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Reeder: Secular culture wants more than ‘tolerance’, insists upon abortion and sexual anarchy ‘celebration’


 

 

 

 

 

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TOM LAMPRECHT:  Harry, I want to take you through a lightning round. Four different stories, but yet they all tie together.

The Supreme Court agreed, this past week, to hear National Institute of Family and Life Advocates vs. Becerra, which challenges California’s law requiring pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to post notices that advise patients or visitors about tax-payer funded abortion programs.

The next story I want to take you to is out of The Daily Signal. It’s a bill would protect pro-life nurses. The bill is sponsored by Chris Smith of New Jersey and it’s entitled “The Conscious Protection Act.”

Basically, what this bill says is, if you’re in the insurance business, if you’re in the medical field, you’re not going to be forced to ever perform an abortion. You’re not going to be forced to do something that goes against your religious values, that goes against your conscience.

I also want to take you to Canada, where The Daily Wire’s reporting on an evangelical couple in Canada who are now taking legal action after their adoption application was denied because of their Biblical views of sexuality.

And, lastly, The Daily Signal is reporting the Delaware Department of Education is now saying that individual students coming to the public schools can declare their gender and their race without ever having to tell their parents.

REEDER: And whatever they declare has to be assumed as factual in terms of how the child is how to be regarded in the school system. You could have a white male who would come and say, “I identify as a black female.”

And then you’ve got the case up in Canada where, now, a couple who is clearly qualified to adopt but not allowed to adopt because, in answer to a question, they have made clear that, if their child comes to them with issues of sexuality – questioning the issue of heterosexuality and are they homosexual – their commitment is that they would put them into counseling to work through that.

And then, of course, you have the situation where nurses are having to fight for what has, historically, even since Roe v. Wade, been affirmed and that is medical personnel do not have to participate in the abortion practice if it’s a matter of their conscience and their free practice of religion. They cannot participate in what they see as an outright heinous murder.

And, in California, where crisis pregnancy centers that exist to give women clarity and alternative in crisis moments of pregnancy – that there is a better way rather than the pressure to abort the child.

There are three things that I want people to see in these stories that you have walked us through. The first thing I want you to see is that the quote/unquote “secular progressive” world and life view that surrounds all of these issues – the death of the unborn, gender confusion, sexual anarchy – all of these things have in common the world and life view that is rooted in the sovereign self.

We have said on many occasions that there are basically two world and life views. There’s the world and life view that is rooted in the sovereign God – that God is sovereign and, by virtue of creation and redemption, He has given us a way of life that, if embraced, leads to that which is good and beautiful and true even within a broken world.

Or there is what is at the root of the broken world and that is the sin nature of man in which a world and life view of the sovereign self. The book of Judges puts it this way that, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

In all of these cases, the sovereign self supposedly is to rule and reign. It doesn’t rule and reign because there are victims whenever we embrace sin to exalt ourselves and, to gratify ourselves, there are victims and their sovereign self is being violated.

However, for us, our world and life view is simply, “We will determine what we believe is right and then we will do what is right,” and the whole purpose of culture, and government, and society is that, “I need to be free to do what I want to do.”

Which brings us to the second principle you need to see: The world and life view of the sovereign self is, by definition and by consequence, is going to be confused, is going to be incoherent, is going to be insensible.

In other words, sin never makes sense. Sin is always irrational, it is always incoherent, it is always destructive and it is always counterproductive to the very thing that the sinner thinks that they are pursuing, which is self-gratification.

Therefore, you have the sovereign self and all of the world and life views in rebellion against God, whether it’s humanism, secularism, consumerism, it doesn’t matter.

Jesus said to Peter, “You have set your mind on man’s interest, not upon God’s.” Either the sovereign God or the sovereign self and all of the -isms are rooted in the sovereign self. Secondly, it is incoherent.

The third thing I want our listeners to hear is this: The secular world and life view of the sovereign self, it is creating a culture that is destructive and incoherent in our society.

My goodness, we are now at the point where a young boy who is either white or black can go to a school system and say, “I know I look white, but I’m actually black,” and, “I know I’ve got all the biology of a male, but, actually, I’m female,” then we, with a straight face are supposed to believe that?

Or you’ve got parents who are able to raise a child and create an environment in which, if there is sexual confusion, they’re going to bring them counseling and they are declared as intolerant and bigots.

Or we’re in a society where someone has a position that, “I cannot participate in murder,” and we now have state governments trying to force medical personnel to participate in abortion.

Or we have a situation in which entire organizations are put in place to present a caring, compassionate, effective and competent alternative to the abortion industry and they are told that they have to promote the abortion industry when someone comes into their office.

That incoherency, that destructiveness, is obvious but notice it is relentless. The present secular sexual revolution world and life view is intent on making you participate.

You are going to be made to celebrate, perpetuate and propagate the very lifestyle that you think it only requires you to “tolerate.” It is not toleration that is the goal – it is your participation, your celebration.

“Medical personnel, I don’t care what you believe about abortion, you got to do one. I don’t care what you think about clarity and sanity – here’s a man, here’s a woman, here’s a person of the ethnicity of black, ethnicity of white…”

We no longer live in the world of reality. We now live in the fabricated world and we’ve gone down the rabbit hole of the sovereign self and, “I will do what is right in my own eyes. I will even say what I think it is right for me to be, even though it is in direct conflict with reality.

We will set aside biology, we will set aside science, we will set aside ethics for the sovereign self to rule.”

Professing Christian, you’re going to have to make a decision.

You’re not going to be able to hide in a commune, so I encourage you: learn to think, learn to act, learn to live and promote in the public square what is good and beautiful and true.

Do so with humility yet courage, do so with boldness, yet compassion, but be those who speak the truth in love.

We certainly are going to do so by sharing the Gospel so that the lives of men and women will be transformed, but we will also do it in the public square so that sin is confronted, confusion is addressed, clarity is brought and we do so carefully, thoughtfully, gently and boldly.

Not only do we love the fact that the Gospel transforms the lives of sinners, we also love the fact that truth, spoken in love, restrains sin in society and brings sanity instead of insanity, freedom instead of coercion, and joy and life instead of despair and death.

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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