Babble On

‘Ambiguity isn’t compassion. It’s poison with a smile.’

Christopher Yuan (click here to access his The Holy Sexuality Project)

My alma mater—Fuller Seminary—recently ‘reconfirmed its commitment to the historical theological understanding of marriage,’ while acknowledging that ‘faithful Christians have come to affirm other covenantal forms of relationship.’ Babble on.

Echoing the doublespeak is scholar David Bennett who entertained the troops at Vintage Church Los Angeles with his campy take on ‘queer celibacy.’ A good friend of mine, repenting of homosexuality, was incredulous: ‘My church has never been more confusing to me.’

Equally confounding is theologian Preston Sprinkle platforming ‘gay Christian’ Gregory Coles, who teaches teens to identify just like himself. Celebrate your rainbow destiny, kids, just don’t do the dirty deed. Babble on.

And so babbles Revoice, Eden Invitation, and other organizations that fight for LGBTQ+ identification in Jesus’ Name and Church as a sign of their authenticity. (For the best critique, check out this article—‘Your sexual pathology doesn’t make you special’— by Thomas Mirus.**) Sure, God may have raised Jesus from the dead but He will not raise His children off the rainbow spectrum.  

Such confusion diminishes the Gospel and biblical anthropology. It dissuades the vulnerable from knowing the truth of their original dignity and from aspiring to it in the Spirit that catapulted Jesus out of His tomb.

Babble on. Instead of clarifying confused saints, the American Church has become expert at appeasing the LGBTQ+ juggernaut with double-speak.

It’s fear-driven, a big fat concession to the deception spawned at Stonewall in ’69. There, in a Greenwich Village bar, persons stoked by same-sex lust politicized and assumed minority status. We have since been bombarded by ‘gay’ rights, culture, and a powerful agenda. ‘Give us what we want, or else!’ The power of that agenda is evident in the thousands of Christians who claim biblical authority while confirming LGBTQ+ ‘status’ upon the misdirected faithful who demand it. Babble on.  

We need the Spirit of Apostle Paul who ‘did not shrink back from preaching…the entire plan of God’ (Acts 20:27). We need the Spirit of Pentecost to give us such courage: courage to hold fast to how God made us and equally, the unfailing love that liberates us to realize our birthright.

We need courage to gently and firmly refuse the doublespeak of our fellow Christians. Let us find the narrow way. We can embrace ‘the entire plan of God’, both in biblical anthropology and in the power of the Gospel to redeem broken lives. We trust God to protect us, come what may, from threatening forces. We do so for those whom God, in His magnificence, grants the grace of repentance.

‘The tongues of fire sent down by the Holy Spirit reorient our words to match the Word of truth itself. When our language reflects the Word, the eyes of our mind refocus with new clarity. Our reason catches fire and we become bold. Pentecost means nothing less than the reordering of our minds to Truth, putting our confused Babel minds back into order. Pentecost vanquishes Babel.’

Anne Husted Burleigh

**Click here for a PDF version of Mirus' article