Have you noticed that contemporary America fights a lot about words? If you’re a teacher, you could get fired for using female pronouns to refer to a male student identifying as female. You’re addressing the same student either way; the problem is using the wrong word to address that student. If you’re in academia, you might publish lists of politically incorrect words, together with lodes of sanitized synonyms to be used instead, e.g. “denylist” instead of the “racial” “blacklist.” You’re communicating the same concept either way; the problem is using the wrong word to communicate that concept.

Why is the Left bound and determined to force us to use their vocabulary? Aren’t we all talking about the same things, whether we say “transgenderism” or “gender dysphoria,” “homosexual union” or “homosexual marriage,” “happy holidays” or “merry Christmas?” Let’s take a brief overview of the biblical theology of language, shall we? I think we’ll uncover the very important answer.

Throughout history, words have always been central to God’s interactions with humans. God spoke creation into existence with words (Genesis 1:3). God communicated His commands to man with words (Genesis 2:16–17). Because humans wanted to build a tower to glorify themselves,, God divided the human race into nations by dividing their languages (Genesis 11:6-9). God communicated His covenant and law through words (Exodus 20:1–17). God rebuked His people through the words of the prophets (Hosea 6:4–5). Then, in the fullness of time, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). And His word is powerful, effective, and sharper than a double-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). And we know all this because God chose to communicate His truths to us through 31,102 verses of Scripture—all enshrined in words.

As creatures created in the image of God, God allowed us to share in His ability to communicate using words. Our capacity for language allows us to communicate with God and with each other, and is therefore one of the most fundamental prerequisites for one of the most fundamental human callings: relationship with God and each other (Genesis 3:8). Our ability to speak is also a necessary tool for fulfilling basic parts of the Christian life, such as singing praises to God (Psalm 150:1–6), preaching the Word (2 Timothy 4:1–2), or sharing the gospel (Mark 16:15). And our capability to use words is a powerful tool for shaping the lives of others, whether it be fathers teaching their children as they walk along the road (Deuteronomy 6:6–7), or preachers impacting the lives of the unsaved (Acts 2:37).

The ability to marshal the world-changing forces of language elevates us above the animals but also imposes on us a level of responsibility that animals do not have: the obligation to align our words with truth. (We don’t prosecute dogs for perjury.) The same God who gave us the ability to speak gave us instruction on how to speak. Our words must accurately describe reality (Leviticus 19:11). Our words must build each other up (1 Thessalonians 5:11). As a matter of fact, we must be slow to even use words in the first place (James 1:19).

But all these restrictions on language don’t demean its importance; they emphasize it. Since the tongue is so dangerous (James 3:6), we are ever more obligated to use it to honor the Lord (James 3:9–12). And Christians throughout the centuries have used the gift of language to fill the world with God’s truth as they translate His word into languages around the world, teach and encourage each other, and fight heresies and tyrannies. Wherever Christian language goes, lives are changed. Which is why the enemy hates it, and that is why he has declared war on words.

Words—those pesky things that we are commanded to use truthfully—are implicit truth claims, and the choice between one word and another, even to refer to the same person or thing, is often the difference between a truth and a lie. When we refer to someone as “she,” we make the implicit statement, “that person is female.” If that person is in reality male, then we have just lied, and we are acquiescing to those who are endeavoring to shape the world in accordance with lies. If we refer to homosexual unions as “homosexual marriages,” we are making a claim about marriage: it is a term that can appropriately be used to refer to other types of unions besides the one-man-one-woman-for-life union as which God defines it. We shouldn’t be calling marriage something that God doesn’t.

As G.K. Chesterton once observed,

“If you’re not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.”

The Left is now fighting every day for our lexicon. If only we, the people of the Word, would fight equally hard for it. Be bold: say “merry Christmas,” use biologically correct pronouns, and label gender and sexual confusion as the frauds they are. It is worth losing your popularity or even your job, because what our words bow to is what we bow to. This is why the martyrs refused to deny Christ or to stop preaching His gospel—doing so would be submitting their words to the intimidation of evil. As Peter and John said to the Pharisees who commanded them not to speak in the name of Jesus (Acts 4:19, NIV), “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God.”

Once upon a time, I held a naïve hope that public education could be pried loose from the grimy grip of self-righteous, presumptuous, intolerant, diversity-loathing, idea-banning, illiberal bullying leftists fluent in Newspeak. That was then. This is now.

Now I know that is not possible—at least not in time to educate properly children who are currently in school or soon-to-be in school. There are good signs that a movement is afoot to challenge the MAN—who now is a homosexual, drag queen who uses the pronouns fae, faer, faers, and faerself.

A few communities are battling to replace their partisan/activist school boards. There is growing vocal opposition to the promotion of critical race theory-derived assumptions, gender theory, and obscene material. And a few state legislatures are banning cross-dressing boys from participation in girls’ sports.

While these are significant developments, even if successful, they are but a pea shot into an ossified, systemically biased, massive infrastructure composed of leftist controlled school administrations, school boards, state boards of education, state legislatures and ancillary leftist controlled organizations like teachers’ unions; the American Library Association; the Modern Language Association; the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, the Illinois “Safe” Schools Alliance, and all the organizations that profit from selling their racist “anti-racism” and pro-homosexual, pro-“trans”-cultic snake oil to public schools—all in the purported service of “safety” and “inclusion.”

Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that in recent years, Illinois’ ideologically non-diverse General Assembly has passed several laws requiring taxpayer-funded schools to preach leftist assumptions about “gender” and sexuality starting in kindergarten and to indoctrinate faculty with those same assumptions through “professional development.”

Here are articles about three bills that passed requiring leftist indoctrination in public schools:

Leftist Public School Indoctrination Bill Moving Forward in Springfield

Another K-12 School Indoctrination Bill Coming Through the Illinois Sewage Pipeline

Leftist State Board of Ed and Lawmakers Collude to Indoctrinate Illinois Students

It’s not just Illinois, the Land of Illiberalism that’s corrupting public education. What’s taking place just over the border in Wisconsin illustrates the presumptuousness of public servants in indoctrination camps that self-identify as “schools.”

Last month, Empower Wisconsin exposed a bit of what an Eu Clair Area School District (ECASD) in Eu Claire, Wisconsin imposed on all staff and faculty during their Feb. 25, 2022 “Equity Professional Development” on “Safe Spaces.” (Is there any word more abused by leftists than “safety”?) A slide presentation included this galling statement:

Remember, parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned.

Who put leftists in charge of what parents are entitled to know about their own children? Who gave leftists the moral authority to conclude that parents must earn the right to know their children’s “identities”?

That claim is brazen and presumptuous. For those who have worked in public schools or studied closely what’s been taking place incrementally over the past three decades, such a claim is not, however, surprising. And it’s widely shared by leftists in schools across the country.

The Federalist reported that Superintendent Michael Johnson justified this violation of parental trust by saying he wants to create an “equitable, safe and inclusive” place “for all students.” Further, Johnson said,

Our staff often find themselves in positions of trust with our students. The staff development presentation shared extensive data and information to assist our staff members in our ongoing efforts to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all students. … The ECASD prides itself on being a school district that makes all students feel welcome and safe in our schools.

Does being in a position of trust require staff members to affirm all identities? Does it require concealment of all identities or just the ones staff members have concluded are good, healthy, and morally acceptable?

If staff members found themselves in positions of trust with students who identified as zoophiles, sibling lovers, or polyamorists, would parents have to earn the right to that information?

Are Johnson et al. concerned about cultivating the trust of parents or about making all parents feel welcome and included?

Johnson asserted that “the staff training focused on data showing students who identify as non-heterosexual have a higher incidence rate of mental health issues than heterosexual students.” Did Johnson and his buddies look at long term health risks from “transitioning”?

Did they examine material suggesting that gender dysphoria—like depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation—may be a symptom of some other underlying condition or caused by trauma?

Did Johnson and his propaganda collaborators look at the data and information regarding detransitioning?

Have Johnson and his ideological compeers researched deeply the issue of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria—a social contagion that is resulting in explosive growth in the number of adolescent girls suddenly deciding they’re boys—a heretofore nonexistent phenomenon?

Every organization leftists cite to justify their efforts to promote their views of “gender” and sexuality in schools are controlled by leftists. And every statistic and tidbit of “information” leftists cite to justify their efforts is arguable. But no debate is permitted by ideological tyrants who presume their subjective assumptions are inarguable objective facts.

I will conclude with this call from philosopher, theologian, and Princeton law professor Robert P. George a year ago–a call that’s even more urgent today:

If you have kids in public schools in New Jersey or a state that has similar laws mandating the indoctrination of children in public schools on matters of sexuality, and if you do not believe in the “Woke” ideology into which your kids are being indoctrinated, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to get your children out of those schools. The indoctrination literally begins in Kindergarten and First Grade.

The state-run schools in New Jersey and elsewhere now reflect the adoption by the State of an established religion. It is not a traditional religion, and it is not theistic, but it is a religion nonetheless–a system of ideas embodying a particular view of human nature, the human good, human dignity, and what is most important (“sacred”). The public schools are as “religious” today as they were at the beginning when they reflected the Protestant Christianity that was dominant when public education began in the U.S. in the 1830s. The difference is that Protestant Christianity has been replaced by secular progressive ideology.

If secular progressive ideology is not your family’s religion, your kids don’t belong in schools dedicated to promoting it–and to indoctrinating children in it. Your kids should be brought up in your own faith. Allowing them to be educated in a set of dogmas that are antithetical to your own beliefs simply makes no sense.

Get them out.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/If-You-Care-About-Children-and-Americas-Future-Keep-Your-Kids-Out-of-Public-Schools.mp3

Written by Trevor Thomas

On Tuesday of this week, Megan Fox at PJ Media reported on Fox News’ correspondent Bill Melugin’s somewhat foolish account of child rapist James Tubbs. While Melugin gets the heinous nature of Tubbs’ crime and the terrible response to it by the Los Angeles County District Attorney correct, he plays into the lefts’ hands when it comes to their perverse gender ideology. As Mrs. Fox notes,

While reporting on a gruesome story in which child rapist James Tubbs (who calls himself “Hannah”) has been caught on tape bragging about the light sentence he got after sexually assaulting a ten-year-old in a bathroom, Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin went out of his way to call Tubbs “she” and “her” multiple times on America’s Newsroom. It’s not only wrong but confusing to the audience. Why would Fox News join the woke gender bullies who demand that everyone gets their preferred pronouns no matter what our eyes tell us or despite whatever heinous crime they’ve committed?

Mrs. Fox goes on to note that,

Strangely, Melugin did not call Tubbs “she” and “her” on Tucker Carlson’s show, seeming to know the audience wouldn’t appreciate calling the convicted child rapist “she.” So what’s the story? Is Melugin required to use the preferred pronouns of psychopaths, or is it a personal choice?

Sadly, it seems that Melguin’s ignorant use of the English language is indeed an indication of policy on America’s Newsroom. Yesterday, in order to again discuss Tubbs’ case, the day after Melguin’s appearance, America’s Newsroom co-host Bill Hemmer had on Alex Bastian, a special advisor to inept Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon. In the segment, multiple times Hemmer referred to Tubbs using the female pronouns “she” and “her.”

HB 4626 is both a harebrained and destructive bill that seeks to further the agenda of the “trans” cult by erasing language references to biological sex. It’s most particularly dangerous and insulting to women. If passed, this bill will change references to a pregnant “woman” to a “pregnant person.” Sane, rational women and men may be asking, “Why?” The answer is that our leftist leaders are pandering to the “trans” cult by erasing all public recognition of sex differences. This legislation is yet one more incremental step toward that culturally destructive goal. Unfortunately, conservatives excel at ignoring incremental steps toward culturally destructive goals. Ignoring them is so much easier than opposing them.

Ironically this anti-woman bill is sponsored by a woman, State Representative Lakesia Collins (D- Chicago), who, equally ironically, self-identifies on her bio page as a “mother.” She probably meant to say, “person who raises children.” It’s hard to keep track of all the new language rules leftists impose in an Orwellian effort to control what people think.

Two of the three other co-sponsors of the anti-woman bill are women too. Lesbian Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago)—sponsor of all garbage bills in Illinois—and State Representative Anna Stava-Murray (D-Naperville).

Anyone who refuses to publicly acknowledge that women and women only can get pregnant and give birth does not deserve to hold office.

This bill will also expunge every occurrence of the pronouns “he,” “she,” “his,” and “her” from existing laws pertaining to children as well as the words “uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, great-uncle, great-aunt, step mother, step father, step sister, [and] step brother.”

If passed, expect to see more of this kind of propagandistic rhetoric:

• Harvard Med and Continuing Education tweeted, “ethnic minority pregnant and birthing people suffer worse outcomes and experiences during and after pregnancy and childbirth.”

• In June 2022, the Biden administration released its fiscal year budget in which the word “mothers” was stricken and replaced with “birthing persons”: “To help end this high rate of maternal mortality and race-based disparities in outcomes among birthing people …” Apparently, the censors didn’t notice the term “maternal,” which too is on the chopping block among “trans”-cultists and their censorious collaborators.

• An article on the CDC’s website reads, “Although the overall risks are low, people who are pregnant or recently pregnant are at an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 when compared to people who are not pregnant.”

• Under Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi’s oppressive reign, the terms “father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, half sister, grandson, or granddaughter” are stricken from the text of U.S. House Rules. So too are the words “himself” and “herself,” which are replaced with the ungrammatical “themself.”

And if this anti-woman, anti-science, politically driven sop by legislative toadies to the “trans” cult passes, expect to see more tyrannical diktats from leftists, including politicians. Expect to see mandates issued in Illinois’ General Assembly, Congress, and government schools requiring the use of “desexed and inclusive” language. Expect to see minor children required to use incorrect pronouns when referring to their opposite-sex identifying peers and teachers. Refusal to comply will result in discipline.

The goal of the “trans” cult is not and never has been to respect diversity. The goal has always been to coerce capitulation to the “trans”-cultic desire to eradicate all public recognition of sex differences. Their goal is to erase biological sex as a meaningful and culturally affirmed anthropological phenomenon. If that entails forcing Christians to participate in a lie, so be it.

Don’t let them do it.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to ask him or her to vote “NO” to HB 4626. Urge your representative to reject bad grammar, wokeism, and the erasure of women.

You may also want to point out that the people of Illinois do not want lawmakers to re-write the English language to accommodate the demands of a group of left-wing radicals. Lawmakers have other priorities that demand their attention during this abbreviated session. Spending time to push legislation that would eliminate pronouns is a non-starter.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/HB-4626.mp3

Illinoisans who are struggling to make ends meet as the Democrat-ruled state teeters on the knife edge of insolvency and whose children are suffering grievously from social isolation and missed milestones that can never be recovered have been waiting for the General Assembly to take action. Illinois families of diverse colors, especially those who lack the financial resources to weather a pandemic, a grossly inept response to a pandemic, government corruption, and decades of egregiously irresponsible economic policies have little choice but to wait for tyrannical, inept, irresponsible and corrupt leaders to help them.

As dispirited Illinoisans waited with labored breath for help, Illinois Senator Julie Morrison (D-Lake Forest) came to the rescue, introducing a bill on January 21, 2022 that if passed will amend a gazillion “Acts concerning children.”

With hopes raised a smidge, Illinoisans wondered how Morrison would help their children.

Maybe Morrison is addressing the urgent need to get children back in school—unmasked.

Maybe she’s calling for school choice, so impoverished families will have the freedom to choose how their children are educated.

Maybe she’s addressing the bloated pensions of teachers that bleed Illinoisans dry.

Maybe she is taking on public schools like those in Deerfield whose “educators” teach obscene material to other people’s children.

Maybe she’s addressing the scourge of children in the womb being slaughtered or taxpayer-funding of human slaughter.

Maybe she’s addressing the plague of fatherlessness that harms boys, resulting in criminal activity and urban decay.

Maybe she’s got a plan to weaken the power of teachers’ unions that care more about preventing teachers from teaching and about setting social policy unrelated to education than they do about children.

Maybe, Morrison will try to get “comprehensive” sex ed and “lgb” and “t” advocacy out of our publicly subsidized kindergartens.

Oh no, Morrison’s proposed bill “concerning children,” SB 3961, (and HB 4626 in the Illinois House) addresses far more urgent issues.  Morrison along with chief co-sponsor Melinda Bush (D-Grayslake) who jumped aboard on Monday, and co-sponsors Laura Fine (D-Glenview) and Cristina Castro (D-Elgin) have introduced a bill that will expunge every occurrence of the pronouns “he,” “she,” “his,” and “her” from existing laws pertaining to children. These women (can’t be too sure these days) also seek to bowdlerize laws that mention “uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, great-uncle, great-aunt, step mother, step father, step sister, step brother.”

In a giant leap for personkind, Morrison proposes changing references to a “mother” or a “mother who gives birth” to a “person who gives birth.”

Ahhhh, finally, a real proposal to help suffering Illinoisans, many of whom are making plans to hightail it out of the state. Illinois will once again be a grand and glorious place to raise children when all biologically based pronouns and terms are expunged from law and, it is hoped, from our collective memory. When the heartland never again permits public recognition of the bi-biodiversity (i.e., the sexual dimorphism) of the human species, Illinoisans can stop worrying and be happy. And Morrison and her collaborators can pat themselves vigorously on the back for a dirty job well done.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state lawmakers to ask them to vote down SB 3961 and HB 4626. You may want to point out that the people of Illinois do not want lawmakers to re-write the English language to accommodate the demands of a group of left-wing ideologues. They have other priorities that demand their attention during this abbreviated session. Spending time to push legislation that would eliminate pronouns is a non-starter.

Please also contact your state senator by phone during normal business hours via the Capitol switchboard: (217) 782-2000.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Illinois-Democrats-Plan-to-Save-the-State.mp3

Exeter High School in New Hampshire is being sued by a Catholic student (identified in the lawsuit as M.P.) who was suspended from playing in a football game because in a private conversation, off school grounds, initiated by a “progressive” student, M.P. expressed his view that there are only two genders: male and female. To be clear, by “genders,” he meant sexes. Until recently when the “trans”-cult redefined “gender,” the term was synonymous with “biological sex.”

The conversation was precipitated by an incident in Spanish class when a student declared that he or she is “nonbinary” and wished to be addressed by the third-person plural pronoun “they.” On the bus ride home after school, M.P. and his friends were discussing the “difficulty of addressing a non-binary person in Spanish,” which has two gendered words for “they”: “ellas” and “ellos.”

A girl identified as A.G. interrupted their conversation to assert the silly idea that there are more than two “genders.” After M.P. got off the bus, A.G. texted him to resume the debate during which she demanded M.P. “Give me one valid reason why there’s only two genders.”

That’s like demanding someone give her a valid reason why there are tigers. Tigers—like boys and girls—just are.

A.G. then sent the text conversation to Vice Principal Marcy Dovholuk, also known as Big Brother Sister Genderless Sibling. She decided from on her high horse that no student is permitted to express his or her true, scientifically verifiable belief that humans, like all other mammals, are either male or female. One wonders what orders Dovholuk has issued to Exeter’s biology teachers.

The next day, M.P. was pulled out of a morning class by Dovholuk and varsity football coach Bill Ball and suspended from the next football game for,

failing to respect another student’s gender pronouns and for ‘inappropriate language’ used in his texts, such as “bozo” and “stfu.”

As someone who worked in a public high school for a decade, I can say with confidence that no student is suspended for calling someone a “bozo” or saying “stfu” in class, let alone in a text message after school.

When M.P.’s mother objected to the suspension, saying that her son had done nothing wrong, Ball replied, “‘I know, but times are changing.’” Truer words were never spoken. Right is now wrong, and wrong is right. Imagine if Ball had had the spine to object instead of capitulating.

Even in the phantasmagorical Transtopia that leftists are socially constructing, A.G. misused the term “gender.” In Transtopia, “gender” is the aggregate of behaviors, roles, and conventions arbitrarily associated with one of the two biological sexes. A. G. likely meant “gender identities,” which in Transtopia, are the subjective, internal feelings one has about one’s maleness, femaleness, both, or neither. “Gender identity” has no objective, material reality. A. G. interrupted M.P.’s discussion about the two sexes with an entirely irrelevant comment about “gender identity.”

Exeter’s outrageous policy on “Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students” states,

[T]he the goal [of this policy] is to ensure the safety, comfort, and healthy development of the transgender or gender nonconforming student while maximizing the student’s social integration and minimizing stigmatization of the student. … A student has the right to be addressed by a name and pronoun that corresponds to the student’s gender identity. … The intentional or persistent refusal to respect a student’s gender identity (for example, intentionally referring to the student by a name or pronoun that does not correspond to the student’s gender identity) is a violation of this policy.

Here are several questions for the Exeter administration and school board:

• What criteria did the school use to determine what constitutes the “healthy development” of gender-dysphoric students? Who socially constructed those criteria?

• Is the school arguing there exists no behavior that should be stigmatized? What if a student identifies as a polyamorist or zoophile? Are other students free to express disapproval of polyamory and zoophilia?

• What are the administration’s pronoun diktats with regard to “gender fluid” students who change their preferred pronouns day-to-day?

• Is the administration aware that when they suggest that saying there are only two genders is worthy of discipline, they are stigmatizing all theologically orthodox Christians, whose beliefs about God’s created order are central to their Christian identity? Could that stigmatization make Christian students feel “unsafe”?

• Does a student have a right not to be forced to lie? When the administration demands that students use pronouns that embody false, science-denying beliefs about humans, they are forcing students to lie, which in turn means the administration is forcing Christian students to violate their religion.

• Does the administration realize that disciplining students for acting on their religious beliefs constitutes discrimination based on religion?

The verb “respect” means to hold something in esteem or to feel deferential regard for something. No public school has a right to demand that students “respect” any aspect of the “trans” ideology or of any behavior related to it. And no public school has the right to demand that only conservative students refrain from expressing their ontological, theological, moral, or political views of “trans”-cultism, while permitting “progressive” students to express theirs.

No student has an obligation to “respect” the superstition that some boys menstruate and some girls have penises. No student has an obligation to respect cross-sex hormone-doping, cross-dressing, or the sexual integration of bathrooms, locker rooms, or sports.

There is nothing progressive about “Progressives.” Their sexuality ideology is an odd mixture of paganism and Gnosticism, and their political tactics are those of all oppressive regimes. The Exeter tattle tale A. G. is like one of the two kinds of “whisperer” (sheptun) in the former Soviet Union who “informs or whispers behind people’s backs to the authorities.” Normal Americans are becoming the other kind of “whisperers” (shepchushchii) in the former Soviet Union, the ones who “whisper[ed] out of fear of being overheard.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Anti-Science-Public-High-School-Discriminates-Based-on-Religion.mp3

May I propose a New Year’s resolution for 2019? Let’s determine to speak up and to speak out, to raise our voices with clarity and compassion, to refuse to hold back regardless of cost or consequence. Will you join me?

To those of you who are already doing this, I encourage you to continue to stand strong.

To those who are not, now is most certainly the time. What are you waiting for?

One of the most important principles taught by Jesus was that if we try to save our lives, we lose them. But if we lose our lives for Him – for the gospel – we find them.

To apply this concept to our contemporary situation, if we try to avoid controversy and conflict so as to preserve our presence on social media platforms, we lose our souls in the process. We become compromisers, fearers of man rather than fearers of God. We are no longer guided by conviction; we are guided by convenience. We survive but we do not thrive.

If we speak what is right and do what is right and live what is right, we might lose a lot in the process, but we will find our souls. We become alive!

We can learn a lesson here from Wang Yi, pastor of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. He was addressing the sinful policies of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is fashioning himself to be the new Mao and is actively persecuting Christians and other minorities.

In a sermon dated September 9, 2018, Pastor Yi said, “President Xi Jinping does not repent he will perish!”

Yes, he said, “The government he is leading has sinned greatly against God, for it is persecution the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and if he does not repent, he will perish!”

But won’t Pastor Yi suffer consequences for preaching such a message? No doubt. In fact, he was subsequently arrested and is currently imprisoned. Yet he still preached with boldness and conviction.

“When we are not being persecuted,” he said, “we spread the gospel. And when persecution comes, we continue spreading the gospel. If we are talking about a President, we declare he is a sinner. And if we are talking about a general secretary, we still declare that he is a sinner. We believe that we have the responsibility to tell Xi Jinping that he is a sinner.”

What a contrast with today’s “gospel of nice,” a PC-compliant, made-for-America message if ever there was one. Whatever you do, don’t offend! Better to skirt the truth. Better to mislead. Just be sure to smile and be nice!

Of course, we should speak the truth in love. With broken hearts. With compassion.

Being mean is no more Christian than being weak.

But if ever there was time to crucify our cowardice, it is now. If ever there was a time to speak up and to speak out, regardless of cost or consequence, it is now. If we don’t, day by day, our freedoms will be taken from us, one at a time, until we find ourselves confined to a tiny, silent corner. This is how those words of Jesus’ apply.

Back in March, 2018, despite not being a fan of Infowars myself, I wrote an article titled, “Why YouTube’s Conflict with Infowars Should Concern Us All.”

I closed the article with this poem, inspired, of course, by the famous World War II poem of Martin Niemoller:

First they came for Infowars, and I did not speak out—because I found them offensive.

Then they came for Geller and Spencer, and I did not speak out­—because I found them obnoxious.

Then they came for Prager U, and I did not speak out—because I found them opinionated.

Then they came for a host of others, and I did not speak out—because I have my own life to live.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

I followed this up with an article on August 6, 2018, “Conservative Speech Be Banned!” This added further documentation and closed with the same poem.

Since then, many other conservative and Christian outlets have been affected (see this shocking list for 2018 compiled by Allum Bokhari). And most recently, Rev. Franklin Graham, arguably the best-known, most-prominent evangelical voice in America, was banned from posting on Facebook for 24 hours because of an innocuous post dating back to 2016.

Facebook quickly apologized and said he was banned in error, but the fact that this could happen at all is another sobering wake-up call.

In 2016, I drew attention to a ridiculous attempt at Princeton University to ban the “m” word (man!) from its campus. No more “man hours” or “manpower” or “layman.” Different, non-sexist terminology must be employed, such as “person hours” (for “man hours”) or “personnel” (for “manpower”) or “non-specialist” (for “layman”).

You might say, “But who cares about what happens on a university campus. That’s already an extreme PC-environment.”

Of course, we should care about what happens on our campuses, since that’s where the next generation is being educated.

But these things are not just happening on college campuses. The UK Telegraph reported on December 27, 2018, that “The European Parliament is attempting to stamp out the use of words such as ‘mankind’ and ‘manpower’ and have them replaced with more gender neutral terms such as ‘humanity’ and ‘staff”.”

Yes, the European Parliament is trying to enforce this hyper-PC speech control.

And, on a related note, let’s not forget that Canada passed a law in 2017 against “misgendering” people, while a similar law had already been passed (with stiff fines) in New York City.

So what will we do? Will we continue to retreat in order to avoid conflict, thereby muting our own voices? Or will we speak the truth in love – as compassionate as we are bold, as Christlike as we are firm, as wise as we are unwavering?

If not now, then when? If not you and me, then who?

Let’s make this our resolution in 2019: “I will not hold back for fear of consequences. I will speak up and speak out as the occasion demands. I will love my neighbor by speaking the truth.”

Are you in?

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.