New affections: When God brings better loves

LIFE is different now. It’s like this meadow mist. Fresh and new every morning. What I cared so much for, I couldn’t care less about. All has changed, seemingly. I have new joys, new affections that are precious to me. I now love people. Especially older slower wiser ones.

What or who changes us? God. What we lack relationally, he supplies. And he blesses us with those who’ve learned to love rightly.

God often uses trauma to transform us. And in doing so, he fans the flames of true and better loves. He doesn’t simply swap affections—the shabby for the shiny—he drives them out by refilling us with his loves.

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. ” (I John 2:15-16 ESV)

The Scottish theologian and astronomer Thomas Chalmers described our attempts to not love the world thusly. (I enjoy using words of smarter men … like thusly.)

The empty beaker

“There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world—either by a demonstration of the world’s vanity, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign an old affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one.”

Chalmers posited that the solution to our love problem is not trying to simply subtract them. He used an “empty” beaker to illustrate that one shouldn’t remove wrong loves and leave a void; they must be displaced with better ones. And the swap requires much more than the efforts of a determined sinner. It takes the power of a loving God.

When someone draws significance from position or power or role and is suddenly unable to pursue a lesser love, he will feel lost. Through illness and age, his significance will have no source and he will wither. His life’s impact will be evanescent (Chalmers), not eternal. The impact he’s made in the world will have sounded to whatever degree—great or small—but will fade and cease like the reverberation of a resting bell.

Life built on lesser loves will likely become empty for most and a misery for others. We don’t consider this when we’re indulging in love for the world.

There is only one escape—to ask God to fill you with new affections, his loves. For forever joy and peace, it’s wise to nurture new and better loves in the here and now. God alone is the source of all that is true, good and beautiful, and as fallen creatures, we need his loving hands to shape and reshape us.

Best new affection?

A genuine love for God. God is loving, wise and good. Why wouldn’t we? Our bodies are failing and life here is short. And if you’re a child of God, your life is not your own.

“You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20 ESV)

New loves can be precious. Fresh affections can be like a second breakfast with true brothers on a long and hard journey. Lesser, shabby, worldly loves are like The Ring, and we’re like Gollum. We will sin. A bitter thought against a loved one, a wrong attitude against a brother or sister or stranger. With new affections, willful sin will become deeply grievous.

Do you hate that you love the world? Ask God to create new affections in you. He can do it the “easy” way or the hard way. (Tough love can hurt.) But his way will always be the best way. It will lead you to better, brighter, joyful new loves.

If you’re his child, it will happen. When it does, you’ll know you’re further along in your journey to complete and sanctified joy. You’ll be free to enjoy a second breakfast.

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6 ESV)

Take heart, fellow sinner, Jesus has overcome the world. Draw near him. Taste and see. He can make all things new.

Desire and delusion didn’t do diddly to Dylan Mulvaney’s DNA

delusion

Bless Dylan Mulvaney’s heart. I don’t mean this in a snarky or dismissive way. I mean it in a way that offers compassion and an embrace of reality. With respect for his determination, Mr. Mulvaney is attempting the impossible.

Scientifically and biologically speaking, no matter how many hormone treatments and surgeries he goes through, the chances of him becoming a woman are equal to his becoming Audrey Hepburn. Zero and zero.

The man is hardwired to be a man. His maleness is as deep as it gets. It’s in his DNA. It’s molecular. In truth, no amount of want to can make him a woman. Conversely, the same goes for Elliot Page, formerly Ellen, regarding her desire to be a man.

In truth, Dylan and Elliot are talented, charismatic, beautifully-created people who’ve been hoodwinked by desire and delusion. Neither can do diddly to change who they are, who they’re made to be.

Deepening the delusion

What is our responsibility to those who desperately want to be something they’re not? Should we enable them to pursue irreversible medical procedures with a “You do you” or “Follow your heart”? Do we do like Kamala Harris and salute Dylan’s courage to live authentically.

What happens when Dylan and Elliot wake up in 40 years and wonder what in the world they did to themselves? Lest this seems like an overreaction, consider people who regret getting botox or breast enlargements or chest implants. Why wouldn’t many who undergo gender reassignment regret something that’s irreversible?

The suppressed truth is that many “trans” people do regret their genital mutilation and hormone treatments. As they age and their bodies react to radical attempts to re-gender themselves, they deeply regret what they’ve done medically.

And for what? For an absolute lie. In truth—literally—transgenderism is a delusion. It’s an absurdity made possible by our seemingly modern understanding of truth. Here’s the hitch: One’s “truth” is utterly useless when grappling with a world built on immutable laws.

In transgenderism, subjective truth seeps into the ironclad realm of reality. When it comes to realizing one’s transgender truth, reality is rendered meaningless. Desire is everything.

Since the tragedy of the school shooting in Nashville, the de-gendering delusion—and its enabling—has deepened dangerously. Last Thursday, protestors descended on the Tennessee capitol to decry our collective transphobia—our “fear” and rejection of the impossible.

Incredulously, protestors held up seven fingers to symbolize the six victims of Audrey Hale’s shooting spree. Six plus Audrey, you see. According to them, she is a victim. A society that fears transgenderism victimized her.

Making victims of victimizers

Audrey Hale was a shy girl with a beautiful smile who stockpiled guns and ammunition. Reportedly, she hid them from her parents while undergoing emotional counseling. Then she exploded in a suicidal shooting spree.

She murdered six people, three of whom were children. How did pundits handle this story? After correcting themselves for gendering and misgendering her, they focused on Tennessee’s recent legislation that makes it more difficult for minors to get gender reassignment treatment and surgeries.

Partisan editors and journalists routinely spin such measures as “anti-trans.” They claim that trans people are being denied care. Manifoldly worse, they lend legitimacy to people who called for a “Trans Day of Vengeance.” And they label those who embrace biological reality “transphobic” and “alt-right.”

Media members suggest that intolerance may have played a role in Audrey Hale’s decision to kill children—the intolerance of people like Hale’s Christian parents.

Did legislation and parenting push Audrey to murder and seek suicide by cop? Did she truly think she had no other option? The victimizer was also a victim, you see. What serious society considers a 28-year-old who guns down six people a victim of her own crime?

Rogers and Rowling are right

Mister Rogers was right.  So is JK Rowling. No amount of desire—no matter how fervent—can make a boy a girl. Either notion would be laughable in any other reasonable time in history.

Sadly trans people feel like they belong to a gender other than the one they’re “assigned” at birth. They disagree with their own bodies, with self-evident norms for one of two genders. They feel like members of a different gender. Some women want to be men and vice versa.

Thankfully, desire is not enough. It can’t be. No matter how deeply Audrey Hale wanted to be a man, she could never alter her DNA blueprint. Even had she undergone hormone treatments and surgeries, she would’ve only succeeded in masculinizing herself.

A natural body—male or female—is beautiful. A butchered one is tragic.

“I wanna fly like an eagle,” sings Steve Miller. But no matter how much he wants to fly to the sea, he can never be a bird. He’s a human being and a talented musician. He’s also a man—genetically and deep in his DNA.

Dylan Mulvaney is a popular singer, actor and influencer. He exudes charisma. But though he can look somewhat like Audrey Hepburn, he can never share her gender. He’s a feminized man. Nothing can change that genetic fact.

Should we affirm people for what they want to be rather than what they are? That’s the worst thing we can do. We should affirm them—as they’re made to be. There’s nothing toxic or hateful or fearful in affirming someone as he or she is and will always be. It’s not toxic to accept reality and reject fantasy.

Here’s what’s toxic to any society:

Toxic transgenderism

It’s toxic to denigrate courage by misapplying it to delusion and dismissing the reality that someone desperately needs mental and emotional care.

It is toxic to embrace someone’s delusion in order to pander and profit. Anheuser-Busch making Mulvaney a spokesperson for Bud Light is tasteless and tacky. It’s also poor marketing.

It’s hard to imagine their blue-collar base being energized by a dude in a dress sipping a Bud with delicately gloved hands. It looks like a bad move and a willful ignoring of their target audience.

It’s toxic for politicians to welcome a deluded social media influencer to the White House and enable him with a gushing letter of congratulations for his pretend womanhood while championing the “rights” of biological men to crush the hopes and dreams of female athletes.

It is toxic to subject women and girls to the predations of men who prowl in public restrooms and who derive sexual arousal and satisfaction from fulfilling fantasies as make-believe women. In truth, transgenderism, for men, is inextricably tied to sexual fantasy.

Gunning for guns

It’s toxic to use school shootings to target the Second Amendment freedoms of law-abiding Americans by pretending (or deluding oneself) that inanimate objects with metal and muzzles kill anyone independent of evil people aiming and pulling triggers. It’s also toxic—and divisive—to demonize good people with guns.

It is toxic to resist those who call for security guards in schools to dissuade killers like Audrey Hale. Especially if reports are accurate that she avoided one school as a potential target because it had armed security personnel.

It’s toxic for congressional representatives to tweet memes of people holding weapons and claiming to protect trans people from transphobes who wish them harm.

It is toxic to subject a society to the biological absurdity that insists that men and women can swap genders through medical modification. It’s tyrannical to try to force people to not only accept the trans delusion, but to celebrate it.

It seems cynical, self-serving and political when a political party ignores incontrovertible truths regarding gender and helps facilitate an entirely new victim group while refusing to protect children from trans ideology—and women.

It is indeed a strange new world we find ourselves in—and not a brave or compassionate one. Dylan Mulvaney and Elliot Page should be loved and offered help, not enabled. A compassionate society embraces people, not delusion.

Abortion in a pill: America’s convenient killing of its unborn IS America

abortion in a pill

“Health secretary slams abortion pill ruling as ‘not America’”

When I read this headline, I felt a flicker of hope. For an absurd moment, I thought our health secretary had come to his senses and realized that providing women with pills to kill their babies is ‘not America’—or any other nation in a moral world.

50 years ago, an American health secretary would be as appalled as the vast majority of Americans would be by the notion of aborting unborn babies for virtually any reason, let alone for convenience. “Safe and rare” was a lie in 1974. The lie would laughable today, if it weren’t so damnable.

Clearly, abortion is never safe for unborn children. It was relatively rare when it was done to save a mother’s life, not to save men and women from the life-changing consequences of their sexual freedom. The truth is that the vast majority of unwanted children are aborted to avoid unwanted responsibility.

What about rape and incest victims?

According to a 2004 Guttmacher Institute study, the percentage of women who said they were seeking an abortion after being raped was one percent. Those seeking abortion as a result of incest was .05 percent. The study also found that these numbers haven’t changed appreciably between 1987-2004.

The health secretary is right—providing pregnant women with abortion in a pill to kill their babies is America. Sadly, it’s our world. It’s what we’ve become. We’ve embraced the lie that unwanted children are better off dead.

The health secretary is outraged not because any woman’s health is actually endangered by a judge’s ruling. He’s outraged because our sexual freedom is at stake. In his America, we must be able to end a life in order to preserve a lifestyle.

Instead of focusing on phantom rights to abort unwanted children, our health secretary should safeguard the health of those are routinely—and conveniently—denied their health and freedom.