Elitist ‘gender-isn’t-real’ culture has descended into sophisticated imbecility
- Dr. Harry Reeder: The sexual revolution an ‘all-out assault’ on our culture
- British government resignations signal problems
- What Alan Dershowitz’ shunning says about snowflake culture and intolerance for debate
- Why the Supreme Court’s labor union decision is a win for freedom and education
- Parents denied access to public school sex education materials is shocking government overreach
- Leadership crucial in the church, life
- Reflecting on Independence Day and its meaning
- Justice Kennedy’s retirement and what it could mean for the direction of the country
- How the church and strong families can help adolescents deal with depression
- Should sex offenders be able to adopt?
- What the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly prayer gets wrong
- Is it just? Farm Bill requires able-bodied on food stamps to work part-time or get job-training
- Is Alabama-founded PCA church encouraging gay people to identify by sin?
- Alabama pastor to the suicidal: ‘Banish the thought of destruction. It’s not the answer’, ‘Many’ of us want to help
- How to think about ‘human rights council’ and elitist concept of abortion as ‘human right’
- Alabama pastor’s analysis of immigrant parent-child border separation controversy
- James Comey echo of J. Edgar Hoover — amassing power, declaring himself moral authority in FBI
- Historic North Korea Summit explainer and backstory
- News Fatigue? How to think about abundance of 24-hr ‘news’
- Where do you turn when your church strays from your faith?
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- Remembering RFK
- It’s inexcusable Clinton didn’t personally apologize to Lewinsky
- Planned Parenthood ignores crime in singular pursuit of death culture
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- How to think about ‘aging pastors’ and ‘scarcity’ of millennials in ministry
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- Oh boy … Americans don’t think they sin very often
- How ‘church growth at all costs’ mentality weakens worship
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- How to think about Memorial Day
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- Transgender chaos playing out as predicted
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- College class gets it terribly wrong. Christians aren’t privileged — Christianity produces privileges for everyone
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- How parents can combat Planned Parenthood’s shocking deviant sex education
- Sorry and all, but yes there is a Heaven and Hell
- When elected officials campaign on promises they don’t keep
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- We must not sacrifice consistent morality for political pragmatism
- Why do Christians call Christ’s death ‘Good Friday’?
- Single parenthood may be a heroic struggle, but it’s not ideal and shouldn’t be promoted
- Freedoms of speech, religion go hand in hand and are being threatened — even in Christian college classes
- States are trying to criminalize the free speech of those seeking to protect unborn life
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- Care about free speech? Keep your eyes on Supreme Court dealing with California abortion law
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- Cultural Marxists are using schools, courts to target Christianity
- No, Joy Behar, it’s not a ‘mental illness’ when the Lord speaks to us through his Word
- Despite what Washington Post writer says, Down Syndrome children are only undesirable to selfish, arrogant people
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- How to debate with decorum … and why profane, vulgar arguments reveal weak arguments & minds
- WAKE UP: Pornography is not victimless — it destroys lives and kills people
- Persecution, violence against Christians significantly increased world-wide in 2017
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- Gov’t attempted to silence this Christian who’s bringing Martin Luther King’s fight to modern times
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- What does academic intolerance of real debate mean for free speech?
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- Blaring Bannon coverage begs question: What’s happened to journalism?
- Call to Christians: Engage in politics & evangelism out of love for neighbor
- New York City votes to fine Biblical counselors for gender dysphoria therapy
- 10 campaign promises Donald Trump kept — or attempted to keep — in his first year
- Is it pointless to make New Year’s resolutions?
- The top 11 news, faith and culture headlines of 2017
- American attitudes about children contribute to our shrinking birth rate
- Here’s what Trump got right (and wrong) in his national security speech
- Tax reform explained: How it helps our culture, our families, our economics
- Advent and Christmas, ever wondered what’s the difference?
- Reformed Christians have lost one of their great theologians, pastors
- The 2 ungodly reactions to politics, current events that Christians must avoid
- Want our trust? The 7 things an elected official MUST do to gain it
- Christian voters faced 4 options in Senate race … only 1 is inexcusable, says Evangelical pastor
- Where the death culture leads: Lawsuits over disabled children who ‘should’ have been aborted
- What’s at stake in the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court decision
- How to put Trump’s U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem in historical and biblical perspective
- Pastor Harry Reeder: There is hope and a way forward for the Matt Lauers in our lives
- Pastor Harry Reeder: If Supreme Court gets Colorado cake baker, same-sex marriage case wrong, it will be culture tipping point
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Liberal ‘Christianity’ is antithetical to Christianity
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Abortion industry ‘doulas’ try to normalize killing of unborn, but we know abortion is not normal
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Trump’s judicial nominee list shows his commitment to originalists and constitutionalists
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Some evangelicals disagree, but here’s why it’s good to emphasize church celebrations during Christmas
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Our military is weakening and here’s why we need it strong
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Why would we be surprised when culture lives out sexual sin it has promoted for years?
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Churches must stay on-mission as evangelists, not cultural acceptance-seekers
- Pastor Harry Reeder: The Museum of the Bible is a great idea…provided we don’t worship the Bible
- Harry Reeder on sexual reckoning: Our conscience tells us ‘something’s wrong here’ even while our culture promotes sin
- Reeder: We have to be honest despite history rewrites– Pilgrims gave thanks to God
- Reeder: It is ‘absolutely ludicrous’ to think a mother’s absence in crucial first 3 years has no effect
- Reeder: Australian same-sex marriage survey a ‘profile in cowardice’ not courage
- Reeder: Believers ‘speaking up’ made real difference in adoption tax credit provision
- Reeder: Secular culture wants more than ‘tolerance’, insists upon abortion and sexual anarchy ‘celebration’
- Reeder on Roy Moore chaos: ‘Do the next right thing’
- Reeder: Here’s what Christians should say when traditional marriage views are labeled ‘bigotry’
- Reeder on church leaders not meeting privately with the other sex: ‘I’ll take the criticism….I learned it from Billy Graham’
- Reeder on LGBTQ campus activists: ‘They don’t want to debate what a marriage actually is. They want to silence those they cannot answer.’
- Yes, it’s ridiculous there’s a new religion dedicated to AI….but here’s why it matters
- Feeling any Christmas guilt? Here’s the type you should ignore and the type you should face
- Reeder on Tuesday’s elections: ‘To see this as a referendum on Trump is overstating it’
- Two terminally-ill patients who refused assisted suicide to help others & show life’s sanctity
- Lots of older pastors, not many young ones — what’s going on?
- Commercial Surrogacy: The objectification of child-bearing
- Elitist ‘gender-isn’t-real’ culture has descended into sophisticated imbecility
- Chaplain who refused marriage retreat to same-sex couple is up against elite culture enforcers
- Sen. Booker’s grilling of Pompeo prime example of ‘religious test’ to exclude evangelical Christians from office
- GENDER ABSURDITY: A nation, led by pop culture, descends into chaos
- How culture rot happens: Unthinkable –> Laughable –> Thinkable –> Accepted
- How Christians should submit to the government’s law
- How to avoid going ‘wobbly’ on the truth
Listen to the 10 min audio
Read the transcript:
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, I want to take you to a couple of stories, one of out of The Daily Caller, another out of the BBC that deals with a Headteachers’ Union that is going to tell schools in Great Britain to be more supportive of LGBT teachers who want to reveal their sexual identity in the classroom. They say it would make children better citizens of the world.
The second story, out of The Daily Caller, a teacher who was fired for calling a transgender student by her biological gender hit back the school system with a lawsuit.
The math teacher, Joshua Sutcliff, 27, allegedly said, “Well done, girls,” to two students at an Oxfordshire secondary school in England. The school suspended him and called for a disciplinary hearing. He apologized to the student, but was charged with misconduct for misgendering, according to The Evening Standard. He now is countersuing the school for damages.
DR. REEDER: Here are two girls, and they’re obviously girls because that’s how they were created with the biological dynamics of femininity.
DON’T HAVE TO EMBRACE STEREOTYPES
Now, you may choose to express that femininity in multiple ways, but your gender is female because of your biological sexuality when you were created. It’s that simple, but now we live in this brave new world in which people can say, “No, I realize what it looks like biologically – the way that I’ve been created – but I choose to identify as a man.” Obviously, that is incoherent.
I do realize that there is a process in adolescence to varying degrees of confusion that kids go through in terms of, “What does it mean to be a boy or a girl?”
There is no one who is more ready to affirm that you don’t need to stereotype gender, in that all boys have to like to ride horses and shoot guns and all girls want to be a cheerleader. Biologically, when you are created by God as a female, you were given a certain DNA, a certain hormonal makeup, men are given a certain testosterone makeup – all of that is given and, therefore, embraced as a gift from God in how God made us in his image.
Genesis 1 tells us that God made man – singular – in His image – male and female, plural – so man is a unit. Humanity is a unit made in the image of God, but it requires male and female to properly reflect the image of God so we embrace that.
The biologically created female with a femininity expresses a dynamic of God and the male, with masculinity, expresses a dynamic of who God is and, together, they properly reflect who God is and both are necessary to reflect who God is.
Now, does that mean a cultural stereotype needs to be embraced? Not necessarily.
There is a certain dynamic of female leadership and of male leadership: While both lead, they don’t lead the same way. That’s not a matter of superiority and inferiority – it’s just different.
Here’s what’s at the core, Tom: The pagan world and life view denies there is a God who is distinct from creation and denies that there is a God who is one, but dwells in three persons – that is, one God with the three distinct persons, yet one God.
And, that one God who dwells in three distinct persons, has created a creation that is unified, yet diversified and so He made man one man, humanity made in the image of God, diverse, male and female.
In a pagan world and life view that is ungodly – that is, without reference to God and denies God – then the world and life view will deny the God-given distinctions. Thus, our world now unashamedly embraces the unnatural that is inconsistent with creation of homosexual practice and even declares it as a civil right.
GENDER CAN’T BE CHOSEN
We deny now the distinction of male and female and we will self-identify so you meet someone and they’re clearly a boy – they’re clearly a girl, they’re clearly a man, they’re clearly a woman – you can’t, “misgender” them by calling them a man or a woman.
Where are we in our return to a neo-pagan world and life view? And that’s what we’re doing. Our forbearers in the barbarian tribes of Africa and Europe were into the depths of the dysfunctionality of paganism and it showed up in the individual and the family and in the community.
The Gospel came and brought sanity into light. And, when it brought sanity into life, now marriage was established – one man, one woman for life – family was established – here’s what a father does, a mother does as they parent their children – here’s what children do in relationship to parents, parents to children.
As the Christian world and life view was Gospel-discipled into the life, then Western civilization and, “Christendom,” with its imperfections, but the clarity of its superiority.
SOPHISTICATED IMBECILITY
But we are now descending back – and here’s my quote for you – in our embrace of the neo-pagan world and life view, we are descending once again back into sophisticated imbecility.
The cultural elite are telling us that the right side of life is to wait for people to self-identify.
How about if I go down to the driver’s license bureau and I self-identify as a 25-year-old? “No, you’re 69.” “No, I self-identify as a 29-year-old and how dare you tell me I’m not what I say I am?”
You say, “Harry, that’s absurd.” Let me encourage you to know this: You were born a male and there are certain dynamics, biologically, that affirm that. And, by the way, it is going to carry out in your behavior — men can father children, women can’t; women bear children, men can’t.
And you can identify as a woman all you want to, but you cannot do what a woman is created to do.
We know that it’s not true because, as soon as I say to someone, “I just want to identify as an African-American,” I can’t identify as an African-American. I’m not an African-American. I may say it but it’s patently untrue and we all have to embrace sophisticated imbecility to act like it is true.
SURGICAL SAVAGERY
And what we are descending to, in an effort to affirm this sophisticated imbecility, are even acts of chemical and surgical savagery upon children that is irreversible for the rest of their life.
Before you even get to that, we are introducing this chaos into the life of our children in their elementary school age years, where they’re going through adolescence but we do not have the ability and the world and life view to guide them through adolescence with sanity.
By the way, do you realize the great opportunity that this presents for Christian educational institutions? If you will develop a consistent Christian world and life view, undergirded with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, communicate the truth with love, then we can produce sanity and people will knock down the doors to get into those educational institutions, rather than send my children to a public school where they can’t even act according to sanity: “Here’s a boy, here’s a girl, and you call a girl a girl, and you call a boy a boy. That’s the biological sexual identity they have and that we will guide you through sexual ethics and we’ll guide you through gender exploration of how men and women are to act with the essentials that God has created but all of the dynamics of how that is expressed.”
What we need to do is not retreat from it – we need to infiltrate this society and do parenting and education in a way that raises children who have a God-centered world and life view with all of the sanity that comes with it, in opposition to the descent into sophisticated imbecility of the cultural elite and the neo-pagan world and life view.
Dr. Harry L. Reeder III is the Senior Pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.
This podcast was transcribed by Jessica Havin. Jessica is editorial assistant for Yellowhammer News. Jessica has transcribed some of the top podcasts in the country and her work has been featured in a New York Times Bestseller.
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