In our last blog in this Integrity Series I wrote about integrity in your WHOLE life and suggested it’s not enough to have integrity at work. You need it at home, too.
-If you do an awesome job at work and come home and neglect your wife, you’ve missed the boat (to mix metaphors) and don’t have integrity.
-If you love on your kids and ignore your husband, something is amiss.
-If you convey to your wife you are an honest bloke and you call your boss and lie and say you are sick so you can take the day off to go fishing, but really you are doing perfectly fine, your wife will wonder if you lie to her sometimes because you are willing to lie to your boss and even brag about it and smile and mock your boss behind his back and she won’t know when you are lying and when you are telling the truth and she’ll doubt you and question you and then you can be mad at her for being upset and not trusting you, when you are the one that planted the seeds of doubt in the first place.
It just takes one lie to set this series of events into place. If you’d never lied in the first place you wouldn’t be having these arguments, these accusations, this feeling of insecurity and fear and worry, for months, even years, on end.
Integrity Is Not Just Not Lying:
But integrity is not just not lying. It’s about your whole life (see the previous blogs in this series). However, it’s been redefined to only include lying in our modern world. We live in a society that is changing morality and common sense and integrity and then expecting all of us to accept the new mores and if you don’t you very well might not get your promotion or even accepted into the university in the first place or your name will be scorned as a perverse phrase so you can be mocked for questioning the “loving” practice. You might not even be welcome at Starbucks or you can’t open a new store in Chicago, all in the name of integrity for those who think certain perversions aren’t perverse and if you don’t agree with the totalitarian view we will mock you and humiliate you and take your rights away and accuse you of not having integrity. And while we’re taking your rights away we’ll boast that you are the one that’s intolerant! And no one will protest, because everyone fears us.
The Same-Sex Apologetic Redefines Integrity:
I’m writing about how men-who-want-to-and-or-do-perverse-things-with-men (MWWTAODPTWM) have redefined good and evil to the point where evil is good and a blessing and good is viewed as bullying. If I wrote that MWWTAODPTWM is perverse and is risky behavior and can lead to death of the individual, death of the person who’s on the other end (to say it gently) and death to a society and that Satan would be perfectly fine if we were all MWWTAODPTWM because then the human race as we know it would cease to exist and he would have won, if I wrote that I’d be subjecting myself to ridicule, public humiliation and charges of insensitivity, meanness, unprofessionalism and, someday, no doubt, I could lose my license and professional liability insurance or my landlord may kick me out.
This is the direction we are heading and I won’t even be surprised when the day comes. Evil and good do not mix. You don’t put sand in the gasoline. You don’t want cancer in your body. You don’t want a wound to get infected. We can’t have it both ways.
Either the thief has rights or the victim has rights. Which is it? We still mostly agree stealing is wrong, right? The murderer and murder victim both can’t have rights. We don’t want terrorists having the right to blow up marathons. We will take the terrorists right to blow up marathons or shopping malls or football games or farmers’ markets away. Sorry. No. You can’t blow up the baby nursery in the hospital, even if you really want to be famous and it’s part of your identity and how you see yourself, just this blowing-up-marathons kind of guy.
Open Marriage and BDSM Redefines Integrity:
We can’t bless immorality and morality at the same time. Which is it? I’m going to honor my marriage and go out and sleep with whomever because my wife and I agree we have an open marriage? This stuff is just nuts. Open means open. Marriage means there’s a boundary between the two of us for the rest of our lives. Which is it? A boundary or not a boundary? You can’t have it both ways.
Tying you up is totally fine. Having a room with chains and whips and handcuffs and you being submissive and me bringing you just to the point of asphyxiation and then backing off is exciting. Whoopee! Wow, was that hot or what? We need excitement in our marriage. Forget the security piece. Isn’t this fun?!
Either I protect you or I defraud and use you. There’s not this middle ground where we skirt to the edge and I pretend to hurt you, but not really, and then you trust me that I really not going to hurt you.
Anything Goes Means There’s Nothing Of Value:
As someone else has said, in our society we can’t tell the difference between an egg and chicken crap. When he said it he probably didn’t use the word crap. We think just because they both come out of the back end of a chicken they are the same thing.
Or, as I read somewhere President Lincoln said, a donkey isn’t a horse just because it has 4 legs.
We’ve been fed a lot of chicken crap, folks. And if you eat that stuff very long you will die. Literally. You and everyone else.
The definition of Integrity has been changed to the point where it doesn’t mean anything.
If You Have No Choice You Lose Your Humanity:
The new view is: If I have urges to unite perversely with someone of the same sex, rather than fight those desires, I need to embrace those temptations, normalize those temptations, not even call them temptations, redefine them as normal and blame God for it by saying He made me this way. I’m not even human anymore. I don’t have a choice. I just do what my animal instincts tell me. Then I need to act upon these thoughts and tell my family and friends and employer and the world that I have and love these propensities and I not only have these propensities, but I act upon them or let others humiliate me by subjecting myself to others abusing me willingly or I abuse others with their consent, for as long as we all consent it’s totally fine, and then get mad if others are upset about it in any way, because if they are upset that means that they are mean and bigoted and not loving, even though this behavior can ruin my life, ruin my loved ones and literally end in my early death and the downfall of our society as we know it.
Integrity has been redefined to mean I need to be true to my inner perversity and brag to the world that I am not going to listen to my conscience or God’s Word or common sense and I’m going to rejoice in whatever debauchery I can imagine and that is what I am going to do and I need to be honest and tell you all about it and if you convey any emotion other than hearty approval I can sue you for discrimination. My rights supersede yours.
And this lie is being accepted not just by our handsome and beautiful Hollywood stars and starlets and, now, even by our robust sports idols, but by politicians and judges and writers and reporters and educators and school administrators and, quickly and sadly, by our churches and theologians and ministers and by the public at large.
Once our President boast he believed MWWTAODPTWM was fine and should be blessed by our Federal Government, Hillary couldn’t get on the bandwagon fast enough and then the lesser politicians lined up like little robots all nodding their heads to keep the beat.
We’ve Dismissed A Long-Held View To Our Peril:
MWWTAODPTWM used to be seen as the ultimate form of sexual perversion. The judgment on it goes back thousands of years. It’s listed right there in the Bible in Leviticus 18 along with child sacrifice, incest, adultery and bestiality. You say, well, we no longer listen to Leviticus because it has all the other rules in there about not eating pork and we eat pork today, right? Careful. Read the text. At the beginning of the chapter it says God was going to punish the people of Canaan because they did these things (bestiality, incest, child abuse, child sacrifice, homosexuality and adultery) and you, as My people (the Israelites), should not do these things. And then He lists the things they were prohibited from doing (bestiality, incest, child abuse, child sacrifice, homosexuality and adultery) and at the end of the list once again He says don’t do these things that the people of Canaan have done. Because the people of Canaan did these things God was bringing judgment to them. The people of Canaan should have known better. Their consciences should have told them these things were wrong. These folk didn’t have the Levitical law. God witnessed to their consciences that it was wrong for hundred’s of years prior and they totally ignored it.
As another example, Sodom was punished 500 years before God gave Moses the Ten Commandments or the Holiness Code in Leviticus 18-19. No one that we know went to Sodom and preached to them that what they were doing and desiring was wrong. God had witnessed to their consciences it was wrong. Today MWWTAODPTWM advocates say this passage isn’t talking about “Loving MWWTAODPTWM relationships” but about gang rape. Gang rape? They never gang raped anyone. The text says the Sodomites wanted to “know” these two visitors. Lot calls their desire “wickedness”. God strikes the men with blindness and they still “groped for the door”! Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for having MWWTAODPTWM DESIRE!
So, from a biblical perspective there’s no such thing as “loving MWWTAODPTWM relationships.” Even to say so would be a mockery of the entire created order where God created male and female and he declared it was very good.
To say otherwise is putting your feelings before how God created you. The biblical word for this is idolatry. We are commanded over and over again in both the New and Old Testaments to avoid idolatry: it hurts us; it insults God.
Feelings Kill The Conscience:
In our day, any kind of of desire is to be encouraged and is totally fine as long as everyone agrees and as long as you are honest about it. So when a famous basketball player announces he does not try to control his sexual urges of whatever kind at all and lets them run rampant to the point where he’s actively seeking sexual encounters with men and he shouts from the mountaintops that he not only desires this but this is in fact his personal identity and his preferred lifestyle, he is praised by everyone except for a few Christians who dare to suggest these kind of temptations should be resisted and not embraced, these Christian types who say this are mocked and derided and denounced as oppressive.
The argument that good oppresses evil is as old as the Serpent in the Garden calling God’s command not to eat of the tree of Good and Evil a devious plot to take Eve’s wisdom and jollies away. This is nothing new. Either good oppresses evil or evil oppresses good. You can’t have it both ways.
To summarize my point: even if you’ve never read the Bible or heard of the Bible, God witnesses in your heart that these behaviors (bestiality, incest, child sexual abuse, adultery and MWWTAODPTWM) are wrong, hurtful, and destructive. You have to break your conscience to do them.
You may not be aware that the Bible only condemns child sexual abuse and incest in these chapters in Leviticus, so don’t be so quick to say Leviticus doesn’t apply to us anymore. Thankfully, we, as a society, still believe these things are wrong.* However, MWWTAODPTWM is not only condemned in this passage in Leviticus, but in other places in both the Old and New Testaments. Yet somehow we’ve convinced ourselves MWWTAODPTWM is fine even though the Bible says the practice is an “abomination”, “wicked”, an “outcry”, “poison”, “cruel venom”, “corrupt”, and “ungodly”. Other phrases and statements in the Bible about the practice include: “lawless deeds”, “indulge in the lust of defiling passion”, “insatiable for sin”, “waterless springs”, “pursued unnatural desire” “great sinners against the LORD”, “do not act so wickedly”, “wore themselves out”, “they proclaim their sin and do not hide it. Woe to them for they brought evil on themselves”, “sexual conduct of the wicked”, and “I have seen a horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his evil”, to name just a few.**
But now integrity means, if you have these urges for MWWTAODPTWM, having integrity is being forthright and honest about the fact that you are acting upon them and living in them and hanging out with others who do them and admitting to everyone in public that, yes, you not only have these desires, but you do them and you glory in them and embrace them as your identity, and you rejoice in them and you flaunt them and you encourage others to do them and think about them and forget your conscience.
If you ignore your conscience long enough you can justify anything.
Now integrity means I’m authentic about all these secretly perverse desires I have and I make no effort whatsoever to control them or redirect them or to stop them and I glory in them and do them willingly and openly and because I admit this, I am being genuine and upfront and, therefore, have integrity. In fact, these thoughts are not perverse. They are normal. God made me this way. I’m just admitting it. I’m being open and real and sincere.
And as long as I’m open and real and sincere and authentic and genuine and upfront I can fantasize anything my heart desires, thank you very much. Who needs a conscience? It only spoils a party.
In other words, integrity means nothing.
And if it means nothing to you and your behavior becomes blessed by the state, following your conscience will no longer be an accepted way to live and if you can imagine the worst possible perverse thoughts and act upon them then so can I. No one needs to listen to their conscience. No one needs to honor boundaries. There is no morality except for saying there is a morality. Evil will have triumphed and the warning of David, written 3000 years ago will be the epitaph of our society:
“The wicked freely strut about when what is vile is honored among men.” Psalm 12:8
We can’t have it both ways: Are the wicked going to freely strut about or are those who are good?
If feelings are the only “law” of the land, then we shouldn’t be surprised when a young man “feels” like blowing up a marathon or a baby ward because feelings, if you aren’t self aware, can be pretty perverse and self- and other-defeating. If the law of the land is doing whatever you feel, then we’re pretty messed up.
I didn’t make this up. Check out this Proverb, 3000 years old:
Proverbs 28:26 He who trusts in his own heart is a fool.
Why? Because ALL OF OUR HEARTS ARE RIPE WITH EVIL. That’s why Jesus commanded us to pray, “Deliver us from evil.” Most of the evil we need delivering from is in our own hearts!
The Transgender Apologetic Redefines Integrity:
You think I’m speaking only hypothetically? You think I’m over-exaggerating? Are we going to let feelings or simple biology help us in determining public propriety? Who has rights?
We’ve let “rights” play with our brains and because “rights” are the measure of all things in our current culture, and because we refuse to believe that God created anything, let alone male and female, we have no idea how to handle “rights” when one individual’s rights overshadow an entire school!
The so-called “transgendered girl” who’s “assigned” (Ha! Assigned by whom? God, anyone?) “she’s” a boy at birth but now feels “she’s” a “woman” (and what kind of woman might he be, I wonder since every cell in his body testifies to reality that he’s a boy?) and “she” (as he defines himself, not as God has defined him) has the right to go to the girls’ bathroom and the girls, who may be a tad uncomfortable with that are “taught” (the formal word in the Guidance for Massachusetts Public Schools Creating a Safe and Supportive School Environment Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity” July 1, 2012, is “pedagogical”) to ignore their better judgment and agree with God, that yes, this “girl” is really a boy, do NOT have rights. Their rights are taken away. To quote:
Some students may feel uncomfortable with a transgender student using the same sex segregated restroom, locker room or changing facility. This discomfort is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student. School administrators and counseling staff should work with students to address the discomfort and to foster understanding of gender identity, to create a school culture that respects and values all students (bold added).
BUT: the values of the students who don’t believe the way the school administrators and counseling staff believe will not be respected. The problem with this policy is it only “respects and values” the student who thinks he’s something he’s not and the other children have to be brainwashed against their better judgment that their feelings of discomfort in being in the bathroom with a guy are inappropriate and discriminatory and public decency no longer exists. What’s to stop a female who thinks she’s a male from swimming topless at the beach? I’ve already heard a first hand account of this happening at a family reunion of the extended family of a relative of mine! Public decency is gone. If you believe in public decency you are discriminatory.
There’s nothing good anymore. We’ve got feces in with the eggs and you have to eat it all and if you don’t you are going the principal’s office where he will scold you and brainwash you to ignore your conscience, all with the blessing of the judges and legislatures and the other false prophets and priests of our day. You will be commanded to lie and call John Jane and while you are lying you will smile and not convey any discomfort whatsoever. We want you to mock God’s creation and we are going to train you to submit to this kind of re-education so you can completely ignore your inner conscience and cease to be able to discern the difference between right and wrong. And you will be happy about it and not complain! Or we will kick you out of school!
So much for “rights.”
The Law Educates. These Laws Promote and Normalize Perversion:
But more than the public scandal of all this is that the nature of law is to educate the public. For example, the 70 MPH speed limit educates the public to keep their speed moderated and fight the temptation to drive like a banshee. These new public proclamations and standards and laws and policies and procedures are teaching children and the public at large to ignore feelings of propriety and conscience and, I believe, the Holy Spirit, who convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment.
You ignore your conscience to your own peril.
We’re teaching everyone to ignore their consciences as a matter of public policy.
We’re Supposed To Fight The Evil In Our Hearts, NOT Embrace IT!
I’ll go on record here that if you have the propensity to think of men’s butts and you are a man and you want me to sanction it as normal I’ll say I’ll help you fight the temptation to fantasize about that or act on those temptations, but I won’t help you embrace it.
Or, like the guy who told me, “What’s the difference? Women wear jeans. Why can’t I wear a bra?” And I said, the difference is a woman who wears jeans isn’t thinking “OOOOH, I’m a man” when she’s doing whatever. She’s thinking about whatever it is she’s doing. She’s living her life. But when you wear a bra you are thinking “OOOOOH, I’m a woman and no one’s the wiser” instead of thinking about whatever it is you are supposed to be doing. So it makes me wonder why you are willing to frit your life away with your mind in the gutter instead of living your life?”
And I won’t rejoice when you publicly declare yourself “MWWTAODPTWM.” On the contrary, like the Psalmist wrote “streams of water run down mine eyes, because they do not observe your law” (Psalm 119:134), because I sorrow you would find your identity in a behavior that will only hurt you and your loved one’s around you and you’ve given up any battle against temptation that wages war against your soul. I sorrow because I know what happens to my heart and my life and my loved ones when I embrace evil in my heart instead of fighting it…and folks, it ain’t pretty. It’s a good thing Jesus died on the cross for me because when it comes to lust I’d be lustaholic for sure if I hadn’t been rescued from that cesspool. It’s definitely my own sin of choice.
And now I help people escape that cesspool for a living. And people come to see me because they are tired of swimming in the sewer. It stinks. The warning of Proverbs 22:8 is still relevant today:
He who sows iniquity shall reap calamity.
I guess you’d have to believe your urges are actually iniquity if you want to fight them, eh?
And no, if your name is John, I won’t call you Jane, even if you think you are, because God created you a male and I believe I would be disobeying God to call you a woman when God clearly made you a male and said it was very good. And I think you are very good the way God made you and it saddens me you’d waste your life going against God’s created order just to get a buzz and you’ve set yourself up in your own little private world of idolatry that escapes the world of reality around you and, no, I won’t fall for your little guilt trip. And you can lock me up in jail for discrimination if you want. That’d be fine. At least I’d could take my integrity with me.
Then we’d have integrity in jail instead of in the schools.
_____
*Sadly this is rapidly changing. There are those who are advocating for “intergenerational love”, the new name for child abuse and incest. Not coincidentally, the same argument that is used to justify MWWTAODPTWM (this is who I am, this is how I feel) is used to justify child sexual abuse (and for abortion, sadomasochism, swinging, pornography, cohabitation and polygamy).
**Leviticus 18-19, Genesis 13:13, 18:20, 19:7, 11; Deut 32:32-33; Isaiah 3:9; Jeremiah 23:14; Ezekiel 16: 7; 2 Peter 2. All these passages refer to the judgment of Sodom and anyone else throughout history who acts and thinks and feels in kind.
