Pride goes before the Fall

Proverbs 16:18 (ESV)

18  Pride goes before destruction, 

and a haughty spirit before a fall.

A Month of Destruction

I use Google Calendar for nearly everything. I use it to schedule meetings with church members, to schedule date night with my wife, to block off when I’m going to cut the grass, and even when I’m going to pay certain bills.

Yet a few years ago, I noticed that a new event popped up on my Google Calendar. This was an event I didn’t program into my phone or desire to see on my calendar. On June 1, I saw a new American holiday: “First Day of LGBTQ+ Pride Month.”

LGBTQ+ Pride month is a month of insanity. It is a month where Romans 1 is fulfilled right in front of us. And you, no matter who you are, cannot avoid its increasing influence on every facet of society.

Enter a Tractor Supply in March and they will ask you if you want to buy all female chicks or if you want to take the chance to wind up with a rooster. In June, you can see the same Tractor Supply Company, a company that exists to sell stuff to people who run farms, heavily involved in the pride activities in a nearby Nashville community. The people who can tell the difference between a male and female chicken can’t see that people made in the image of God are made distinctly male and female.

Our culture has exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things (Rom. 1:23).

What can Christians seeking to be faithful do? Might I offer three suggestions:

1) Expose Lies.

Which lies? There are three I think worth exposing.

1) Expose the lie that Pride is a virtue.

Augustine is noted as the source of the following quip. Someone once asked him “What are the most important Christian virtues?” He responded, “The first is humility. The second, humility. And the third, humility.”

Pride month is a month of vice. But the lie of our culture is that vices are virtues as long as they are sincere. Pride screams “This is who I am and you must love me!”

It is amazing that no relationship in your life actually works that way. My children don't get to act any way they want, even though I love them deeply. In fact, my love for them motivates me to discipline them and seek to change their behaviors as the Lord changes their hearts.

And if you are married, and you say something really stupid to your spouse, and you respond with “Well that’s just the way I am, you have to love me the way I am,” I expect your marriage will not be very harmonious very often. Who wants to be married to someone like that?

You should change. You must change. And in fact, you are changing, whether you want to or not. The question is whether you are changing to be better or worse. Unrestrained pride ensures we become the worst version of ourselves possible, for pride never sees anything as needing to be improved. Rather, when we are prideful we imagine that we have already become the best version of ourselves.

Let me remind you that the Lord abhors pride.

Psalm 31:23 (ESV)

23  Love the Lord, all you his saints! 

The Lord preserves the faithful 

but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride.

The first problem with Pride Month is not actually sexual sin. The problem is good old-fashioned pride. And the problem with pride is that I’ve got a bad case of it, you’ve got a bad case of it, and so does everyone you’ll meet from now until eternity.

Might Christians be the first to repent of our pride and seek to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God (1 Pet 5:6). In June, the first lie we must combat is that pride is a virtue.

2) Expose the lie that men and women are interchangeable.

Men and women are distinct. You cannot swap a man for a woman and expect no change in outcome. For a man to love a woman is for him to love someone who is remarkably similar to himself and at the same time altogether distinct. These were surely Adam’s thoughts when he remarked that Eve was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh (Gen 2:23).

Recall that Adam was given a job before Eve came along. He was given the job of naming every animal. Nevertheless, we notice in Genesis 2 that Adam also names the woman, for she was taken out of man. Additionally, in Genesis 3, Adam calls his wife “Eve,” for she was the mother of all living. Adam bestows on his wife the highest honor that could be bestowed on any created being by another created being by giving her a name. Adam and Eve were the crown jewel of creation and Adam honored his wife by her name and the manner in which he named her. They were a team made up of two equal but different creations. Both genders are indescribably good in God’s eyes. Both genders are complete persons in God’s sight. And yet, neither one is interchangeable with the other.

7th grade biology tells you that one must have a mommy and a daddy to have a baby. But if you’ve ever observed homosexual couples, it doesn’t seldom happen that lesbians remain feminine or gay men remain masculine. It is rare to see two lesbians both embodying femininity or two gay men continuing to embody masculinity. Rather, gay men regularly embody feminine characteristics and lesbian women often embody masculine ones. It can be observed in lesbian couples that one looks much more like a man and generally takes on that role while the other presents as more feminine. To be fair, I am sure that there are exceptions to this generalization. Yet it is clear that even though no stated “roles” are implicit in a same-sex relationship, people often fall into those roles, though denying they even exist. It is almost as if a gender binary is inescapable.

This is precisely the point. The inescapable cannot be escaped. If being a lesbian means you love women, why do lesbians often act masculine? Let us contend that it is because men and women are not interchangeable. This leads to a third lie that needs to be confronted.

3) Expose the lie that the “LGB” and the “T” are on the same team.

Lesbians, gays, and bisexual people all affirm that there are two genders and that you are either attracted to the same gender (homo) or that you are attracted to both of them (bi).

Transgenderism, on the other hand, affirms that there is no such thing as a clearly defined gender. Transgender people affirm, not simply that men can become women, but that people can be asexual, pansexual, or really whatever they want to be. An article I perused while writing this post informed me that there are 68 different terms for gender expression. God help us.

Nevertheless, even that article will tell you that these terms depend upon nothing more than a subjective feeling or emotion. The transgender movement declares no one was born with any specific sexual nature and you can choose what gender you want to be. Conversely, gay and lesbian people affirm that no one chooses to be gay or lesbian. Rather, they often insist that they were born this way.

To further cloud the issue, consider that someone who has “detransitioned” or “converted” from a sexual perversion to a heteronormative way of life often receives nothing but contempt from the community that once accepted them. Consider this interview if you are curious about what I mean.

I say this to explain that the movement not only has no moral basis, it also has no logical basis. The “T” threatens to undo whatever the “LGB” has sought to accomplish. And yet, the movement is codified in our apostate culture as LGBTQ+ Pride Month. But consider that the LGB and the T are not even close to being on the same side of the issue. They are diametrically opposed to one another! One group of letters insists on a gender binary (hence “bisexual”) while the “T” denies such a binary actually exists. The only thing that the “T” has in common with the rest of the acronym is depravity. They don’t share any other common ground when it comes to anthropology.

As an extreme example, lumping all these things together makes about as much sense as celebrating the KKK on MLK Jr’s birthday. If that thought sounds appalling, perhaps we’re on the right track.

We must expose lies as we attempt to navigate the world of pride. Many Christians have sought to do this. However, I fear the area we have fallen short is not in our ability to spot the error but rather in our ability to prescribe an antidote. Allow me to propose a remedy to the disease.

2) Aspire to walk in the Light.

1 John 1:7 (ESV)

7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

Years ago, I heard that the statistics for divorce outside the church were exactly the same as the statistics inside the church. It is very hard for us to advocate that traditional marriage is the best way to be human when Christians don’t take traditional marriage very seriously!

Consider three ways we might walk in the light regarding marriage:

1) Prioritize your marriage.

Does your marriage look like a better alternative than the arrangements of the LGBTQ culture? Or is your marriage a drag, something you put up with for the good of the kids while you seek fulfillment elsewhere?

Marriage is hard. My father used to tell me often that marriage was the hardest thing any man would ever do. My dad was absolutely right.

And yet, marriage is absolutely one of the best things you will ever do. Marriage is a picture of the gospel (Eph. 5:25-33).

Do you want a radical way you can fight back against the onslaught of LGBTQ everything in your world? Husbands, do everything in your power to ensure that your wife knows how valuable she is and how much you care about her. You should live with her in an understanding way (1 Pet. 3:7). As Christ has loved and forgiven and given up himself for you in the gospel, so should you seek to love, forgive, and give up of yourself for your wife.

Wives, consider how submission to your husband is a better alternative to the model given to you by the world. Radical feminism liberates no one. Consider how loving your husband well and serving him well will actually be better for you than any other alternative arrangement.

But both the husband and the wife must have a deep sense of their own personal sin and the grace of God if that marriage is to work in the long term. At the end of the day, the only thing the best husband in the world has earned for himself is hell. The same is true for a wife. Apart from Christ, a marriage cannot function very well for very long.

Consider that God has joined you and your spouse together by his good and sovereign will. Based on this truth, make death your only alternative to marriage. Die to yourself every day as you seek to honor your marriage. Because if we don’t honor marriage, the culture will attempt to steal it from us. In fact, the takeover has already begun.

The culture is radically selfish in its arrangements. Consider how a Christian marriage is distinct from the ways of the culture. Also, consider how much marriage improves your life all the way around, whether that be financially, emotionally, or spiritually. Brad Wilcox, a sociologist who studies marriage, makes this exact point in his new book Get Married. In fact, he demonstrates that both men and women who get married and stay married are happier, wealthier, and generally more satisfied than their unmarried counterparts. Consider his remarks in this short article if you don’t believe me. If you want to fight back against the crazy culture, treat your marriage like it is the best thing going for you apart from Christ. Because apart from Christ, it is.

2) Be a man (or a woman).

To be clear, being a man or a woman has always been culturally conditioned to some extent. In Scotland, men wear kilts. In Tennessee, men should not, generally speaking. Nevertheless, androgyny does not glorify God.

Men, do something manly. Women, do something feminine. And while you do such things, glory in the fact that you are made a man or a woman to the glory of God. As a general rule, men should pioneer. Women should cultivate.

A man will often have to do the hard work so the woman can do the beautiful work. That is typically the way things go. For a biological example, consider how a child is conceived. A man is involved in the process only for a short while. Then begins the 9-month wonder of a woman bringing to perfection that which was begun by their union. While it takes a mother and a father to create life, the work of the two in that creation is vastly different.

If I may use an agricultural analogy, it often seems that men till the ground while women tend the ground. A man will break up the hard ground so that it can be used. The woman will work to use it.

The man can carry all the groceries inside the house in one single trip so the woman can take many short voyages to the pantry to prepare dinner for the family. The man will change the oil in the car so the woman can drive where she needs to go to accomplish what is necessary for herself and the kiddos. The man can build the bedframe while the woman puts clean sheets on the bed.

To be perfectly clear, different marriages are different, so I need not prescribe every activity of the man and every one of the woman. However, I think the analogy bears itself out, generally speaking.

Anthony Esolen makes a good case for why the strength of man is necessary for the flourishing of men and women in his book No Apologies. But we must be careful in our prescriptions of what is manly or not, for I think masculinity is something that is generally felt rather than it is something quantifiable. It is caught more often than it is taught. Truly masculine men really don’t need to announce their masculinity to anyone else. A bear doesn’t need to announce he has entered the woods and yet there is no doubt about who rules the forest. Masculine men exert a quiet strength, a strength which is to be respected silently more often than it is broadcast publicly.

If we’re going to make any lasting influence on the culture, men must become men once again, freeing women to become the women they have always desired to be.

3) Treat children like the blessings that they are.

The birth rate in our country has fallen below what is needed to replace the population. This means that when someone who is 30 is 60, and they want to go to a coffee shop to read a book or chat with a friend, there will be no one to work the cash register. Fast food joints will close down as there are no teenagers to work behind the counter. Everyone will always be hiring and there will be no one to work, because there is no work force, because no one had children in their 20s and 30s. Businesses will shutter. Society will change. All because people stopped prioritizing children.

Pour your life out for your kids. The Bible only ever describes children in one way: Blessings. Children are expensive, inconvenient, loud, and often snotty, but they are the best thing going in this culture.

And the one thing that LGBTQ people cannot have is children. This is simply a logical fact.

If we are to recover any sanity for the sake of what it means to be a human being, it will be done in our children’s generation. So if you have children, thank God for that blessing and treat children as the blessing that they are. And know that they will shape the culture in the coming years.

Perhaps the answer to a culture that has lost its mind about what it means to be a human being is as simple as love, marriage, and the baby carriage.

3) Take heart, for Jesus has overcome the world.

The LGBTQ+ revolution has an expiration date. There will be no pride parades on the streets of gold or outside the pearly gates. In heaven, our bodies will be redeemed, but they will still be gendered. After all, Jesus was still a man after his resurrection. The Mediator is not androgynous but is a man full of glory and sinless perfection.

And the man has a Bride, who has been purified by her husband’s work to redeem her from all of her sin and shame. The people of God will feast at the marriage supper of the Lamb, knowing that what Jesus has done for his Bride is far better than all the lesser things the world would have ever afforded to her.

So take heart, friend. Pride month ends on June 30. But once the marriage of the Lamb begins, it will have no ending.

If you have drunk deeply of the cultural waters and thought affirmingly about the lies of the LGBTQ agenda, you can come to Christ. Every Christian was once a rebel against God. There is no sinner so great that Christ cannot redeem. And if you think no one else would have you, know that Jesus will. He is a great savior to great sinners, of whom I am the chief.

Hear the words of our Lord:

Revelation 22:17 (ESV)

17 The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.

Are you thirsty? Only the living water will truly satisfy. And the Lord Jesus gives it without any price. Though its value is infinite, he freely gives to all who will come.

So rather than pride, take a drink of humility, and taste and see that the Lord is good.

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Further resources:

My intention in this post was to deal more with ideas and concepts than “boots on the ground” practical application. If you are still looking for more practical ideas on remaining faithful in a wild world, consider some of these resources:

“A Time for Courageous Love” - Rosaria Butterfield

The Holy Sexuality Project - Christopher Yuan

True Compassion and LGBTQ Weddings - Ligonier Ministries

The Masculine Mandate: God’s Calling to Men - Richard Phillips