Surely you have noticed given the rainbow laden mayonaise in your local grocery store that PRIDE month is upon us. We have decided to spice things up here a bit in New Sodom in order to hasten the judgment. So churches, schools, governemnts, car lots, and the like are decked to the gills in God’s covenant sign to symbolize our debauchery. 

This parade of ungodliness is certainly most unwelcome. But at the same time, the June festivities are a gift from God. He is giving us an opportunity to see what is really going on around here. And we desperately need to get a grip on the situation.

You can find people making the point that the LGBT community is over-represented in the public square and politics. The reasoning goes that there are only a small amount of people who really want to live an LGBT lifestyle. But, like the Mormons in Idaho politics, they punch way above their weight in the civil sphere. I take no issue with someone making this point. But I want to make another one, which runs in a different direction. And that point is: we’re all gay now.

While there may still only be a minority who actually want to sleep with someone of their same sex, or pretend to be the opposite sex, Americans far and wide hold to gay presuppositions, a gay worldview, and live a gay life. This point was made very well by Carl Truman in his recent book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. I’m paraphrasing here, but Truman essentially says that his grandfather would have coughed up a hearty horse laugh if a man told him that he was a woman trapped in a man’s body. But, the same assertion does not illicit the same response today. The absence of the belly laugh may be due in part to the courage that the previous generation had which has been replaced today with the fear of man. But cowardice does not give a full account for the different responses.

We do not laugh today, says Truman, because we all hold to the same basic premise about the nature of man. Modern man assumes that individual expression is a hallmark of what it means to be human. Our true self is our inner self. And we have a right and duty to express our individualism. And we have a right and duty for our expressive individualistic self to be recognized by others. It is hard to laugh at the flamming idolatry of another when you are simply offering a different pinch of incense at the same altar. It is hard to chuckle at the man running down transgender lane, when you are only twenty paces behind him. You can’t howl at the idea of a man being a woman when you’re teaching your son that he can be whatever he wants to be when he grows up.

All of the festivities of this month, the trumpets sounding, and the rainbow banners are signaling to you that America is head over heels in idolatry. And the god of that altar is the self. In slightly broader terms, the god of that altar is the creature. Paul has told us exactly what to expect when we turn away from the Creator to worship the creature—

“Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet” (Romans 1:24-27).

LGBT is the fruit of creature worship. And while the majority of Americans have not manifested this particular fruit yet, they have well worn paths up to this pagan altar.

We are steeped in this paganism. We swim in a pagan culture. Truman points out how this expressive individualism has modified all sorts of things, even dance. Back in more corporate-minded days, we used to dance with each other (one thinks of a folk dance or the grand march). But now we dance at each other, in an atomized jiration at a night club. We used to eat together, but now we scarf something down in the car alone. Institutions used to be the entities that formed and shaped us. But now institutions are seen as platforms upon which we express ourselves. 

Religious institutions are not excluded. One thinks of sacraments that in the older confessions are spoken of as signs from God to us, which we have turned into individual expressions of inner (and modern) faith. In this system, church government becomes nothing more than government by the people and for the people, with pastors turning into politicians who serve their constituents. The church itself is diminished and essentially unrealized. There can be no corporate people of God on earth, no church militant, because the only real thing going on down here is individuals journeying to heaven in a personal relationship with God. Individuals journeying to heaven in a personal relationship with God is a glorious thing. Jesus Christ came to save sinners and in that I will always rejoice. And he also came to save the world. And we need a full-fledged recover of what that means.

The family used to be seen as an essential unit, a real thing that was not a social construct or a product of the will of the parties involved. It was something God formed which then formed us. But now the family is little more than a natural or biological relationship, held together by the juggling act of parents, searching for ways to manipulate children to keep them close by. Headship is gone even in conservative circles because the idea of the family as a body is gone. Without a real body with real members, how can there be a real head?

And yes, all of this is intimately related to Big John washing his hands next to your teenage daughter in the Target ladies bathroom.

This is the point, and it is for the conservatives and Christians throughout our land: When you look at the Burger King LGBT Whopper this month being paraded around with two bottom buns (no sesame seeds), don’t pretend like that is a problem disassociated from your own life and worldview. If you’re still asking, “Where did this come from? How in the world? Who could do this?” then you are way behind and likely swimming in the very ethos to which you’re objecting. Americans from sea to shining sea decided to leave it to their kids to grow up and determine what they are long before the LGBT community demanded that they do so. Paganism begets LGBT and America has been toying with paganism for more than a few decades. 

The play being run on us is no joke. The Gay Liberation Manifesto of 1971 said, “Equality is never going to be enough. What is needed is a total social revolution, a complete reordering of civilization. Including society’s most basic institution, the patriarchal society.” 

And then there is Kate Millet’s infamous call and response meetings from the second wave of feminism: “Why are we here today?” “To make revolution,” “What kind of revolution?” “The Cultural Revolution,” “And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” “By destroying the American family!” “How do we destroy the family?” “By destroying the American Patriarch,” “And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” “By taking away his power!” “How do we do that?” “By destroying monogamy!” “How can we destroy monogamy?” “By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution, and homosexuality!”

The bitter pill to swallow is that we gave up on the patriarchal society long before the rise of LGBT PRIDE month. The cultural revolution is now the conservative standard operating procedure. The paganism now feels normal, but we still think the transgender baby dolls are a bit much. Let’s just stick with gender-neutral for now, keep it mainstream you know.

Up, Get You Out

Many evangelicals, seeing and lamenting the sexual perversion being celebrated around every cornder, still pull their best “Lot’s sons in law” when they hear exhortations like the ones I’ve given above, “And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law” (Genesis 19:14).

Surely God will only judge those who attend the gay pride parade, says the run-of-the-mill evangelical. Surely, the spirit of Sodom is not in me. But I repeat, “Up, get you out of this place.” The rainbow flag you cannot avoid this month is a sign to you of an aroma that you breath in every day of the year. And you must flee up to the mountains. And half measures won’t do. You opt your child out of the sex education class at your local government high-school. “The sex curricullum is gay,” you say. Yes, but you have left your child in the Science class . . . and it is gay too. 

I’m not recommending that you flee to a physical monestary. You do need a Christian community that understands the times. But I’m not an advocate for hiding in the catacombs at this hour. I am, however, saying that the Christian Church in America needs a theological, ideological, and cultural reconstruction. And the demolition job has to cover the whole property, and run all the way down to the foundations. This recon will need entirely different contractors than the ones who built our current evangelical ghetto, but that is a story for a different day.

For now, “Up, get you out of this place.” And remember Lot’s wife.