The Progressive Sexual Agenda

According to the Progressive agenda, any form of sex should be taken as casually as eating a Big Mac. Consistent with this vision:

• A new sex education program says that consensual sex between 13-year-olds should be seen as normal, and describes masturbation and attempting to touch other children's genitals is "a safe and healthy sexual development" for children as young as five.

• For 13 to 17-year-olds, green behaviors include "obscenities and jokes within the current cultural norm," "having sexual or non-sexual relationships," "sexual activity including hugging, kissing, holding hands," and "consenting oral and/or penetrative sex with others of the same or opposite gender who are of similar age and developmental ability."

• The final safe option listed for this age group is "choosing not to be sexually active."

• In the newborn-to five-year-old age group the "traffic light tool" gives a green light to "playing with own genitals," "attempting to touch…other children's genitals," and "attempting to touch…breasts, bottoms or genitals of adults."

The welfare of children must have been the prime concern of these educators, yes? Surely, much research must have paved the way to such radical and progressive programs. Certainly, the experts would never subject children to influences that could possibly destabilize, confuse, and even destroy the children along with their familial relationships. It is totally unthinkable that they would have embarked on such a radical course without the support of years of testing the effects of such programs on children!

Sadly, the unthinkable has become highly thinkable in Western society. It is not that there aren’t voices of sanity:

• Dr. David Paton, a professor of industrial economics at Nottingham University and a leading expert in teenage pregnancy rates, has consistently warned that explicit sex education and easy availability of contraceptives, including the morning-after pill, has not led to a decrease in teen pregnancies or abortions, but has led to a staggering increase in STD's because of an increase in sexual activity in children.

• Paton told the education select committee that he has a "big issue" with the guidelines in the "tool" suggesting that sexual relations among 13-to-17-year-olds are a "safe and healthy development."

• "The advice is both misleading and potentially dangerous,” Paton said. "There’s an awful [lot] of evidence that early sexual activity is associated with all sorts of adverse outcomes – including early pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, but also mental health issues and adverse academic outcomes.”

What then drives this radical agenda to normalize all forms of sexuality, even among the youngest and most vulnerable? I think that the answer can be summed up in one word – projection.

We are morally wired to know right from wrong. This includes sexual behavior. Therefore, we feel guilty when we act wrongly sexually. However, it is easier to blame society for our guilt and shame than to blame ourselves. Therefore:

•  “It is society that is wrong. It is our puritanical beliefs that are the source of my inhibitions, sexual dysfunction, and porn-addiction shame and guilt. Society must therefore be changed!”

There is little consideration of the fact that, perhaps, we are constituted in such a way that we need to listen to our conscience for guidance. However, we reject this guidance in favor of an unfounded hope.

The New Secularism and the Death of a Nation

We will live or die, sink or swim, according to our beliefs. The progressive is poised to remove religion from the public, arguing that this has always been a secular nation. However, the “secularism” of today bears little resemblance to the secularism that had once made this nation great. A few quotations might bring this fact home.

In his Notes on Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, arguably the most un-Christian of our Founding Fathers, observed:

• Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not violated but with his wrath?”

Instead of removing or marginalizing our Judeo-Christian foundations, Jefferson, along with the other Founding Fathers, insisted that these were necessary for the preservation of our liberties.

His words were prophetic. As we have seen the weakening of the influence of the church and the strengthening of those who hate it, we have also seen the removal of our liberties by a new militant and secular religion. Here are just a few of many examples:

1. Christians fired for expressing their ideas about marriage, even outside of their job.

2. Mayors threatening to not allow businesses to come into their towns because of the owners’ beliefs about marriage.

3. Women threatened with dismissal from graduate counseling programs because they expressed disapproval of same-sex marriage.

4. Businesses fined, the owners required to go for “re-education,” and threatened with closure because they wouldn’t perform acts that their faith forbade.

It had been the vision of secularism to allow everyone a seat-at-the-table with free expression. In contrast, the “secularism” of today forbids Christians a seat. Instead, they must conform to a new religion if they want to be heard or even to work.

This “secularism” claims to be neutral, unlike other religions, and maintains that the “separation between church and state” requires that the Christian voice be kept silent in the public. However, this hadn’t been the thinking of our leading secularist, Jefferson:

• No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be.

Historian Robert Royal affirms that the secularism of the Founders was never supposed to impose a new monopolistic religion:

• The generation that led the American Revolution knew clearly that a secular government designed to take care of secular affairs did not mean a society in which secularism was in effect the official religion. Church and state were separated so that each could do it job better. (The God that did not Fail, 207)

In his Farewell Address, President George Washington warned that the nation’s welfare depended on its religion:

• Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports… Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for prosperity, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Meanwhile, today’s secularists are naively convinced that morality and law can easily be maintained apart from the roots that had sired them.

Washington’s words have also proved prophetic. As the Christian faith has been degraded in the West, especially beginning with the early sixties, crime, drug use, depression, and loss of economic vitality escalated.

The new “secularists” have also rejected other lessons. They are convinced that our social problems are best addressed by big, powerful and over-reaching government – the very thing that the Founders had feared most.

• That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness… But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. (Declaration of Independence)

How long can a free people endure “a long train of abuses and usurpations… to reduce them under absolute Despotism” to a new and militant religion? How can a vast segment of a nation tolerate coercion designed to force them to violate their most precious faith? How can this not produce contempt for the government that coerces them in this unjust manner?

A Letter to a Progressive Universalist

You claim that:

• The God who created us loves us so much that he/she/it would never subject any of her creation to an endless hell. This is just a primitive and barbaric idea.

However, if this idea is so “primitive and barbaric,” why then have all societies made use of punishment, sometimes even the most extreme form – capital punishment? Not only do we punish, but we also regard such “barbaric” behavior as just, even cleansing. Often, it is only punishment that is able to satisfy and enable us to move on. If we are supposed to model ourselves after your god’s “love,” then we shouldn’t punish. Instead, we should fire the judges and police and close down the prisons.

You admit that some form of punishment is necessary. However, if it is necessary for human earthly society, perhaps it is also necessary for heavenly society! From where then does your confidence arise that there will be no future judgment of humanity?

Also, you want to dismiss the twin concepts of justice and injustice as if they are irrelevant. In doing this, God then is deprived of any just rationale to give the unrepentant what they deserve – whether eternal death or eternal torment. Instead, according to you, all deserve eternal life.

While you reject the idea that God will judge, you stand firm on the idea that God will love and give everyone a free pass into heaven. How can you retain the moral absolute of love and not judgment? Instead, it seems that these two concepts are inseparable. If God loves, He will judge, if only to remove the evil from the midst of those He wishes to protect.

To take this reasoning one step further, if God is not just and righteous, it is difficult to account for the suffering in this world – natural and man-made. If God was just love and not punitive, why would He allow suffering? Why wouldn’t He have stopped a Stalin or a Hitler? Instead, this world should have been without suffering. But if there is suffering and judgment here, perhaps we should expect that it will follow humanity into the next life. This is precisely the Apostle Peter’s argument about the flood and other catastrophes (2 Peter 2, 3) – If God has judged in the past, we must take Him seriously about His promises to judge in the future. (Interestingly, approximately 270 people groups retain a tradition of a world-wide flood!)

Now let me take a bolder and more personal tact. I think that we are intuitively aware of the reality of an ultimate punishment. For one thing, the Bible claims that we have this awareness and are therefore accountable:

•  Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:32)

How do “they know God’s righteous decree” of this eternal punishment? The Bible claims that this knowledge is wired into us (Rom. 2:14-15). Let me try to give some supportive evidences.

Universally, we experience guilt and shame – feelings that inform us that there is something the matter with us. However, along with these feelings, we also sense that we are vulnerable to and deserving of punishment.

We desperately attempt to bury or compensate for these feelings. Sensing that we are unworthy, we feverishly try to prove our worthiness through many different means – power, sex, popularity, prestige and attainments. Here in Facebook, it seems to take the form of vanquishing our opponents through argumentation or ridicule.

Why should we be so obsessively driven in this manner, unless we were trying to address a deeply felt threat? If feeling worthy or deserving were just a need, the urgency of the need would disappear once fulfilled, as when we fill our hungry stomach. However, we never arrive. Consequently, we are obsessed with trying to prove our worthiness. This suggests that the real problem lies deeper than just a hungry stomach or an aching ego.

Any reminder of our inadequacy is met with hatred. Because we never address the real problem, it continues to fester, leaving us vulnerable and defensive. Consequently, we often resent those we perceive as good, because they make us look bad, uncovering our deeply seated sense of doom.

Jesus exposed our unworthiness and was hated for it: “The world… hates me because I testify that its works are evil” (John 7:7). Consequently, we can more easily be forgiven for stealing one’s car than one’s honor and self-respect. Why? Because we intuitively know that our ultimate welfare rides on our worthiness.

Christians have often asked this question of non-Christians:

•  If there is a heaven, do you deserve to go there?

Ninety five percent answer “yes.” When asked “why,” they inevitably answer, “Because I’m a good person.” Although they do not admit it, this answer means that they regard themselves as more deserving of heaven than 90% of others. This reflects the fact that we refuse to see the real self. Instead, we manufacture a worthy self. Why? We can’t endure the idea that we are not deserving. Why not? We intuitively know that there is nothing more important than our worthiness! Without it, we face judgment.

When we fail to convince ourselves of our worthiness, we compensate by punishing ourselves. We do this in a variety of ways. We hurt, deprive, and even deprecate ourselves. We try to pay the price that we intuitively know that we deserve. Primitive peoples had a keen sense of their moral indebtedness, and tried to pay off their gods through sacrifices, convincing themselves that these offerings were adequate and that, through them, they could stave off the punishment they knew they deserved.

Ironically, when we truly acknowledge our overwhelming indebtedness and inability to manipulate God with our attainments or sacrifices, as if we have the power to control the outcome, we are ready to receive the mercy of God through Jesus the Messiah.

Thinking about Human Dignity

Ultimately, the way we think about humanity is the way we will treat humanity. The late and renowned Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, affirmed the impactfulness of our worldview:

• The recent terrible years of the world war and of the preceding totalitarian revolutions have shown us that the understanding of man is the basis of all social order and of all culture…The denial of this dignity is equivalent to the total abandonment of man to the power of the state…The totalitarian state can arise, and is bound to arise, whenever the idea of human dignity has been lost. The idea of human dignity, however, is historically and, in principle, none other than the idea of man’s being created in the image of God. (The Scandal of Christianity, 69-71)

Most embrace an idealistic concept of the dignity of humanity and also acknowledge that, without such a concept, humanity is no more than an animal to be manipulated and used. But are there necessary preconditions for such an idealistic and dignified view of humanity? Brunner thought that there were:

• [The] time of idealism has always been followed by one of materialism in which human dignity was denied. Such was the case after the idealist tide of the nineteenth century, which was followed by a terrible ebb of crudest materialism, which had nothing else to say of man but that he was the most differentiated and developed animal.

Sheer secular humanism cannot long retain this idealism. It lacks the necessary presuppositional underpinning and, therefore, belief in human dignity will eventually erode. If the human is no more than a sophisticated bio-chemical robot, eventually he will be treated in this manner. Robots are esteemed as long as they serve a purpose, and then are thrown on the junk heap.

Brunner concludes:

• [The Christian] doctrine of man, which acknowledges the image of God as well as the depth of sin, is able to create a social order which has room for the dignity of man and at the same time provides for the necessary precautions against the terrible forces of evil which are slumbering in man.

These forces seem now to have been revived with renewed “progressive” vigor.