God of Our Depraved Image

When churches, theologians and faith scholars accept the Darwinian theory of evolution as the objective truth of our beginnings, it is only a matter of time before they fully embrace the theory of social and spiritual evolution too, and with it the full spectrum of perverted worldviews and twisted truths. It is not possible to embrace the evolutionary philosophy and remain faithful to the essentials of Christian faith as intended by the Biblical revelation. They are mutually exclusive.

Likewise, whenever a Christian church does not take the first pages of the Bible seriously, eventually it will fall for some perverted version of the Gospel too. By that time all the foundational beliefs, that have been upheld by Christians for centuries, will have disappeared in a sinkhole of popular fictions and fairytales that promote a god fashioned in the image of a depraved man.

This kind of god is no longer the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Father in Heaven. He is a pal, a mate, a dude, a Santa Clause or anything else that is emptied of any authority and power; for through the process of “demystification” he is being stripped of all attributes which offend a self-indulgent generation that desires to be accountable to no one. Thus, infusing the social and spiritual worldviews of the Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection into the Christian worldview becomes a way of raising our human fists into the face of God, with the tirade of a spoiled kid: “Be gone! We will make ourselves our own idols that will lead us henceforth”.

It is not surprising then that those Christian denominations and their centers of learning that have taken the lead in the “liberation” of Christianity of its “mythical past,” have become wishy-washy in their profession of the historic pillars of Christian faith, to say it mildly. There where the principles of evolution have infiltrated Christian theology and vision, believing in the literal fall of man, sin, redemption and the literal return of Jesus Christ is becoming an embarrassing theological nuisance. It is not coincidence at all that more and more denominations are diluting their stand on the centrality of Jesus in their beliefs. They speak and act as if they are not sure any more if Jesus Christ is “the only name under the heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:11). Not surprisingly, the number of Christians who claim that they do not believe in God any more is on the increase.

The latest call for the release of the gender-neutral language Book of Common Prayer by American Episcopalians fits this paradigm of the ongoing spiritual erosion well. This American denomination has recently decided to “revise its 1979 prayer book, so that God is no longer referred to by masculine pronouns.”  The official Episcopal Church web portal delivered the news on July 4, 2018 that the delegates attending the 79th meeting of General Convention in Austin, TX have decided “to correct the overwhelming use of masculine language to refer both to God and to human beings.” “It is an impediment to the (denominational) mission and evangelism,” stated Ruth Meyers, an Episcopalian theologian. Apparently, the church is not growing because its servants are overindulgent in the usage of the “humanly constructed” gender-defined nouns and pronouns as they go about addressing God and their fellow brothers and sisters. According to this kind of reasoning, it is now up to the denominational scholars and theologians to correct the images that have become “socially, politically and morally” corrupt.

While it is true that God transcends gender, for He is neither male nor female, it is equally true that He decided to project His image onto humanity by deliberately creating biologically and sociologically recognizable male and female gender distinctions. The Apostle Paul reasons in the first chapter of the Book of Romans, that missing to see the imprint of God in his obvious and deliberate acts of creation amounts to the actions of intentional pretense on the part of men and women who desire to be accountable to no one. In other words, the fact that the first humans were created as man and woman, with all their physical, biological and sociological distinctions, and had not evolved as some nongender or transgender entities argue, was not a result of a divine joke in the experimental process of a theistic evolution. As God goes about creating He does not leave anything to chance, or to some future improvements this side of eternity.

Moreover, it is also true that God, throughout the entire history of revealing himself and speaking to us, has decided to present himself predominantly by assuming male or masculine images and forms. Yes, He does use also female metaphors to describe his qualities of care, love, kindness. However, He comes to us even more regularly bearing the male titles of authority. So, on the pages of the Bible we meet God who is “our Heavenly Father”, “our King”, “our Husband”, and never as “our heavenly mother”, “our queen”, “our wife”. And, as He chooses to communicate to us more like a man than a woman, he is doing it deliberately, and not in response to the ancient cultural demands.

In fact, in the days when the books of the Bible were written, when the neighbors of Israel and Judah were indulging themselves in all kinds of worship of female deities and debased practices of pagan temple prostitution, it would have been quite acceptable to venerate all kinds of goddesses, queens of heaven, and indulge in all kinds of gender confusing practices under the protection and attraction of various pagan religions. Had the Bible authors been the victims of cultural peer pressure of their days the use of confusing gender constructions on the Bible pages would have been a commonplace, and the Old Testament prophets would have never dared condemn the leaders of Israel and Judah for their idolatrous deviations.

It goes without saying that Paul spoke more than metaphorically when he compared the marriage union between husband and wife with the organic union shared between Jesus Christ and His Church, in which Jesus is the Husband and the Church is His Bride. Ephesians 5:22-32.Jesus himself used a similar imagery in his parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25).In it He is the long-awaited Bridegroom, and his waiting, sleepy Church is His Bride. Nowhere in the New Testament Jesus or its writers would ever reverse the use of gender-like comparisons.

Moreover, Jesus was born as male. It must have been more than just a coincidence that this was so. Many centuries earlier Isaiah the prophet announced prophetically: “To us a sonis given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” Isaiah 9:6.The prophet prophesied also: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call himImmanuel.” Isaiah 7:14. Matthew 1:23. NIV It would require lots of unnatural mental gymnastics if one were to try to excuse the maleness of Jesus on account of cultural prejudices of the age in which those prophetic declarations were made. That Jesus Christ came into our world and history as male was a divine statement and a result of divine decision, and not a random choice of God, or a consequence of cultural inconvenience or convenience.

C.S. Lewis suggested that “gender goes far deeper than our human distinctions reveal”. He said that “God is so masculine” and that we are all “feminine in relation to Him”. There is nothing discriminatory, degrading, devaluing or culturally derogative in many masculine descriptions of God throughout the pages of the Bible, unless our ego or some kind of political or social correctness makes them appear irritating to us for the purely narcissistic and egoistic reasons.

It does not sound convincing at all that the real reason behind the recent announcement of the Episcopal Church is to be found in the concern that “limiting God to masculine pronouns and imagery limits the countless religious experiences of billions of Christians throughout the world.” Instead, it seems that this mainstream Protestant denomination desires to open its doors to the current LGBTQ movement that promotes gender confusion as a god given gift to humanity. The church activists who are fighting for a gender-neutral God are not doing it because they would like to see God being called “our Mother” just as much as “Our Father”. They really want to construct a god who will condone and bless the demands of all artificially constructed genders that are mushrooming among us today at the incredible pace, so that the words of a “non-binary” transgender delegate attending the recent triennial conference, may one day become the respected norm within the church community: “I am not your brother or your sister. I am your sibling.”

And here we come back to the church hunted by the ghosts of the Darwinian evolution and its detrimental social, moral and spiritual implications. Reshaping the image of God according to the demands of the gender confusing agendas of this age is becoming possible only there where the opening creation statements of the Bible are dismissed as a myth, and instead the theory of evolution is revered as its guiding theology of human origins. It is only within the context of those circumstances that anyone can call the otherwise clearly distinct and obvious gender separation “a social construct” or “a human construct”, and not a deliberate designe of the very creative God. Once this is done it is only a matter of time when a Pandora box containing all kinds of perversions will become wide open, and its goods presented as the gifts of God given graciously to His people.

This is the crux of the matter: there where today it is becoming offensive to call God “our Father”, or “our King”, and “our Lord”, tomorrow it will become offensive to call our fellow believers in Christ “our brothers and sisters”, and our own children “our sons and daughters”, or anything else that acknowledges the reality of the only two genders created by a deliberate creative act of God.

I can only imagine what the mind confusing, tongue twisting and morally corrupt those days will be!