After Monday's mass shooting at the K-6 school at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville, trans activists are doubling down on calls for bloodshed, putting their support behind the murderous woman who took the lives of 6 people.
This follows a rise in threats leading up to this week, which has been branded by activists as a "Trans Week of Visibility."
This week of protests and violence is supposed to be capped by a "Trans Day of Vengeance" outside the Supreme Court on Saturday.
No one was sure if this was an April Fool's Day prank or real, but given the horrific violence we've seen already this week, it sure doesn't seem like a prank.
Trans activists have been arming themselves in recent years, seeing any disagreement with their sexual behaviors and fetishes to be a literal "genocide" on their existence.
Much of the trans activist outcry comes around laws that protect kids from genital mutilation or hormone injections as minors, as well as laws that prevent teachers from forcing sexual ideology on children who are too young for such conversations.
One has to seriously ask why these activists are so concerned about reaching and grooming young children into their ideology, and why they get so violent when anyone opposes them.
Memes aside, these activists believe they are the good guys and that their worldview is true and just. In their minds, sex and sexuality is a construct with a thousand different expressions. They believe that they must teach young kids to embrace their true identities because they believe it is abnormal for human society to be divided into male and female – despite all the scientific, psychological, sociological, theological, and historical evidence that opposes this religious belief of theirs.
Like many religious zealots, they see themselves in an epic struggle to overcome evil (conservative "fascists") and the opposing ideology that prevents them from achieving a better world (Christianity).
Once you understand this, you will understand why they pick Christian schools and churches as targets. Not unlike the Islamist terrorist who is frustrated by Christian influence in society, the trans terrorist wants to impose their ideology not by sound argumentation and peaceful protest, but through force.
The LGBT lobby has crafted a tribe for itself out of sexual identity in a twisted desire to create division and oppression, allowing its members to paint their ideological foes as the evil empire when in truth, they represent the head of the beast that seeks to devour children, families, and society at large.
There is a reason that the most powerful Western politicians and corporations have sided themselves with these activists:
Power.
They are not the oppressed; they are the celebrated. They are the trendsetters, the high priests, and the martyrs.
After all, the powerful will wear their flag:
It is a "war," according to them.
Consider this statement from the Trans Resistance Network:
Many transgender people deal with anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide, and PTSD from the near-constant drum beat of anti-trans hate, lack of acceptance from family members and certain religious institutions, denial of our existence, and calls for de-transition and forced conversion. All of these factors contribute to a population that is medically under-served and who often face anti- trans bias while accessing care leading to significant physical and mental health disparities. Hate has consequences.
"Hate has consequences."
It's likely you'll hear shades of this rhetoric as more trans activists shoot up more Christian churches and children.
Consider another tweet the Trans Resistance Network shared:
I don't know when and where these incidents will occur, but I am sure the violence will increase. It will get much worse before it gets any better.
So what are we to do?
When I say "we," I'm speaking to those of you who hold to the teachings of Jesus Christ, even if you merely believe in them in the way a man casually believes in the ability of the support beams that keep his house from collapsing.
Jesus said he did not come to bring peace but a sword (Matt. 10:34), but this sword was not to fight against people (Eph. 6:12) because His kingdom is not an earthly one (John 18:36). This must be remembered for all else that follows.
In John 16, Jesus promises his disciples that by following him, "the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God."
Common criminals may realize they are the bad guys, but the most dangerous ideological movements – those that kill tens of millions – rarely believe they are in the wrong. They are "on the right side of history," after all.
Just before Jesus tells his disciples that their enemies will celebrate killing them as a service to God, he notes that He too was "hated without reason," and that this unjustifiable, nonsensical hatred had been prophesied about long ago (Psalms 35:19, 69:4).
If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.
How then do we respond to this guarantee of hate?
Especially when fellow church leaders and "Christian" publications like Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition side with the sexual revolutionaries and Marxist thugs?
Consider Jesus's message in Luke 6:
But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.
This passage is well known to many of us.
It is a constant reminder that we should show love when our time comes to suffer for the Name.
But here's an important caveat: Turning your other cheek does not mean turning your friend's cheek or your wife's cheek or your child's cheek. You are called to go into the lion's den full of love and grace when the mob calls out for your blood. You are not called to let the mob take your family and friends.
What I mean is this: Be willing to lay down your own life, but do not think you have the authority to lay down the lives of others. For those lives, you fight.
"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." - John 15:13
"Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter." - Proverbs 24:11
"But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." - 1 Timothy 5:8
"And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image." - Genesis 9:5-6
"For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer." - Romans 13:3-4
"And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, 'Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.'" - Nehemiah 4:14-15
Many squishy Christian publications shy away from the use of force these days, but the use of righteous force – force that is not vengeful or sinful but in defense of the defenseless – is proper and just in our Heavenly Father's eyes.
There is a reason most men are attracted to weapons. Deep down in the very fiber of their being there is a desire to protect and defend. When this is corrupted, like the rest of our fallen nature, it is terrifying. When it is redeemed into something noble and true, it is beautiful. Men's hearts long to be heroic and brave.
But in order to defend the innocent, there are times when not only spiritual swords are needed, but actual ones.
A knight is not a knight without his weapon.
"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." - JRR Tolkien, The Two Towers
As I said, this is not proper talk within many Christian circles today. David French is probably reeling somewhere as I write this.
These circles don't like stories of knights and valor and swords and dragons anymore, despite the fact that our Savior will come again, this time to strike down the nations and judge the living and the dead. We especially find it yucky to talk about modern-day weapons, as if an AR-15 and Level IV ballistics armor is somehow more offensive to God than an English longbow or Damascus steel.
It is important in our context to consider the philosophy that made America. The Founders believed that men were granted the right by God to defend themselves and their families. And not just a right, but a duty. In their minds, the best way to fulfill this duty was to ensure that every man among the people could be called to arms to defend against criminals, whether highway robbers or tyrants sitting on a throne. Authority was given to the magistrates and their officers – authority we can not simply or rightly usurp with a "Don't Tread On Me" bumper sticker – but also to the common man, right down to the poorest in the poorest home.
This provision for defense was the ultimate safeguard that protected the rest of our human rights, for the Founders theorized that no government would allow its citizens these rights if it could usurp them to its own advantage.
But the Constitution was made for a moral people, said John Adams once upon a time. It is wholly inadequate for any other.
As we fall back into immoral times with immoral people, we must look to standards greater than our own Constitution to justify our course of action. As attacks on conservatives and Christians increase in the coming months and years, accusing us of hate, we must turn to God's law of love.
Love may mean turning our cheeks or going into the fiery furnace, so that by our suffering we may show these trans activists that we do not wish to destroy them, but to save them, because we believe all men and women need to be saved. Our fight is not against people, but the spiritual powers that hold them hostage in darkness and evil.
Love also means fighting for laws that protect children. It means standing up at school board meetings and saying mean-but-true things, even if you get ostracized for it.
And at times (rarely, I pray), loving your neighbor might call for actual force to defend the innocent and defenseless from those who wish to kill and maim them, like a trans terrorist marching through the front door of your children's school.
