by Brian Hobbs | Apr 21, 2016
When North Carolina lawmakers passed the “Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, in schools and government buildings people must use the bathroom that corresponds with their ‘biological sex,’” proponents and critics of the law have been involved in a public debate.
Often talking past one another, the stakes of the debate were just raised this week, as popular retail giant Target issued a statement saying people who self-identify as transgendered persons could use whatever restroom or fitting room they wish.
Target’s statement (read the full version here) said in part, “Inclusivity is a core belief at Target. … In our stores, we demonstrate our commitment to an inclusive experience in many ways. Most relevant for the conversations currently underway, we welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.”
People I know, who do not want a biological male to be in the same dressing room or bathroom as women and girls, are cutting up their Target credit cards and swearing not to shop there again. Other people and individuals are applauding Target, and other corporations are sure to follow.
This public debate is getting ugly. People who support Target’s stance are accusing supporters of the “bathroom laws” as paranoid, discriminatory or worse.
Yet let’s look at some facts. Just last year, the University of Toronto had to walk back its policy of open gender-neutral bathrooms, after more than one voyeurism incident.
In the Christian worldview, we know that sex matters. God created men, and God created women (Genesis 1), and after sin came into the world, we have a fallen nature. The sexual drive is a powerful reality, and it must be checked and kept in proper boundaries.
For the better part of history, every civilization has known that bathing and dressing quarters must be separated by sex, because the sexual temptation to do wrong is so great.
In our age of political correctness and moral relativism, though, we are catering to a very small group of people and an ever-adapting worldview. Today, it’s bathrooms. Tomorrow, it could be dorm rooms. Where does it end?
Target’s policy is wrong and misguided, and there is a significant chance it will backfire in a way that even its supporters recognize, just as it has in Toronto and other places.
Until this grand social experiment with sexual identity ends, Christians will be in the minority view. Let’s pray that we can uphold the truth and decency, but in a way that when the experiment is over and the promises of the sexual revolution do not come fulfilled, that the church will be waiting to welcome them into the fold.
As Christians, we must be careful in our zeal for propriety and decency that we do not unnecessarily offend our neighbors who self-identify as transgendered. Just as God made male and female, He made us in His image and loves every sinner, every person in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Let’s not let Target’s tragic mistake get us off target from reaching our neighbors for Christ.
by Brian Hobbs | Apr 19, 2016
Where were you on April 19, 1995? For anyone living in Oklahoma at that time, we immediately remember. That was the tragic, fateful day in which notorious killer Timothy McVeigh exploded a bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, taking the lives of 168 people, including children, and injuring many more.
The heroic and faithful response of Oklahomans (and others) to the bombing gave birth to the term, The Oklahoma Standard. Today marks the 21st anniversary of the OKC bombing.
On April 19, 1995, I was a high school student sitting in driver’s ed class when I heard the news. I remember being confused by what was happening, then horrified. I wish I could say I had some important part in the response, but really, I merely followed the lead of many around me, in joining hearts in prayer for victims, families and first responders during the difficult days that followed.
Since the time of the event, I have been given a few small opportunities to remember, including running in the OKC Memorial Marathon (not the whole marathon, only half), touring the National Memorial Museum and helping to publish a 20th anniversary article series (here and here) with the Baptist Messenger.
Any efforts by you or me to remember are worthwhile and important. Yet, to borrow a phrase from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, “In a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”
In other words, the heroics in response to the terror at that time are so powerful, so important, they are beyond anything we can do.
And yet… let’s remember. Let’s pray. Let’s act to honor those who lost their lives and the families of the victims and others who were part of the response who, 21 years later, still inspire us. By God’s grace, may their memory live on, with hope from the Lord.
Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me (Isaiah 46:9).
by Brian Hobbs | Apr 14, 2016
What does the date April 15 bring to mind? For most, April 15 means tax day, the day on which our tax filings are due (though this year I am told April 18 is tax day).
History buffs, though, may recognize it as the date on which the Titanic sunk (April 15, 1912). If you have seen the Leonardo DiCaprio film Titanic, you might be led to think that many of the men on the ill-fated boat were selfish losers who tried to save their own skin.
History records show, to the contrary, that of those who perished in the tragic sinking of the Titanic, 80 percent of men died, while 25 percent of women died. “Women and children first,” was largely the mode of thinking in this age.
There was one man, however, who took it a step further. John Harper, a committed Christian believer with a zeal for evangelism and burden for lost souls separated from God also was on that boat. As the great vessel began to sink beneath the icy waters, he shouted “Let the women, children and the unsaved into the lifeboats!”
His story is recounted in a book titled “The One Year Book of Christian History,” which gives great examples of the people of God doing mighty things because of God.
Harper, years before the Titanic’s voyage, nearly drowned on another ocean vessel. Surviving the experience, he said, “The fear of death did not for one minute disturb me. I believed that sudden death would be sudden glory.”
That same confidence in Christ shone through on the fateful night of the Titanic’s sinking. One survivor shared that prior to slipping beneath the waters to his death, Harper shared the Gospel with him. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” said Harper, citing the book of Acts.
The man who heard the Gospel was picked up by a lifeboat and was rescued. Because of Harper, he repented from his sins and believed in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and was eternally rescued, saved unto eternal life.
When I compare Harper’s commitment to evangelism to that of mine, I am ashamed. In my worst moments, I am waiting for perfect conditions, for just the right moment, before I step out to share the words of life.
Harper, meanwhile, in life and in his death shared without ceasing and proved that God can use moments of disaster and desperation for his glory, if we will just be available.
by Brian Hobbs | Apr 7, 2016
Do you recall the movie “Freaky Friday,” where a mother and her daughter accidentally traded souls? The daughter’s soul switched places into her mother’s body, making a grown-up woman behave like a teenager. And the mother, in her daughter’s form, started acting grown up. The changing of personalities perplexed everyone.
According to an article about Erika Christakis, a former professor at Yale University and early-education expert, today’s culture has become a lot like that movie.
Christakis says, “Adults and children have reversed roles. Adults, she says, now act like children, reading children’s books and dressing like college students, while children have become overscheduled and hyper-pressured, their childhoods cut short. ‘Adults are paying attention to their own self-care with mindfulness and spa care and yoga, yet children are really suffering.’
“In her new book, ‘The Importance of Being Little,’ Ms. Christakis, 52, argues that giving children less downtime has made them more fragile. She fears that overburdening them with facts, figures and extracurricular activities has led to a decrease in their autonomy and resilience. Giving children free time to play with others, she says, allows them to learn how to solve problems and deal with conflicts.”
I have noticed this too. Everywhere we look, more and more, we see our culture wooing adults to act like children. Consider these examples:
- Entertainment venues are popping up, ones like Chuck-E-Cheeses, designed not for kids but for adults
- Coloring books designed just for adults
- Guys wearing pajamas with footies
- Corporations who host extreme games and juvenile activities for their employees, when no kids are present, under the banner of team building
- Businessmen and women wearing excessively casual clothing in the workplace
While these activities and trends are in good fun and may be mostly harmless, the trend toward a reverence (almost obsession) for youthfulness is concerning.
Christakis is not the only one to have made this observation about children and grown-ups reversing roles. In his 2004 essay, “The Perpetual Adolescent,” Joseph Epstein said, “The ideal almost everywhere is to seem young for as long as possible. The health clubs and endemic workout clothes, the enormous increase in cosmetic surgery (for women and men), the special youth-oriented television programming and moviemaking, all these are merely the more obvious signs of the triumph of youth culture.
When I say youth culture, I do not mean merely that the young today are transcendent, the group most admired among the various age groups in American society, but that youth is no longer viewed as a transitory state, through which one passes on the way from childhood to adulthood, but an aspiration, a vaunted condition in which, if one can only arrange it, to settle in perpetuity.”
Epstein traces this movement back to the publishing of “Catcher in the Rye” in the 1950s and the movements that followed, leading into the election of the youthful John F. Kennedy.
Again, youth is not a bad thing in itself. It’s the worship of youth that leads to trouble.
Epstein talks about it in more modern terms, including the collapse of Enron. “’The trouble with Enron,’ said an employee of the company in the aftermath of that corporation’s appalling debacle, ‘is that there weren’t any grown-ups.’”
What do we do about it?
- Revere our elders. We need grown-ups in charge. We need them in business. We need them in government. We need them in the church. The Bible says, “Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.” (Titus 2:2-8).
- Seek mentors. As a young adult, I want to be mentored by grown-ups. I want to learn from their wisdom and have my character shaped. I found that many of them were edified in the process. In the years that followed, I have been blessed to work and live around many exemplary grown-ups—both spiritually and emotionally. As Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore has said, in church life, the 27-year-old needs the 72-year-old, and the 72-year-old needs the 27-year-old.
- Don’t fear growing old. If your hair is turning grey and you are starting to age, don’t feel like you have to look young and act young to matter. As you are growing older, revere it don’t fear it. God gives us grown-ups for our own good.
In the end, we all—kids and adults alike—are better off when we act our own age.
by Brian Hobbs | Mar 31, 2016
Presidential candidate Donald Trump did it again. When he was asked by journalist Chris Matthews if women who get an abortion should be punished under the law, he implied they could and should.
Now almost all pro-life leaders and organizations believe, contrary to Trump, that it’s abortion providers, not women who get an abortion, who should face legal consequences and punishments.
Jesus said, “Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble. Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come” (Matt. 18:7).
The action of getting abortion is a sin, as is performing an abortion. But offering and performing abortions is a far worse sin. In Christian thought, all participants in sin bear guilt, but the tempter bears more guilt than the one who gave into the temptation.
Think of another issue like illegal drug use, which has implications for communities and society as a whole. The use of illegal drugs is against the law and should be, as is dealing drugs. The Christian response has been to anger toward drug dealer and a compassionate posture toward addicts and users. The law reflects this, reserving greater punishments for dealers than users. Again, both actions are a sin, but the one mass-providing the temptation is guilty of a greater sin.
Now back to Trump. Not all sins are considered crimes. In the case of those who perform abortions and those who obtain them, it is currently legal to do both in America (with certain restrictions).
Indeed what the pro-life movement is all about is making it illegal to perform an abortion in America. But it is as much about the ultimate goal of making abortion unthinkable, as Russell Moore has said.
Yes, we want to reduce the supply of abortion-on-demand through the force of law, but we also want to reduce the demand for abortion. Mr. Trump’s comments are a setback in both endeavors.
When he condoned the idea of punishing women who get abortion, it tainted all of the pro-life causes work toward policies that protect life. As someone who only recently claimed to be pro-life, he has shown multiple times and in multiple ways that he has not thought this through.
Then when he condoned the idea of punishing women who get an abortion (admittedly, he did back track some on this), it created a cloud of condemnation in the minds of people who might be vulnerable to the temptation of seeking an abortion. Even worse, it galvanized public opinion against the pro-life position, which had been trending our way.
Christians must not speak and act like Mr. Trump did. We are a people of conviction for righteousness, and we are a people of compassion. While we continue to work and pray with all our might toward the end of justice under the law for every person—born and unborn—we must leave that kind of ultimate judgment and punishment in the hands of God.
Here’s praying that Mr. Trump’s reckless comments do not permanently set back the pro-life cause in America, because after all, this is a life and death issue.