It is so, so discouraging to see the people of God be led by soft and ineffectual men.
The former Southern Baptist President and megachurch pastor JD Greear discussed the cultural issue of transgenderism. Greear encourages "generosity of spirit" in his discussion by using someone's preferred pronouns.
Yes, the former SBC president is encouraging Christians to knowingly bear false witness against nature and nature's God in order to spare the feelings of confused people who deserve the truth.
But he says so in a much more nuanced way.
JD frames the discussion between the two sides of the pronoun issue fairly well. One side is on the side of truth and the other on "generosity of spirit."
You know some people on one side are going to say, 'Hey, we gotta tell the truth and the truth is this person is male or female and I would be lying if I called someone female who identifies as male.'
Okay, he confused his words, but I know what he's saying.
There's others that say, 'Well, you know, look, as a courtesy, you should refer to a transgender person by their preferred pronoun' and a sort of generosity of spirit kind of approach. And you see evidence in the Bible of that...
Personally, I lean a little bit towards generosity of spirit... if a transgendered person came into our church and my life I think my disposition would be to refer to them by their preferred pronoun.
When we want to talk about gender, I will be clear with them on the truth.
Greear's disposition would be to go along with the lies of radical gender theory and politely oblige someone's demand that you lie to them.
That's his disposition.
And that's the entire problem.
JD, in his daily conversations, will go along with a lie in order to make someone feel better. But if the subject explicitly comes up he'll start telling the truth at that point.
How can he square this inconsistency? We should recognize that we should tell the truth always, facing awkwardness and the risk of seeming "mean" with boldness and conviction, then acknowledge that in certain cases, there may be exceptions to the rule. JD gets it backward, which is exactly how backsliding starts, and exactly why preachers who give up on pronouns or gay marriage or racial Marxism are writing books about the "Zim Zum of Love" like Rob Bell.
And for those who say, "Yes, but truth must be spoken in love," JD fails to explain, in this clip at least, how lying to someone is loving them.
- If someone wanted to be called "tree/treeself" in his congregation, would he refer to him as a plant?
- If someone had pronouns that change by the hour, would he capitulate?
- If a middle schooler wants to be called rock or banana, would that still warrant a "generosity of spirit" approach?
Would this call the people out of lunacy and sin, or just help JD feel better about being kind to them while failing to warn them about eternal damnation?
Romans 13:10 says, "Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." Is it more loving to enable people in their rebellion against God, or will aiming at that trajectory out of "generosity" actually harm them?
JD seems not to realize that this pronoun issue is an attack on language and reality – on Logos itself. It is a fundamental Satanic attack on God's created order.
He, like many mainstream pastors, seems utterly unaware of the Enemy's plan.
I'll leave you with this thoughtful, expositional critique of JD's statement with Scriptural examples:
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