Radical reinterpretations of Scripture passages that address homosexuality were not driven by new discoveries. They were driven by the sexual revolution and the sexual desires of same-sex attracted persons. That said, even today, there are homosexual scholars who admit that Scripture is clear that God condemns homosexual activity.

Biblical scholar and expert on the topic of the Bible and homosexuality, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon cites two homosexual scholars, historian Louis Crompton and professor of Christian Studies, of Women’s and Gender Studies, of Classical Studies, and of Religious Studies at Brandeis University, Bernadette Brooten—both of whom affirm homosexual marriage—who argue that such a position is not consistent with Scripture.

3.) “There was no such thing in biblical times of a positive LGBT identity. The modern understanding of same-sex marriage is different from the biblical times.”

There was “no positive LGBT identity in biblical times” because God condemns homosexual activity. God’s condemnation of homosexual acts is categorical—no exceptions. Paul tells us that those who affirm such sin as righteousness will not see the kingdom of Heaven.

The hubris of this argument is astonishing. It suggests that there is something that Jesus—who is God, and, therefore, omniscient—didn’t know about human nature, human activity, or human experience.

4.) “The fact is that many, many LGBTs have been married within their various faith communities; their children are doing just fine. Take some time to get to know real LGBT people.”

Though homosexuals may be “married” legally, they are not in reality married because marriage has a nature, which Jesus himself said is the union of one man and one woman.

Getting to know those in faux-marriages does not change the Word of God.

How we feel about people has nothing whatsoever to do with a moral assessment of volitional acts. Colbert’s suggestion “to get to know real LGBT people” reveals that to him the experiences of fallen humans supersede Scripture when it comes to homosexuality.

Does he apply that principle consistently? Would he, for example, recommend that people who disapprove of consensual adult incest take some time to get to know two brothers who are in love and raising kids together as a means to eradicate their disapproval? Would he suggest “getting to know” the five people of assorted sexes in a poly union as the means by which to assess the morality of polyamory or poly-parenting?

Intentionally denying children either a mother or father is unconscionable no matter how nice the two parents are. In addition to the intrinsic right of children to be raised whenever possible by a mother and father, there are a number of studies that indicate children being raised by homosexuals are not fine—and some of these studies are far better studies than those worshipped by the homosexual community. The “LGBTQ” community savages these studies by applying standards that they never apply to studies whose results they like.

For example, homosexuals—including Colbert—frequently tout a study on lesbian parenting without citing the serious structural problems with the study including small sample size, method of selecting participants (i.e., “convenience sampling” vs. far superior “random sampling”), self-reporting nature of responses, absence of a control group, and failure to do long-term follow-up testing.

For research that contradicts the claim that children raised by homosexuals fare as well as children raised by mothers and fathers in intact families, click here, here, here, and here.

5.) “LGBTs are active and productive members within their communities. As more and more people get to know and understand gay people, they see that we are just as good as everybody else. I am sure God is fine with ‘their behavior.’”

The fact that homosexuals do good things tells us precisely nothing about God’s view of homosexual acts. Virtually all sinners do good things as well.

No one is good. Romans 3: 10-12: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

6.) “Why would you care anyway? LGBT life has no adverse effect on your life anyway.”

The homosexual and “trans” community really must stop disseminating the patent lie that widespread cultural approval of homosexual activity, the legal recognition of intrinsically non-marital unions as marriages, and acceptance of the “trans” ideology affect only the parties involved. Here are just some of the adverse effects that harm countless lives:

• Lies that destroy temporal and eternal lives are being disseminated as truth.

• Children are being denied their intrinsic right to be raised by a mother and a father.

• Children are being fed the lie that either mothers or fathers are dispensable.

• Government schools are teaching implicitly and explicitly the lie that disapproval of homosexual activity constitutes hatred of persons.

• Schools are now teaching kindergartners about homosexual relationships—rather, they’re teaching children leftist ideas about homosexual relationships.

• Schools are teaching that biological sex has no intrinsic or profound meaning, including regarding feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy in private spaces.

• A feckless school board (April 27, 2018 Brabrand Briefing.pdf) in Fairfax, Virginia has proposed replacing the term “biological sex” in the health curriculum for grades 8-10 with the nonsensical, science-denying term “sex assigned at birth.” Apparently, board members aren’t “woke” to the fact that doctors don’t assign sex. They identify it.

• Government schools are mandating that faculty lie, ordering them to refer to students who masquerade as the opposite-sex by incorrect pronouns.

• Government schools are engaging in absolute censorship of resources that dissent from “LGBTQ” dogma even as they present resources that affirm it. That’s not education. That’s indoctrination.

• Professors are losing their jobs for expressing conservative or theologically orthodox views on sexuality and marriage.

• Christian owners of wedding-related businesses are being sued.

• The Boy Scouts of America was forced to accept openly homosexual scouts and leaders, and then girls who pretend they’re boys.

• Public libraries now have drag queen story hours for toddlers, and little boys dressed in drag march in the shameful “pride” parades that deface our once-great cities every June.

• “Progressives” like New York Times writer Frank Bruni have reinterpreted First Amendment religious protections to be limited to pew, home, and heart.

• Adoption and foster care agencies have been forced out of business for refusing to place children in the homes of homosexuals.

• Corporate America, professional medical and mental health organizations, the mainstream press, and the arts promote the pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” ideology.

• While leftists express their views of homosexuality freely at work, even starting pro-homosexual clubs and slapping silly safe space stickers on work spaces, conservatives risk loss of employment for expressing their views.

• Brendan Eich was forced out of his job at Mozilla, the company he founded, for donating to Prop 8—the California proposition that would have banned homosexual marriage.

• Minors are being surgically mutilated and chemically sterilized in a futile quest to mask their sex.

The homo/“trans” ideology not only affects but also harms everyone.

7.) “Gay people are in nature so how can they be against natural law. There have been gays throughout history.”

There are diverse definitions of the word “natural.” Colbert seems to be using it in the sense of “found or existing in the world,” which is not how it’s used in natural law theory. Natural law refers to the design of humans which points to their intended purposes (i.e., teleology).

All manner of disordered desires and deviant activities exist in nature, including all sorts of “paraphilias.” Would Colbert argue that because some humans exist who desire to be hurt or hurt others, to expose their genitals, or to have sex with toddlers that these phenomena are natural—in the natural law sense—and worthy of affirmation?

8.) “Your view for LGBT Christians is pretty judgmental. Take a look at the planks in your eyes before you go after the specks in LGBTs’ eyes.Judge not, or you will be judged.”

The erroneous claim that the Bible prohibits making judgments between right and wrong must be examined in light of the following verses: “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment” (John 7:24), and “The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks justice” (Psalm 37:30).

The verse that says, “Judge not, that you be not judge” means that we are not to engage in unrighteous judgment. We are not to condemn hypocritically a sin that we are engaging in. We’re to recognize the universality of sin and offer forgiveness as we have been forgiven. This verse does not entail a refusal to judge between right and wrong behavior. It does not prohibit humans from making distinctions between moral and immoral conduct.

It’s absurd to claim that the Bible prohibits Christians from making statements about what constitutes moral conduct (i.e., to judge). If it did mean that, we could not say that slavery, racism, bestiality, polyamory, selfishness, fornication, adultery, aggression, incest, lust, or gossip is immoral, for surely those moral propositions constitute the kind of judging that repels critics like Colbert.

Everyone does and should judge right from wrong. Every civilized human makes judgments every day between right and wrong actions. Christians have no moral authority to judge the salvific status of others, but Christians have every right to discriminate between right and wrong actions and to express those beliefs publicly. The ethical legitimacy of public speech is not dependent on the subjective response of those who hear such expressions.

As he railed against judgmentalism, here are some of the terms Colbert used to describe those who disapprove of homosexual acts: “self-righteous,” “sanctimonious piety,” “condescending attitude,” “rabid,” “bigoted,” “prejudiced,” and “hateful.”

9.)  “I did not choose to be gay anymore than you chose to be, presumably, straight. Being gay has nothing to do with a choice.”

While erotic attraction to persons of the same sex is not chosen, acting on those feelings is, indeed, chosen. Humans experience myriad powerful, persistent, unchosen feelings. Our task as moral beings is to determine on which of those feelings we are morally justified to act. And that task requires some arbiter of morality—some basis on which to judge right from wrong.

10.)  “I am not defying God. God does not condemn gay people, our lives and our love. God is fine with his creation of gay people.”

On what basis can Colbert make the claim that he is not defying God? He can’t rationally make such a claim based on either the plain words of the Old or New Testament.

God does, indeed, condemn homosexuals as well as many others. God condemns anyone who rejects the work of Christ on the Cross. One of the clearest signs of being saved from God’s wrath is repentance. Doing the will of the Father and confessing when we fail are signs that we are saved. Perpetual embrace of that which God condemns and calling that which God condemns “good” are sure signs that one will not see the kingdom of Heaven:

Or know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

God creates men and women. Through the fall of Adam, all of us are born with a fallen nature and are in need of redemption. While God for a time allows the disordering of his creation, he no more created in humans homoerotic desire than he created in humans adulterous desire, polyamorous desire, incestuous desire, “minor-attraction,” murderous desire, the desire to be an amputee, the desire to gossip, pride, covetousness, or physical anomalies.

If Christians truly love their neighbors as themselves, they should be prepared to respond courageously to claims like Colbert’s. Authentic love depends on knowing first what is true.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Conversation-with-Homosexual-Journalist.mp3

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Prager University (PragerU) was started in 2009 by Dennis Prager as a way to circumvent the left-leaning educational universe and bring conservative ideas to the public in general but especially to young people. This week, PragerU released a deeply disappointing video featuring Guy Benson, political editor for Townhall Magazine and frequent contributor on Fox News Channel.

Guy Benson is immensely gifted. He is a bright, thoughtful, articulate young man with a quick mind and a gracious, winsome manner. He is also telegenic, which makes him a perfect spokesperson in a culture mediated by visual media. But those very gifts and his appeal to young people will enable him to have a corrosive effect on some conservative values.

Book-ending his five-minute PragerU video, Benson says, “I’m a Christian; a patriotic American, and a free market, shrink-the-government conservative who also happens to be gay.”

The phrase “happens to be gay” is an attempt to diminish the significance of his choice to affirm homosexuality as central to his identity. Please note, I did not say Benson chooses to experience same-sex attraction. Rather, he has freely chosen to place his unchosen homoerotic feelings at the center of his identity, and that is not something that just “happens.” Nor is it something trivial.

Benson goes on to say that “Far too often people are sorted by their gender, or their skin color, or their sexual orientation, or any other immutable characteristic that has nothing to do with ideas or values.”

This short sentence contains a number of troubling propositions.

Like “progressives,” Benson suggests that “gender”—and by “gender,” I assume he means biological sex—and skin color are analogous to “sexual orientation.” First, “sexual orientation” is a Leftist rhetorical construction intended to communicate the false idea that heterosexuality and homosexuality are flipsides of the sexuality coin and morally equivalent. In contrast, others argue that homosexuality represents a disordering of the sexual impulse.

Second, homosexuality per se has no points of correspondence to sex or skin color. Biological sex and skin color are genetically determined and carry no behavioral implications, thereby rendering moral disapproval of them irrational.

In contrast, homosexuality is constituted by subjective feelings, whose cause or causes are unknown, and volitional activity for which moral assessment is both rational and legitimate—no matter what the cause or causes for the feelings.

Third, what does Benson mean when he refers to homosexuality as an “immutable characteristic”? Is he referring to the powerful, persistent, and seemingly intractable nature of his desires? If so, in his view is it morally acceptable to act on all powerful, persistent, seemingly intractable feelings? If he doesn’t believe the powerful, persistent nature of feelings confers automatic moral legitimacy on actions impelled by such feelings, how does he determine which ought not be acted on?

And how does he respond to the brilliant Rosaria Butterfield, a former feminist English professor and lesbian who has written eloquently about her spiritual conversion and rejection of a lesbian identity?

Fourth and most intellectually dishonest, Benson makes the remarkable claim that the affirmation of a homosexual identity “has nothing to do with ideas or values.” Does Benson really believe that his (or anyone else’s) homosexual attraction has anything to do with his ideas about and support for the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages?

And does he really believe that his homosexual attraction has nothing to do with his hermeneutics (i.e., methods of biblical interpretation)? Benson claims he is a Christian and that his Christian identity sits at the tiptop of his list of personal identifiers. For him to identify as a homosexuality-affirming Christian, Benson must have first embraced a very late 20^th Century revisionist hermeneutic that rejects the plain reading of Scripture and 2,000 years of church history, and which emerged not from newly discovered documents but from the mid-20^th Century sexual revolution.

Arguably the preeminent theologian writing on the Bible and homosexuality, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, writes this in response to Benson’s PragerU video:

Marriage is the single most significant structure in society. Radically redefining it at its very foundation so as to make gender differentiation irrelevant is a decisively non-conservative political stance, not to mention an unfaithful anti-Christian position that tacitly rejects the God of Abraham and Moses as well as the lordship of Jesus Christ. There can be no negotiation on this point without upending the rug on which the conservative table is set. It takes more courage to hold the line here than on any other position. Conservatives should be known for courage, not cowardice; clarity, not confusion.

In an unsuccessful attempt to prove that his homosexuality does not affect his “ideas or values,” Benson points to the relatively small amount of time he spends addressing “LGBT issues”:

To be candid, in my day-to-day life and work, I spend a lot more time thinking and writing about the failures of Obamacare, for example, than I do about LGBT issues.

But that’s a non-sequitur. It does not follow that because he spends more time thinking and writing about the failures of Obamacare than he does about “LGBT” issues that his homosexual “identity” does not affect his ideas or values. Thinking and writing less on “LGBT” issues than Obamacare means precisely nothing about whether his homosexuality affects his ideas and values on “LGBT” issues.

Benson supports “narrow exemptions for small businesses adjacent to the wedding industry” and he “chafe[s]” at the idea that “all opposition to expanding marriage is framed as ‘hate.’” Since he is a rising star in the GOP, I guess we should be thankful for that.

The talented Guy Benson and others like him pose a threat to conservatism and Christianity. Widespread cultural approval of the homosexuality-affirming ideology threatens the foundation of any society. And if the church affirms heresy, we put at risk the eternal lives of people like Guy Benson.

Since Dennis Prager is committed to the free exchange of ideas, perhaps he’ll invite someone to appear on another video to debate the ideas expressed by Guy Benson, whose embrace of a “gay”  identity suggests that homosexuality—not Christianity—sits at the tiptop of his identity list.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Prager-Universitys-Troubling-Video-with-Homosexual-Christian-Guy-Benson.mp3

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“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter
the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will
of my Father who is in heaven.”  ~Matt. 7:31

Two influential bloggers who “identify” as Christians have rejected biblical orthodoxy in order to affirm homoeroticism as holy. Jen Hatmaker and Glennon Doyle Melton have chosen to reject two thousand years of church history to embrace heretical views of homoerotic activity and marriage.

Jen Hatmaker and her husband Brandon assure their followers that they studied the Bible closely using established hermeneutical principles; “engaged in hours of conversations with theologians, bishops, pastors, authors, and church leaders”; engaged in “a ton of prayer”; kept “a journal full of notes”; and even “researched the claims behind the Kinsey Scale” before they concluded that the Bible actually affirms the views that the Hatmakers were embracing before they embarked on their deep Scriptural studies.

The Hatmakers concluded that those theological views that emerged in the latter half of the latter half of the 20^th Century—views impelled not first by close study of Scripture but by the cultural movement to normalize homoeroticism—are correct. Like liberal theologians, the Hatmakers have concluded that only abusive homoerotic relationships are condemned by Scripture:

Every verse in the Bible that is used to condemn a “homosexual” act is written in the context of rape, prostitution, idolatry, pederasty, military dominance, an affair, or adultery. It was always a destructive act. It was always a sin committed against a person. And each type of sexual interaction listed was an abuse of God’s gift of sex and completely against His dream for marriage to be a lifelong commitment of two individuals increasingly and completely giving themselves to one another as Christ did for the church. But not one of these scriptures was written in the context of marriage or civil union (which simply did not exist at this time).

The Hatmakers evidently assume that the only reason Jesus defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman was that homoerotic “marriage” did not exist. They evidently believe that Jesus’ understanding of marriage as a sexually differentiated union was limited by his culture. In their view, Jesus’ understanding of marriage was a product of his limited knowledge.  The Hatmakers presume that if same-sex “marriage” had existed, surely Jesus would have defined marriage in the Bible as a union of any two people with their sexes being utterly irrelevant.

But if the sex of marriage partners is irrelevant, then what is the reason for limiting marriage to two people? Can’t three people love each other?

And since the Bible teaches that marriage is a picture of Christ—the bridegroom—and his church—the bride, are the Hatmakers saying there is no distinction in role or function between Christ and the church?

When asked if she would attend a friend’s “marriage” to a person of the same sex, Jen Hatmaker said, “I would attend that wedding with gladness, and I would drink champagne. I want the very best for my gay friends. I want love and happiness and faithfulness and commitment and community.”

Every Christian desires love, happiness, and faithfulness for their loved ones. But knowing what love is requires knowing first what is true. And no Christian should desire that an unholy relationship endure. Permanence does not mitigate the moral offense of homoerotic relationships. Commitment can no more transform an intrinsically immoral homoerotic relationship into a moral one than it could transform an intrinsically immoral incestuous relationship into a moral relationship.

Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, arguably the foremost authority on the Bible and homosexuality, has critiqued the late 20^th Century revisionist position that only exploitative, abusive homoerotic activity is condemned in Scripture. In his book The Bible and Homosexual Practice, Dr. Gagnon refutes the Hatmaker’s claim that the only homosexual acts condemned in Scripture are condemned were abusive or exploitative:

The prohibitions in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 are unqualified: any man who lies with another male in the manner men lie with women (i.e., engaging in sexual intercourse) has committed an abomination. There are no exceptions. One finds no specifications regarding age of either participant. Neither is there any mention of the exploitative character of the relationship. If homosexual relationships were wrong primarily because they were exploitative, why would Lev. 20:13 specify a death penalty for both participants, the exploited as well as the exploiter?

The Hatmakers were motivated to critically reexamine what Scripture teaches about homosexuality by seeing “so much pain among the LGBTQ community: Suicidal teenagers. Divided families. Split churches. So. Much. Pain.” Let’s pray the Hatmakers don’t notice the pain of “zoophiles,” adulterers, and sibling-lovers. Let’s also pray that the Hatmakers do notice that church splits are largely caused by biblical revisionists like them and that the pain that results is felt not just by homosexuals but by the theologically orthodox as well.

While Jen Hatmaker until recently embraced theologically orthodox views, self-indulgent “Christian” blogger Glennon Doyle Melton has long made her unorthodox theological views known on her blog Momastery.

Melton, a recently divorced mother of three known for such faux-pearls of wisdom as “Life is brutal. But it’s also beautiful. Brutiful, I call it,” announced on Sunday night that she is “deeply, finally, FINE. Fine through my bones and soul and mind and just every fiber of me.”

And what is the cause of this deep, final bone and fiber-penetrating fineness? Could it be a renewed relationship with Jesus Christ? Nope. It’s her newfound homoerotic relationship with lesbian soccer star Abby Wambach.

For those who are unfamiliar, Melton, who has 645,000 Facebook followers, is a professional confessor in the mold of self-indulgent professional confessor Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. Interestingly, Gilbert left her second husband for a homoerotic relationship with her best friend.

Oprah-esque/Gilbert-y Doyle rationalizes her self-indulgent, relativistic worldview to her children—a worldview manifestly non-Christian—arguing that through her selfishness she is a brave, empowering, feminist role model:

Now we are entering a new time which calls for a different type of leadership. And now it is my job as a leader not to concern myself too deeply about what you think and feel about me- about the way I live my life. That is what I want to model now, because that is what I want for YOU: I want you to grow so comfortable in your own being, your own skin, your own knowing – that you become more interested in your own joy and freedom and integrity than in what others think about you. That you remember that you only live once, that this is not a dress rehearsal and so you must BE who you are. I want you to refuse to betray yourself. Not just for you. For ALL OF US. Because what the world needs — in order to grow, in order to relax, in order to find peace, in order to become brave—is to watch one woman at a time live her truth without asking for permission or offering explanation.

When it comes to homoerotic activity, there is no such thing as “her truth.” There is only objective, eternal transcendent truth. And the betrayal revealed by Melton, who claims to be a Christian, is her betrayal of her commitment to Christ and rebellion against the will of the Father.

Those who care about Melton’s children and the temporal and eternal lives of both Melton and Wambach should pray that they will be called to Christ like Rosaria Butterfield who was deeply entrenched in a life defined by homosexuality and recently wrote this:

I was not converted out of homosexuality. I was converted out of unbelief. I didn’t swap out a lifestyle. I died to a life I loved.

The worldly view of “identity” stands diametrically opposed to a biblical view of identity. As I wrote in an earlier article, “progressives” always in thrall to subjective feelings have redefined “identity” to render it immune from moral judgment:

Homosexual activists began transforming the concept of “identity.” They sought to recast identity as something intrinsically inviolable, immutable, and good. They sought to refashion identity in such a way as to make it culturally taboo to make judgments about any constituent feature of identity. They re-imagined identity in such a way as to move homoeroticism from the category of phenomena about which humans can legitimately make moral distinctions to one about which society is forbidden to make judgments.

Identity in its former incarnation was merely a way of saying that a thing is itself. Identity when applied to individual persons simply denoted the aggregate of phenomena constituting, associated with, affirmed, or experienced by individuals. Identity was “the set of behavioral and personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group.”

Identity was not conceived as some intrinsically moral thing, because identity could refer to either objective, non-behavioral, morally neutral conditions (e.g., skin color) or to subjective feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts that could be good or bad, right or wrong. Prior to the new and subversive conceptualization of identity, there existed no absolute cultural prohibition of judging the divers elements that constitute identity.

By conflating all the phenomena that can constitute identity, “progressives” demanded that society should no more make judgments about feelings and volitional acts than they should about skin color.

In contrast, Christians should find their identity in Christ which means we must die to ourselves. Butterfield writes about the meaning and challenge of being a new person in Christ:

Conversion to Christ made me face the question squarely: did my lesbianism reflect who I am (which is what I believed in 1999), or did my lesbianism distort who I am through the fall of Adam? I learned through conversion that when something feels right and good and real and necessary—but stands against God’s Word—this reveals the particular way Adam’s sin marks my life. Our sin natures deceive us. Sin’s deception isn’t just “out there”; it’s also deep in the caverns of our hearts.

How I feel does not tell me who I am. Only God can tell me who I am, because he made me and takes care of me. He tells me that we are all born as male and female image bearers with souls that will last forever and gendered bodies that will either suffer eternally in hell or be glorified in the New Jerusalem. Genesis 1:27 tells me that there are ethical consequences and boundaries to being born male and female.

While the world tells us that our identity is found and secured by yielding to our emotions, Christ tells us that our identity is found in obedience to him through which our feelings will be redeemed from their fallen distorted state.

These women, Hatmaker and Melton, influence people—particularly women. These two attractive women use flowery rhetoric to describe pseudo-love. It is pseudo-love in that it is severed from truth. By promoting sexual deviance as holy, Hatmaker and Melton are wolves in adorable sheep costumes.

Warn your loved ones about them and their false teachings, and please have conversations with your children about the differences between fallen man’s view of identity and Christ’s.

Listen to this article HERE.

Save the Date!  Feb. 18th Worldview Conference

We are very excited about our third annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Frank Turek on Saturday, February 18, 2017 in Barrington. Dr. Turek is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture:  Click HERE to learn more or to register!

Click HERE for a flyer.