Scripture says that pride comes before a fall (Prov. 16:18). In America, pride comes before July—for an entire month. I don’t know how your June was, but mine was permeated with a steady stream of multi-colored imagery. It’s the time of year when companies, sports teams, and politicians change their branding to incorporate the new religious icon of our time, the rainbow.
I know this month-long celebration of sin can be discouraging for you. It discourages me. It’s sad to watch our culture glorify the rejection of God’s design for human sexuality and for human flourishing. On top of that, it’s so in your face. Even going to the grocery store requires maneuvering a minefield of rainbow propaganda.
Staying discouraged won’t help us. What we need instead is clear thinking from a biblical perspective to help us move away from discouragement and toward compassion. Here are three observations that might help.
First, Pride Month confirms Romans 1. Paul gives us a compact explanation of what happens when societies reject God. They become futile in their thinking, they become foolish in their hearts, and they exchange worship of God for worship of idols. Then God gives them over to homosexual sin (Rom. 1:21–27). Sound familiar?
Humans are worshipers. It’s a trait inherent in all of us. We cannot help but worship. But who or what will we worship? According to Romans 1, there are only two options: the Creator or the creation. When people reject the Creator, then something in his creation fills the void.
Sex is one of the most popular idols of all time. Our culture is obsessed with it. Pride Month is not merely the worship of sex, though. June has become a month-long celebration of sexual identities completely contrary to God’s design. All hail the idol of LGBTQIA2S+. Futile, foolish, idol worship—Romans 1 proven true again.
Second, Pride Month is nothing new. Pagans have confiscated calendar months before.
Roman Emperor Julius Caesar instituted huge reforms to the calendar. Proud of his effort, he decided to rename his birth month after himself, changing the name from Quintilis to Julius. We call it July.
Not to be outdone, Caesar Augustus renamed a month after himself, too. Sextilis has ever since been called August. Just when you thought you were done with month-long celebrations of pagan idols, you now have two more months to go.
My point is that the identification of pagan rulers, pagan causes, and pagan idols with calendar months is nothing new. Pride Month is exactly what prideful human beings do when they deny their Creator. They mark the passage of time with the thing their hearts worship—usually themselves.
Third, Pride Month can’t compete with Jesus. Jesus is not merely celebrated once a year on Christmas or even twice a year if we include Easter. Jesus is celebrated every Sunday—the Lord’s Day—as Christians worldwide worship Christ and commemorate his resurrection. But there’s more.
The Gregorian calendar, which most of the world accepts, has Jesus at the very center of time. When I was a kid, we called it BC (before Christ) and AD (anno Domini, Latin for “in the year of our Lord”). Even with the current, religiously neutral BCE (before common era) and CE (common era), the world’s calendar is still centered on Jesus’ life.
Jesus himself tells us that all time is about him: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13). Jesus is responsible for the beginning of history, and his second coming will be the conclusion of history. As much as people rage against him, Jesus is Lord over all the days and all the ages of mankind.
With these points in mind, we should be less discouraged with the dates of pagan worship and more concerned with the impending judgment our calendar days are leading to.
There is a day coming when Christ will dominate not only the calendar, but also the culture: “So that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:10–11). Not Caesar, not sex, and not identity—Jesus is Lord.
There is a day coming when people will no longer suppress the truth, but instead they’ll be overwhelmed by the truth. This should move us to compassion for those who worship created things instead of the Creator.
Let’s spend the time we have left directing people to the Creator of time. We have the message of reconciliation that Pride Month worshipers need to humbly believe before time runs out.
— Robby Lashua, Apologist at Stand to Reason, Don’t Be Discouraged by Pride Month, June 29, 2022
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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“We have the message of reconciliation that Pride Month worshipers need to humbly believe before time runs out.” So he said, but he left out…”or if you refuse our reconciliation, then God is going to burn you forever hahahaha!”
Something tells me this guy is a virgin.
I do hope so Ange, I shudder to think of him parenting small kids.
Mr Lashua you might even gain a teensy bit of credibility for your fantasy religion if you told us that x-tians should be doing something about the real major evils in the world, like injustice, hunger, war and climate disasters. Doesn’t your god have some hotline message to tell you about these things? Is he really bothered that, having created human beings with sexual needs and desires, some choose to share a bedroom with the one, or ones they truly love, despite your personal disapproval? And apparently he voyeuristically watches every sinful act of masturbation in the world. Perhaps that’s what’s keeping him too busy to come back, as you claim he’s gonna one day. That and his having to weep tears at rainbow decor in supermarkets!
So, offering compassion means go out and witness to non Christian? I have an even easier idea, compassion can be simply making sure that whatever you do in your christian life does not bring pain and suffering to non christians. All the compassion I need from christians is to leave me to live and celebrate as I desire, and I will leave them to live life how they desire. Why is that so hard for christians??
That question would bring us to the “feeling oppressed by certain people’s existence” scenario.
If, as Lashua claims,, Jesus is “celebrated every Sunday,” and Pride can’t compete with Jesus (talk about false equivalencies!), why is he so bothered by celebrations of Pride?
He trots out the old canard that Pride is “in your face.” It’s just another variation of the whine that gaya are “ostentatious “ or “obnoxious “ because they have the cheek to express their affection publicly: something straight people have been doing from time immemorial.
Ange—I was thinking the same thing. Or, perhaps, he’s not out of the closet. Either way, or even if neither is true, I hope he doesn’t decide to have kids any time soon.
Robby’s deity is really obsessed with sex, isn’t he? Straight sex, gay sex, self-care sex, you name it. I bet Robby thinks that in every Christian straight married sex encounter it’s a 3-some, with Jesus there in the thick of it.
These fundies are so obsessed with policing sex! It’s ridiculous.
These guys really do not grasp being gay at all. They are so obsessed with the actual sex acts, they seem to be incapable of grasping that it is a brain issue. There are people who’s brains are wired gay as well as other parts of the sexuality spectrum. Most total gays are incapable of finding the opposite gender desirable. This is why they will lose this argument.
All sexual orientations are normal. Gay, straight, bi, sometimes one thing, sometimes another…absolutely normal. This is how humans roll. As a species, it all seems to work for us very well. That some orientations are less likely to lead folks to have children than others is a complete non-starter for us statistically. We’d do better to not reproduce like rabbits.
(There are some sexual INCLINATIONS that are troublesome because, and only because, they require non-consenting partners. Sometimes they require victims who can be hurt EXTREMELY badly–ask MJ–and so most of us are rightly disgusted by them. In general our society is too reluctant to bring such people to justice, or to even believe the stories of their victims, because in other parts of their lives they are often people that others look up to. These evil behaviors have NOTHING to do with the normal spectrum of sexual orientation, but anti-LGBTQ people are often willfully ignorant of that fact.) /rant
Me thinks he doth protest too much about minefields of colorful merchandise. Someone should buy him the absolutely fabulous fisher price little people Rupaul set. Unfortunately this person should get s little perspective on life, there are plenty of mainstream organizations willing to sell crappy christian merchandise year round not to mention the smorgasbord of nativity sets available for 3 months straight starting sometime in September. There are people in the world also who have to navigate literal minefields just to get basic necessities and this guy is complaining about having to explain the gays exist because his kids saw a rainbow flag at target. No wonder evangelicals are disliked.
Robby Lashua looks like he gives GREAT blowjobs.