"Daddy, do you love God more than me?"
That was the question my then 8-year-old son asked me as we were driving together a couple years ago. At first, I danced around the periphery of his unexpectedly deep question, asking why he would even think to ask something like that. I told him that it was not an either/or proposition - I could and would always love both him and God.
But that wasn't enough. He had been told in children's church that he was to love God more than anything else, even his siblings and parents. So, he wisely deduced, that must mean that his mom and I were to love God more than him.
I told him honestly that I couldn't imagine my life without him, that he was the most precious gift imaginable, and that I loved him with my whole heart.
"And who do you suppose I have to thank for creating and giving me that gift?" I asked him.
He knew the answer.
"That's the cool way this works, son. As my Creator and yours, God is my first love. Without Him I have nothing good in my life. And the way I show Him love and thanks is by the way I love you."
God doesn't ask me to love Him at the expense of loving my son. He provides me the opportunity to love Him by the way I love my son.
That conversation and understanding came to the forefront of my mind when I saw the rancorous furor that arose when The Gospel Coalition published an anonymously written piece last week entitled:
"I love my transgender child. I love Jesus more."
In a society where the social contagion of LGBTism is so prolific that the percentage of young people identifying as such doubles every generation, it was a familiar storyline:
[I]t came as a shock to us when, last year, [our son] stated he had gender dysphoria and wondered if he was transgender. Within a few months, our 18-year-old firmly believed he was transgender and that an LGBT+ identity was compatible with Scripture's teaching…
[W]hen he was finally willing to talk with us, he communicated his hope that we'd call him by his new chosen name and pronouns. We knew we couldn't do that. At one point, he said that by not using his preferred name and pronouns, we weren't doing the bare minimum to love him…
As devastating as this must be to experience for Christian families, it's not abnormal that a child (even an 18-year-old) would hold the selfish perspective, "If you don't let me do what I want, and embrace what I embrace, you must not love me." The added insult of emotional blackmail that threatens, "And if you continue not agreeing with me I might kill myself," provides a perfect demonstration of the emotional and spiritual immaturity involved here.
But as the author of this piece rightly discerns from Scripture,
In Luke 14:26, when Jesus tells his disciples they'd have to "hate" their children, he wasn't speaking of literal hatred. The Scriptures are replete with God's good commands to enjoy and sacrificially love our children (Deut. 4:9; Prov. 17:6; Isa. 49:15 - 16; Mal. 4:6; Col. 3:21; Eph. 6:1 - 4). Jesus doesn't contradict this. Instead, he's emphasizing the degree of the sacrifice you make when you love Jesus. Your love for Jesus can be viewed by your family, even your children, as hatred.
That's hard enough. But what makes it doubly difficult is the corrupting and reckless compromises many professing Christians make with the spirit of the age.
For instance:
The last line of Phil's tweet depicts perfectly the disconnect between these progressive religionists and sound Christian doctrine. Loving God, His truth, His statutes, His commands, His guidelines, and His wisdom will never make us love another person less, be it an enemy, neighbor, community member, or child.
The only way to truly love others is to first love God.
To the suffering parent who wrote this heartbreaking article: God is love (1 John 4:8). It's not just that God is "loving."
He is the definition, the standard, the meaning of love Himself.
Nothing is loving if it contradicts who He is and what He says. Therefore, this parent understands that the most "loving" thing to do for his son (or anyone) is to worship and honor God in spirit and truth (John 4:24).
The compromising Christians have made their personal (or cultural) definitions of "love" into a god. They have decided the attributes and qualities that are worthy of worship (in this case, full affirmation of personal, sexual, gender expression), they have fashioned a "god" that demands such, and they are worshipping it.
