I am told that the words “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad” is a phrase spoken by Prometheus in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1875 poem, “The Masque of Pandora”. They seem to be a pretty apt description of life in the West in the 21st Century.
The Bible does give us something rather similar. As we find in Deuteronomy 28:28: “The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind.” Of course there is a particular context to this passage. Deut. 28 contains a list of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience for Yahweh’s covenant people Israel.
While the verse therefore primarily applies to ancient Israel, I think we can take a generic application for today as well. Certainly we see everywhere – primarily at the hands of the radical secular left – confusion, madness and blindness.
And it is a clear case of Isaiah 5:20: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” The Apostle Paul tells us similar things in Romans 1:18-32.
There he speaks of those who seek to defy God and rebel against him. Homosexuality is listed as a primary example of this. Paul then says in verses 28-29, “just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.”
Depravity and confusion of mind, moral blindness and madness – these are the hallmarks of a people who have been given over by God because of their immorality, rebellion and disobedience. And this best explains what we see happening in the sex wars.
In the 60s we had the radical feminist and homosexual revolutions, and all that nicely prepared the way for the radical transgender ideology being forced on us today. And talk about madness and confusion. When adults actually tell you that a person’s sex is simply a matter of preference and whim, and has nothing to do with our DNA, our anatomy, our biology, and with reality, then you know these people have gone full-on nutzo.
They have come to “believe a lie” as Paul also warns about (see 2 Thessalonians 2:11). Indeed, the madness of the trans activists is a direct result of rejecting God and his good and perfect design for us, including what it is to be a human being of either male or female sex.
This is rebellion against the created order and against the Creator. These militants are shaking their fists at God and telling him they will have none of his good and gracious plans for us, but they will rebel against it all, and listen instead to the father of lies (as Jesus describes the devil in John 8:44).
Rebellious autonomy, immorality and a disordered mind always go together. So when we see the activists telling us there are 50 or 100 or 200 genders, they are not just pushing a radical progressive agenda, they are actually pushing Satan’s agenda.
This is ultimately a spiritual war in other words. Sure, it is also a political, social, cultural and ideological war, so it needs to be fought on every level. We must be engaged in the war of ideas, the political debates, and the legislative fights, but we must also be involved in spiritual warfare to properly deal with all this.
Let me look a bit more at the passages we have been discussing, especially Romans 1. Theologians speak about “judicial abandonment”. By that they mean there comes a time when human wickedness and rebellion becomes so great that God simply abandons people to their sin and unbelief.
And it sure does not look pretty when that occurs. Let me cite a few authorities on this. In his expository commentary on Romans, Martyn Lloyd-Jones says this about the frightening process:
When mankind refuses to glorify God as God, when mankind does not thank Him and address Him and worship Him as it ought, and when, in its cleverness, it dismisses or throws Him out, what God does is to do exactly the same to mankind. There is a play on words in this twenty-eighth verse: “Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge”. God did not like to retain them – He gave them up, left them to themselves. They abandoned God, God abandoned them. That is what Paul is saying.
In other words, what we have here is an account of God’s judicial abandonment of man in sin. And you notice that He even abandoned them in their minds, which is the most terrifying and terrible thing of all. . . . The tragedy of man in the world is not only that he is debased in his conduct, he is debased in his mind. He cannot think straight. That is why he tries to justify these vile things, and tries to explain them in terms of biology or psychology and so on. . . . And when a man’s mind has become reprobate, there is no hope for him, there is nothing to appeal to!
Also worth quoting is R. C. Sproul:
Three times in this section we read about human beings being given up by God. They are given up to their vile passions, the lust of the flesh, and their reprobate minds. When God judges people according to the standard of his righteousness, he is declaring that he will not strive with mankind forever. We hear all the time about God’s infinite grace and mercy. I cringe when I hear it. God’s mercy is infinite insofar as it is mercy bestowed upon us by a Being who is infinite, but when the term infinite is used to describe his mercy rather than his person, I have problems with it because the Bible makes very clear that there is a limit to God’s mercy. There is a limit to his grace, and he is determined not to pour out his mercy on impenitent people forever. There is a time, as the Old Testament repeatedly reports, particularly in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, that God stops being gracious with people, and he gives them over to their sin.
The worst thing that can happen to sinners is to be allowed to go on sinning without any divine restraints. At the end of the New Testament, in the book of Revelation when the description of the last judgment is set forth, God says, ‘He who is unjust, let him be unjust still; he who is filthy, let him be filthy still’ (Rev. 22:11). God gives people over to what they want. He abandons them to their sinful impulses and removes his restraints, saying in essence, ‘If you want to sin, go ahead and sin.’ This is what theologians call ‘judicial abandonment.’ God, in dispensing his just judgment, abandons the impenitent sinner forever.
These are very shocking and confronting words. But they reflect a very real truth: persistent sin and rebellion will take you on a one-way road to perdition, and will result in all sorts of madness and depravity along the way. The gender bender agenda is just a part of this. And sadly it will simply get worse, unless things change big time in the West.
Let me finish on a pastoral note. We as Christians must do two things here: we must show compassion and respect for those caught up in gender confusion, especially our young people, and point them to good counsel and help. But at the same time we must resolutely resist the ideologues and militants who are so aggressively pushing all this.
As Peter LaBarbara once put it concerning a related issue: “Homosexuality is at its core a war of defiance against Nature and Nature’s God. Still, as Christians we must offer practicing homosexuals forgiveness through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As Jesus said, ‘Repent and believe the good news!’ (Mark 1:15).”
And in his brief book Transgender, Vaughan Roberts speaks to this two-fold approach as well:
We will never give in to a “yuk” reaction, because they are beautiful and precious creatures made in God’s image. But neither will we give way to the false notion that “they were made that way”. We are created but fallen. We are made but marred. And those who experience gender dysphoria, along with all of us, are both victims of the fall, and therefore to be sympathized with, and also, to some degree, sinners with disordered hearts who need to be both forgiven and rescued.
To properly engage here as God’s people, as Michael Brown often puts it, “we need hearts that are broken and backbones of steel.”
8 Replies to “Trans Sanity: Perversion, Confusion and a Depraved Mind”
Another good piece Bill. God had brought me, when I was anguishing during my quite time about the force of the battle, to this exact revelation – what we are seeing is the falling away. Satan is doing everything in his power to remove God from society using those who have been given over and no longer have a sound mind, to erode the Biblical foundation of society. The attack on gender is there to remove the Bible truth that says “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6), and against Marriage as it represents the relationship between Jesus and His bride.
Bill, if God has given one over to a reprobate mind, can they still receive the Gospel?
Thanks Nick. Good question. We know that God is forgiving and patient and gracious. But we also know that there is a limit to God’s graciousness. Whether Romans 1 is describing this could well be. We do know there is one unforgivable sin. Whether it equates to this is not fully clear.
The LGBTIQ goal is to change the meanings of words, so people can’t understand the Bible, or God’s truth as revealed through creation and everyday life. Same-sex couples can’t have a one-flesh union, sexual intercourse, procreation, or husband/wife living arrangement. Making the word ‘marriage’ have two different meanings, makes the word ‘marriage’ meaningless.
Jesus offers His perfect sacrifice to the Father till all is concluded, so we must join ourselves to Him by lives of total obedience faithfulness and prayer pleading, with Him, for those in danger of eternal damnation. Some may be eleventh hour people. All they need is the grace of profound repentance. I believe our sincere intercession, In union with Jesus, can effect miracles of grace. Consider how Moses pleaded with Almighty God for the apostate and idolatrous Israelites and God relented (Exodus ch. 32 v 7-14). We have God incarnate risen and glorified pleading for all poor sinners so there is hope for the worst of us till the very last breath. I believe the unforgivable sin is to refuse God’s mercy, to refuse to repent and so be eternally damned.
The word “homophobic” goes to the core of the issue. Acceptance of that term means you accept that people do not have the right to affirm decency and truth which is why that term and ones like it, must be absolutely and completely rejected. The term is an extremely clever piece of manipulation that has done a tremendous job of closing down debate. Any discussion of even minute problems with homosexuality, is immediately shut down as homophobic. This is, of course, how homosexuals and others must live their lives because any consideration of what is wrong with what they are doing is completely intolerable in their mind and thinking because it exposes and manifests what is wrong. The only way they can continue to live their lifestyle is to completely shut out all consideration of the facts concerning what they do and for this to be affirmed in law they require everyone else to do likewise. Hence no plebiscite and emotional blackmail is used to prevent it because there is, in fact, no other reason. This approach is, in fact, typical of the disorders involved.
The new secularists say they affirm “The Enlightenment” but can you imagine any thinker from that era accepting the new, relativist, existentialist ideas based on nothing but people’s opinions and imaginations? Surely the whole point of the enlightenment was to do with the age of reason and using facts, evidence, experimentation and review to support your position. Now what we have is a reversion to the ancient Roman model, before Christianity and the respect for truth and before the enlightenment, where all that matters is political and social power and the concept of truth does not exist and cannot even be discussed. This generation simply does not understand that when you set aside concepts such as natural justice, which you must do to affirm homosexual ‘marriage’ then all that is left is political will and this must inevitably lead to tyranny just as it did in Rome. This is the problem with the new secularism. Whereas previously secularism meant that all views were to be considered and the the path forward determined democratically and the courts were to accept the people’s judgement now the concept of secularism has been perverted to say that nothing can be truthfully considered because all views are apparently equal. This, of course, is the easy way out for judges and politicians but it is not a path that is amenable to democracy nor truth nor to the functioning of society.
One thing that may come from this could be that decent people are less willing to just go along with the political powers simply because it is the easy way and the lesser evil. The recent mini-revolt in the Liberal Party over extradition with China may be a spark of hope. Perhaps people are waking up to the fact that we have had things easy but that is no reason to be lulled into allowing evil to occur. Perhaps there is still some hope that people will actually stand up as people did in the past and not allow themselves to be manipulated into accepting evil.
Bill, are your aware that back in the late 1960,s the method of education was changed here in Australia in all state, private and religious schools. From a Judeo-Christian method, to a Secular Humanistic method and the father of this method was a John Dewey. As a parent of six children back in the early 1970’s, I became aware that our children were not being taught the way I thought they should be, both Spiritually and Academically, so this lead me to carry out some research as to what was happening.
This is a very serious matter because for the last 50 odd years, we are educating God out of the minds of our children.
Thanks Mel. Yes I have long been documenting all that in these 176 articles on education:
Another good piece Bill. God had brought me, when I was anguishing during my quite time about the force of the battle, to this exact revelation – what we are seeing is the falling away. Satan is doing everything in his power to remove God from society using those who have been given over and no longer have a sound mind, to erode the Biblical foundation of society. The attack on gender is there to remove the Bible truth that says “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6), and against Marriage as it represents the relationship between Jesus and His bride.
Bill, if God has given one over to a reprobate mind, can they still receive the Gospel?
Thanks Nick. Good question. We know that God is forgiving and patient and gracious. But we also know that there is a limit to God’s graciousness. Whether Romans 1 is describing this could well be. We do know there is one unforgivable sin. Whether it equates to this is not fully clear.
The LGBTIQ goal is to change the meanings of words, so people can’t understand the Bible, or God’s truth as revealed through creation and everyday life. Same-sex couples can’t have a one-flesh union, sexual intercourse, procreation, or husband/wife living arrangement. Making the word ‘marriage’ have two different meanings, makes the word ‘marriage’ meaningless.
Jesus offers His perfect sacrifice to the Father till all is concluded, so we must join ourselves to Him by lives of total obedience faithfulness and prayer pleading, with Him, for those in danger of eternal damnation. Some may be eleventh hour people. All they need is the grace of profound repentance. I believe our sincere intercession, In union with Jesus, can effect miracles of grace. Consider how Moses pleaded with Almighty God for the apostate and idolatrous Israelites and God relented (Exodus ch. 32 v 7-14). We have God incarnate risen and glorified pleading for all poor sinners so there is hope for the worst of us till the very last breath. I believe the unforgivable sin is to refuse God’s mercy, to refuse to repent and so be eternally damned.
The word “homophobic” goes to the core of the issue. Acceptance of that term means you accept that people do not have the right to affirm decency and truth which is why that term and ones like it, must be absolutely and completely rejected. The term is an extremely clever piece of manipulation that has done a tremendous job of closing down debate. Any discussion of even minute problems with homosexuality, is immediately shut down as homophobic. This is, of course, how homosexuals and others must live their lives because any consideration of what is wrong with what they are doing is completely intolerable in their mind and thinking because it exposes and manifests what is wrong. The only way they can continue to live their lifestyle is to completely shut out all consideration of the facts concerning what they do and for this to be affirmed in law they require everyone else to do likewise. Hence no plebiscite and emotional blackmail is used to prevent it because there is, in fact, no other reason. This approach is, in fact, typical of the disorders involved.
The new secularists say they affirm “The Enlightenment” but can you imagine any thinker from that era accepting the new, relativist, existentialist ideas based on nothing but people’s opinions and imaginations? Surely the whole point of the enlightenment was to do with the age of reason and using facts, evidence, experimentation and review to support your position. Now what we have is a reversion to the ancient Roman model, before Christianity and the respect for truth and before the enlightenment, where all that matters is political and social power and the concept of truth does not exist and cannot even be discussed. This generation simply does not understand that when you set aside concepts such as natural justice, which you must do to affirm homosexual ‘marriage’ then all that is left is political will and this must inevitably lead to tyranny just as it did in Rome. This is the problem with the new secularism. Whereas previously secularism meant that all views were to be considered and the the path forward determined democratically and the courts were to accept the people’s judgement now the concept of secularism has been perverted to say that nothing can be truthfully considered because all views are apparently equal. This, of course, is the easy way out for judges and politicians but it is not a path that is amenable to democracy nor truth nor to the functioning of society.
One thing that may come from this could be that decent people are less willing to just go along with the political powers simply because it is the easy way and the lesser evil. The recent mini-revolt in the Liberal Party over extradition with China may be a spark of hope. Perhaps people are waking up to the fact that we have had things easy but that is no reason to be lulled into allowing evil to occur. Perhaps there is still some hope that people will actually stand up as people did in the past and not allow themselves to be manipulated into accepting evil.
Bill, are your aware that back in the late 1960,s the method of education was changed here in Australia in all state, private and religious schools. From a Judeo-Christian method, to a Secular Humanistic method and the father of this method was a John Dewey. As a parent of six children back in the early 1970’s, I became aware that our children were not being taught the way I thought they should be, both Spiritually and Academically, so this lead me to carry out some research as to what was happening.
This is a very serious matter because for the last 50 odd years, we are educating God out of the minds of our children.
Thanks Mel. Yes I have long been documenting all that in these 176 articles on education:
https://billmuehlenberg.com/category/education/