Shine!

‘Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and His glory appears over you’ (Is. 60:1, 2).

The Kennedy Center Honors this year, lauding five artists for lifetime achievement, were so dominated by LGBTQ+ entertainers that I thought the Human Rights Campaign had shanghaied the whole affair. It’s not just the tedium of Billy Porter wearing a flouncy dress—it’s our national leaders (many present) propagating sexual disorder by feigning adoration of persons enslaved by it.

We get the fall out. ‘Burt’, my neighborhood barista, wants to be called ‘them’. I would honor that request only if asked to do a deliverance for the slew of demons captivating her. She’s a petite young woman with tattooed black rings around her eyes and shrouded by a spirit of death. She personifies confusion while everyone around her high fives the ‘new’ creation. Like ‘Amy’, the Jeopardy champ now honored for being the most ‘winning’ of all female contestants. Only she’s not a woman. Just one look: we see a man in make-up and fright-wig. Still, everyone applauds and pretends that trying to change one’s sexual birthright is laudable.

We need to cry out for teens like Linda, a 16-year-old student in my daughter’s classroom who boasted that she had kissed 5 girls that day then scowled: ‘Keep the Church out of my crotch.’ Darkness. An assault on womanhood. On personhood. Utterly demonic. This is not about flesh-and-blood but about the enemy of our souls taking a generation captive while we who know better look on, silently screaming.

Epiphany prods Christ-adorers. The Magi invite us to arise radiant and show His light to those living in darkness. Only true worshippers, ignited within and flaring out, will break the silence. Will we shine in this hour? Will we declare the better Word of this Jesus who made us and who alone has authority to define us?

Gender muddle demands the gleam of faithful Christians. Our Infant King has entrusted us with a Kingdom that breaks strongholds of confusion. We mirror that clarity by stirring up the truth that there is only one sexual ‘orientation’: to honor ‘the dignity of what is intrinsically masculine and feminine’ in our fellows (TOB 131:4). Period. What He asks of us, He enables by the power of Almighty mercy.

Our bodies tell the truth. We who own this truth have a responsibility. We must never stop flinching at the deformation of human sexual dignity in persons around us. And we must never stop seeking our Jesus to give us authority to bring that Kingdom of clarity and transformation to them, in wisdom and piercing tenderness. Persons may disdain us for it and dodge us entirely. That’s God’s business. We are simply called to stir up the truth of the One to whom we bow and to be faithful, loving messengers of His destiny for every human being.

Epiphany 2022: God is raising up a countercultural tribe of Christ-adorers who reveal His lovely chaste face to an adulterous generation.