Yes I hope the title grabbed your attention. It is not click bait or frivilous swearing. It is an exact description of what Washington State and the LGBTQ agenda would have your children be. They are running a very well-oiled machine. And this well-oiled machine is a sign to us all that we have been steeped in a selfish-bastard ideology for a long time now. The bolts were not tightened on this abominable aparatus over night. But they are cinced down now and the gears are thundering along swiftly producing souls for the abyss.
I refer to the wretched news which surfaced recently that Washington State K-12 government schools have a policy of not telling parents of their children’s sexual confusion. Mairead Elordi, reporting at the Daily Wire, explains that Washinton’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction forbids teachers telling parents about a student’s transgender confusion unless they get permission from the student. Teachers are actually instructed to ask students what name and pronoun they would like the teacher to use when speaking with their parents—”So Frank, your parents call you Sally. We know you’re Frank around here, using the boys bathroom and all. But when I speak to your parents, do you want me to call you a him or a her, Frank or Sally?”
Illegitimizing Your Children
The state’s LGBTQ agenda would cut your children off from you. The Bible is full of God’s generational blessing and that is the very thing that the spirit of the age abominates. Our present cultural mileu is drunk on individualism. And thus the adjective “Selfish” in the tile of this post. You (singular) must be you (singular), says modern man. And you must not let anyone stop you from being you. Carl Truman has detailed such thought under the term expressive individualism—”Expressive individualism is the belief that each person must act based on expressing his or her core feelings and intuition, and in so doing they become ‘authentic,’ or, to put it another way, they become really themselves . . . [Expressive individualism] is wrong in tending to see the world as thus serving the individual’s happiness. Other people, formal institutions, and cultural traditions all tend to be seen in an adversarial light, as threatening the individual’s ability for self-realization. In trans ideology, even the body therefore becomes a problem to be overcome if it contradicts our inner feelings” (TableTalk Magazine, November 2021).
When such self-centeredness permeates the thought-life of a given society, then the inevitable result is the bastardization of children. And thus the noun “Bastards” in the title of this post. Hebrews 12:8-9 says, “But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons . . . we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence.” Fatherly discipline is what sons receive. Bastards or illegitimate children do not receive it. And the point is not only that the modern state is uncomfortable with parental discipline. Modern uncomfortability with parental disipline is merely the fruit of modern uncomfortability with the divinely instituted family and the blessings and obligations that attend it. The spirit of the age would strip your children of the rights and privileges of recognized sonship.
The Church Leads the World
The bitter pill for the Christian Church to swallow is that the we have actually propogated many of the bad ideas we see out there in society. As Melville says in Moby Dick, “The pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world . . . Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.” So when we look out of our window at a culture gone made, we must not point the finger and think the problem is merely out there. Rather we should look in our kitchen to see what we have been cooking up.
As Pastor Douglas Wilson has noted in a very fine book called The Paidea of God: Women were in pulpits before they were in cockpits. And such is the case with self-centered expressive individualism and the cutting off of familial blessings and duties. American Christianity has by-and-large severed the family tie that binds. And it did so long before Principal Thompson started keeping from you the fact that your daughter Sally calls herself Frank and showers in the boys locker room.
So the Christian witness to our corrupt age is this: Our children are not selfish bastards, and they will not be selfish bastards. And we say this without the slightest bit of worldly fear. For God has told us that He will be our God and He will be God to our children after us—”And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you” (Genesis 17:7).
Moreover, God has made a new covenant with us in which He will do good not only to us, but to our children, “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them.” (Jeremiah 32:39).
We laugh with our Father in heaven at your attempts to severe God’s familial blessing because He has promised that His Spirit, who is upon us, shall remain upon our children and grandchildren, “And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord: ‘My Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children’s offspring,’ says the Lord, ‘from this time forth and forevermore'” (Isaiah 59:21).
We will fear God and not be afraid of the secular left’s attempt to undue God’s generational blessing. For God’s steadfast love and even His righteousness are guaranteed to the children of those who fear Him, “But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments” (Psalm 103:17-18).
We do not flinch in the face of a tumultuous and overreaching state for God has already guaranteed blessing for our descendants, “They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord, and their descendants with them” (Isaiah 65:23).
The liberal progressive agenda aims to remove our generations from the hand of the Lord. But their agenda is worthy of mockery for God has said, “For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain” (Isaiah 66:22).
Our modern culture would unsteady our children, teaching them that even their sexuality is wobbly. But God has promised that the children of those who serve Him will be established before Him, “The children of your servants shall dwell secure; their offspring shall be established before you” (Psalm 102:28).
The godless state, baked in selfishness and individualism, would severe your children from the salvation you enjoy. But no matter how hard they try, they cannot undue God’s familial promise, “And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children” (Acts 2:38-39).
Our Father
So Christian parents, fret not. And say with Joshua, “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:14). And if this simple and glorious truth causes the idols of individualism to fall, then it will have accomplished its purpose. For our children are no bastards. They have father and mother. And what is more, they have the Father. They have been baptized in His name. They eat and drink at His table. They sing, “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.” And they have a right to sing that song. And no matter how our secular age would attempt to cut the cord of the family, from infancy our children learn to pray with warrant, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9).