You might think that “Queerly Beloved” and “Quirky, Queer and Wonderful” are the titles of Pride Month TV shows. These are actually two of the hymns of Songs for the Holy Other: Hymns affirming the LGBTQIA2S+ community.
Alongside a “queer hymnal”, we now have the “Queering the Bible” project. A ministry linked to the Presbyterian Church (USA) has launched a sixteen-part study that examines the Gospel of Mark as a way “to learn how we experience God as gay people and how we experience the Scriptures as as homosexual people”.
If you believe that God created us in his image as male and female (Genesis 1:27) and defined marriage as the covenant of a man and a woman (Genesis 2:21-24; Matthew 19 :4-6), how do you respond to Christians who endorse and celebrate LGBTQ ideology?
As I reported yesterday, at least thirteen companies have announced plans to help employees cross state lines to get abortions if the Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade. Across the country, businesses are celebrating Pride Month by participating in parades, putting rainbow logos on their emails and other correspondence, and contributing to LGBTQ causes.
If you work for a company that has chosen to help fund abortions or celebrates unbiblical sexual morality, how should you respond?
These are not speculative questions. As our culture moves further and further away from biblical morality, Christians are increasingly attacked for our biblical beliefs. And believers working in the secular market face increasing pressure to capitulate or resign.
Consider three biblical answers.
One: Know what you believe
The scriptures call us to “honor the Lord as holy, always being ready to defend before everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). Whether it is abortion, sexual morality or some other ethical challenge, it is vital that we know what we believe and Why we believe in.
For example, if you think abortion is morally wrong, how would you defend your position? If you think marriage is between a man and a woman, how would you respond to those who disagree? If they don’t want to consider Bible truth, how else would you persuade them?
It is incumbent upon all American Christians today to know and be able to uphold basic claims of biblical truth. Apologist William Lane Craig: “Many Christians do not share their faith with unbelievers simply out of fear. They are afraid that the non-Christian will ask them a question or raise an objection that they cannot answer. And so they choose to remain silent and thus hide their light under a bushel by disobeying the command of Christ.
“Training in apologetics is a tremendous boost to evangelism, because nothing inspires more confidence and boldness than knowing that you have good reasons for what you believe and good answers to typical questions and objections the unbeliever may raise.A solid training in apologetics is one of the keys to fearless evangelism.
(Three of my articles on defending life are here, here, and here. For help defending biblical marriage, go here. For ways to explain and defend the essential facts of the Christian faith, go here.)
Two: Know your “red lines”
In Jeremiah 29, the Lord calls his people to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile” (v. 7). In Romans 13 we are told to “be subject to the governing authorities” (v. 1). However, when the apostles were ordered by the authorities to stop preaching the gospel, they replied, “We can only speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).
Some problems are “hills to die on”, but others are not. If you work in a secular environment, you will undoubtedly face challenges to your faith that are not worth resigning and thus ending your influence with your colleagues. However, you may face other issues so serious that they require you to take a stand even at the risk of losing your job.
It is better to decide on these “red lines” in advance.
For example, I recently spoke with an executive from a secular hospital system. His hospital does not do elective abortions at this point, but he has decided that if their policy changes, he will quit. In contrast, he has decided to stay even though the hospital is celebrating Pride Month in a way that makes him uncomfortable, choosing to stay where his faith can have an impact in prayer on those he he influences.
Pray for the guidance of the Spirit as you “discern the will of God” in this regard (Romans 12:2).
Three: Speak and Act Redemptively
Earlier we noted Peter’s call to always be ready to “defend” our faith. The apostle continued, “But do it with meekness and reverence, having a good conscience, so that when they slander you, those who insult your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame” (1 Peter 3:15b-16). .
As I say so often, we are not called to be culture warriors but cultural missionaries. The other side is not the enemy. We are called to speak and act redeemingly, reflecting the light of Christ in the darkness of our time (Matthew 5:14-16) so that others will be drawn to our Lord and find joy and peace in Him. that their souls yearn to know.
Saint Chromatius (d. c. 407) was one of the most famous theologians of his time and a ministerial partner of Saint Ambrose and Saint Jerome. Responding to Jesus’ call for us to be the “light of the world,” he writes: “Since he is the Sun of righteousness, he rightly calls his disciples the light of the world. The reason is that through them, as through shining rays, he spread the light of self-knowledge over the whole world. For by manifesting the light of truth they have dispelled the darkness of error from the hearts of men.
He then warned, “If we fail to live in the light, we will, to our condemnation and that of others, veil and obscure by our unfaithfulness the light which men so desperately need. . . . Therefore, we must not hide this lamp of law and faith. Rather, we are to set him up in the Church, as on a candlestick, for the salvation of many, that we may enjoy the light of truth itself and that all believers may be enlightened.
How will you display the “light of truth” today?
