Hypocrisy

     I started writing this July 1, but it got pushed to the wayside, and other posts became more urgent.  It also gave me the opportunity to add more to it.

     

    Well, for another year, June is behind us. June is just a month.  Life lived.  Flag day, the summer solstice, birthdays, weddings (traditionally June has been the most common month for weddings--though my husband and I did the opposite and married in December!).  In the last few years, though, June has taken on a new meaning to some as pride month.  This is a month to celebrate the lifestyle of those who claim to belong to the LGBT (etc.) community.  For this reason, I am so glad this month is behind us for another year! 

     Though it is framed as a compassionate idea for marginalized people, it is actually anything but.  Chloe Cole, a young woman who at one time believed she was really a boy and transitioned and then detransitioned, now works to expose this ideology as a cult and, as she puts it, "one of the biggest medical scandals in the history of the United States of America."  I encourage you to look up her story, and her current advocacy.  

     If something is truly compassionate and loving, then everyone should be shown compassion and love, not just the target group.  This is not the case with pride month (which I refuse to capitalize, by the way).  It is completely hypocritical, as this picture below illustrates:

     This sign was in front of a business during June.  It says, Happy Pride, Y'all.  John 8:7, He without sin cast a stone.  There are so many problems with this, not the least of which is the logic.  Whether or not their intent was to do this, they have acknowledged that homosexual lifestyles (and other deviant lifestyles recognized in the LGBT etc community) are sinful.  But they take a laid-back view of it, and say, in essence, "Hey we're all sinners."  Which is true.  The fact that we are all sinners is a reason not to cast stones (and why we all need Jesus!), but certainly no reason to celebrate anyone's sin!  I speculate here, but the owner of this business establishment might realize that the population around are God-fearing folks, and decided that a quote from the Bible might win them over.  But the error in thinking goes even deeper here.   The maker of this sign didn't take into account that the Bible actually teaches that homosexuality is a sin (Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:16-28--to name just a few verses).  To use the Bible to defend something that it condemns in other places is fallacious.  If the Bible both condemns and excuses this lifestyle, then the Bible shouldn't be used as an authority at all (of course I know it doesn't excuse it, and the Bible is my authority, but I'm illustrating where their logic ultimately leads).  Those who read their Bibles know what it teaches about homosexuality, so this sign likely didn't win anyone over.  If anything, it annoyed Bible-believers to see God's word misused, and possibly annoyed LGBT folks to see it called a sin.   In John 8:7, the verse they're using as an authority here, Jesus did not allow anyone to cast a stone at the woman caught in adultery, but neither did He celebrate her sin.  He didn't even excuse it.  He forgave her, and then told her to go, and sin no more. (John 8:11).  To use these words to celebrate pride month is a gross misrepresentation.  

     Three summers ago, I was so sick of the LGBT (etc) agenda being forced on everyone, so I did a little barb against it.  My husband and I took a group of our teenage summer missionaries to Chick-Fil-A (a business known for conservative values, and one a lot of the pride folks were boycotting at the time), and got a picture of all of us.  I put it on FB, and put the hashtag #humilitymonth.  It was just my own statement.

I am pictured with my husband, right, with some friends and summer missionaries in 2021, after we had finished teaching at our 5-day club that afternoon. 

     How did Facebook handle my post?  I went to FB jail!  I was cancelled!  I received a message, telling me that I wasn't being "safe" for other people.  And yet their LGBT propaganda isn't considered unsafe?  The idea that someone just might dare to disagree with them isn't acceptable?  Do they have any idea how hypocritical they are?  I was eventually let out of FB jail, but I have never again been allowed to boost my author posts, and this has hurt my writing business.  It's a small thing.  God knows.  I don't let it get to me.  But the LGBT agenda, and all who accommodate it, are hypocrites, accusing everyone else of the very things they are doing.

     Around that same time, my favorite baseball team, the Dodgers, posed in support of pride month.  I asked the honest question: "What does baseball have to do with sex or who a person is sexually attracted to?"  I got hundreds of furious responses, telling me I was ignorant and I needed to go educate myself (but I bet if I read 100 books about baseball, none of them would mention homosexuality, and if I read 100 books about homosexuality, none of them would mention baseball, so my question would still go unanswered).  One person told me (quite angrily) that pride month has nothing to do with sex!  Look who's ignorant now!  

     Why does this agenda need to be bullied onto people?  Why are those who disagree villainized?  Why are dissenters (like Chole Cole) silenced and cancelled?  I waited a while to post this (as I said, I had started writing it in early July), and now, I can point out that the Olympics opened with a disgusting display of drag queens making a mockery of the Last Supper.  Why?  Why don't we see people of other lives enacting it?  They didn't ask a bunch of law enforcement officers to reenact the Last Supper.  They didn't ask school children to reenact it.  They didn't get a group of regular but modernly-dressed people to do it (reenacting period pieces in modern clothing is an art form that many find interesting).  But they didn't do any of this.  They had to get people caught up in blatant sin, and are proud of it.  We're all sinners, and our sins are equal before God, but we don't all flaunt our sin and demand the rest of the world celebrate it.  We don't all intentionally and publicly make a mockery of Jesus with it at a world event.  

     We live in a world that has never known God since Genesis chapter 3, and will not know Him until He comes back and settles evil for all time.  Satan will get people to swallow whatever he can.  Many years ago, people weren't necessarily better--they were equally sinful and depraved, but the enemy has been working to get people to accept different things.  He is working toward a progression (or more accurately, a digression).  Where things are now--that's not an end goal.  That's a step in the progression.  We as Christians need to stand up for truth and not be taken in.  I have shared in other posts how we should completely love all people, and treat them with the love of God.  This means accepting them as created by God, fallen into sin, and redeemable through faith in Jesus.  It does not mean we tell them their sin is acceptable.  It doesn't mean we accept things God has condemned.  Love without truth isn't love at all, and if we act all loving toward people caught in sin, and refuse to tell them the truth, we don't really love them.  We are wishing them well on the road to hell.  We can't do that!  We can be kind and polite, and we don't need to make every conversation with such people into a major confrontation, but we can't afford to just "live and let live" anymore.  They aren't doing that for us.  They don't accept our stand or faith.  They are doing exactly what they accuse us of doing, cramming their beliefs down our throats and having temper-tantrums at anyone who disagrees with their fragile ego.  We need to call it what we see it.  They are hypocritical.  

     People often see hypocrites as very conventional people, like the Pharisees seemed to be in Jesus' day--people who wanted to do right so baldy that they added to God's laws.  Their intentions may have started off as being good, but it led to self-righteousness, and caused them to fail to recognize Jesus as the Messiah.  This is a form of hypocrisy, certainly, but it is not the only form.  Many people apply this Pharisee analogy to mean that anyone who is conservative or has more traditional tastes are hypocrites, but that is not true.  A hypocrite is anyone who fails to practice what they preach.  The "tolerant" left only tolerates their protected classes.  They don't tolerate the views of others.  Those pushing this LGBT agenda are not sweet people trying to be kind and accepting.  If that were their goal, they would be wrong and misguided, but at least we could understand where they were coming from.  They would be kind to everyone.  But it is far from what they want it to look like.  The claim to want equality, but they really want their agenda to be more equal than those that oppose them.  Many well-meaning Christian people unfortunately play into their plans, like Jacob Whitehead, who shared the following about the opening of the Olympics (please read after this for my response):

   I’m a pastor, and I have something to say.

Christians that get online and spew hate toward nonbelievers anger me much more than nonbelievers spewing hate toward my religion.

I have no idea what the table at the Olympics was supposed to represent, as the official statement contradicts the larger opinion. But what I can say is that every single person at that table would have been invited to Jesus’ table. Jesus not only spent His time on earth with sinners, He invited them to the very table everyone assumes the Olympic table represents.

Matthew was a tax collector.

Peter was about to deny Him.

Thomas was about to doubt His resurrection.

Judas was about to betray Him.

Jesus ate with them anyway.

Jesus was with “sinners” all of the time. In fact, it’s one of the reasons the church people hated Him and wanted Him dead.

Please allow this to serve as a reminder that people who are not Christians are not our responsibility to regulate. Jesus gave us an example to follow of welcoming everyone and pointing them toward the love of Jesus. Remember that God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance, not the shouting of His angry “followers.”

This doesn’t mean I condone any religion (especially my own) being mocked. In fact, it is wrong. But my heart doesn’t hurt for what they are doing to Jesus. My heart hurts for people that are likely not in a loving relationship with their Creator. Jesus doesn’t need me to shout about sinners sinning. He wants me to shout about the hope and the love they are missing out on.

Before you share an angry post, or shout at people that Jesus died for, think for a while, and ask yourself if He would do the same. To be honest, you already know the answer. He wouldn’t. He didn’t. He died for them just as much as He died for you. Angrily shouting at people that don’t know Jesus is in direct contradiction to the example He gave us on the cross.

Westboro Baptist sandwich signs should anger you much more than this. Jesus flipped tables on people in the temple, not people outside of it.

Remember that.

This pastor is very misguided in this post. A lot of people rightly responded against his comments, and he turned off the comments from the post. That is immature. It would be better to just remove it. If you can't take it, don't dish it out. Immaturity aside, He is implying that the disgusting display and mockery wasn't a problem, but those who disagree with it are actually the problem. He is throwing his fellow Christians under the bus, and seems to completely misunderstand the situation. I think he is naive (and that's giving him the benefit of the doubt--maybe he's cruel and caustic). I don't know any Christian who hates those in the LGBT community, but we are called to stand for righteousness, and call people to the truth. Disagreeing with people shouldn't be equated with hate. Those who participated in the drag queen version of the Last Supper are not simply misguided and needing someone to just set them right. They need to be called out, and brought by the Holy Spirit to repentance. It's true that Jesus ate with those caught up in sin, but there is no instance where He saw someone openly mocking Him and approved of it. He delivered them first, then called them to follow Him. He called them to a new life in Him. That is what we are to do.

Don't buy into the hypocrisy. Stay in God's word, and keep the truth in mind always. Then, when foolishness rears it's ugly head, we can respond rightly. I'll close with Second Timothy 2:15, Study to show thyself approval unto God, a workman that needed not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.