The Collapse of Meaning
By Rev Charles H Roberts, D.Min.
Pastor, Reedy River Presbyterian Church
www.reedyriverbpc.org
Authority and sovereignty are unavoidable realities in life.
And by definition when something or someone is sovereign, or has absolute authority,
no one or nothing else is (or has).
It is the Reformed-Protestant Christian understanding that
Holy Scripture, the written Word of God, speaks with authority concerning
everything about which it speaks….and that it speaks about everything.
An individual, a family, a church, or a social and political
order that is based on the principles and worldview of Scripture will be unique
therefore regarding important issues that concern people, families, and
societies.
An important issue confronting Christians in America today
is “political correctness” (“PC”).
Author Jeff Deist, in the November-December 2015 issue of The Austrian magazine, provides the following helpful definition:
Political correctness is
the conscious, designed manipulation of language intended to change the way
people speak, write, think, feel, and act, in furtherance of an agenda.
In the same article he further states that PC is a form of
all encompassing propaganda. It needs to be added, however, that the foundation
of PC is a worldview that implicitly believes that humanity is sovereign, that
man is the ultimate voice of authority over all areas of life, including
language.
One of the areas where this is evident is that of human
sexuality. Before the destructive influence of PC, human sexuality was properly
defined as either male or female. Employment application forms and
questionnaires typically provided blank spaces or check boxes to indicate
“your sex” as either male or female.
PC has supplemented, (and in the popular mind replaced) the
idea of “sex” identity with that of “gender.” It is rare today to be asked, “what
is your sex?” but rather, “what is your gender?” Certainly gender has reference
to identity…. but typically not human identity.
Gender has, until the advent of PC, generally referred to certain
word forms in various languages where a term is classified as either masculine,
feminine, or neuter, and in Romance languages, such words have an associated
definite article that precedes them.
For example, in French, the word “La femme” means “the
woman,” and is classified as feminine word, whereas the word “Le livre” means “the
book “and is a masculine word.
In the broad history of Western culture the Christian
worldview had been the dominant influence, and thereby was anchored the
Scriptural account of the creation of man and woman by God as two distinct biological
sexes.
The source of the definition of what it means to be human in
the area of sexuality is the God of Holy Scripture. To see what happens if that
definition is derived from a different source one need look no further our PC
influenced culture.
You should understand however that this is nothing new. As a
matter fact, most societies have been based on a humanistic worldview, that is,
the idea that humanity is its own god, and therefore the source and definition
of all things, including sexuality.
The apostle Paul encountered this in the Roman culture of
his day and wrote these memorable words about what happens in a society where
the true God is not regarded as sovereign:
What happened was this: People knew God
perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship
him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was
neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but
were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the
whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.
So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It
wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy
inside and out.
And all this because they traded
the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God
who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us…
Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how
to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be
men.
Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women
with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how
they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches. Since they
didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run
loose. And then all hell broke loose:
rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell
on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating….
They know
perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they
hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!
(From The Message, Romans 1:21-32.)
Political correctness believes it is wrong to think of sex as a
biological force. Rather, it should be understood as a social construct that is
imposed on humanity. In other words, sexual identity is not biological; it is
cultural, and therefore subject to being defined in a myriad number of ways.
According to PC, the individual, not God, is
the authority that determines what “gender” they will be, and the concept of
discreet biological entitles that are male and female can, and should be,
discarded.
The average reader is excused if this seems
confusing. It is confusing and the evidence of the confusion is plainly seen in
the cultural expressions of “gender” throughout American society.
But this confusion, while directly related to
the issue of sexual identity, is only a symptom of the larger issue of
sovereignty and authority. Humanity considers itself god, and the ripple
effects of that misconception are seen, felt, and heard in the cultures humans
create for themselves.
R.J. Rushdoony made this telling observation
about the fate human beings who follow this path:
Man is in trouble, because his idea of himself is
radically defective. More than that, it is evil. Because the world is not man’s
creation, and only man’s cultures are his products, a false culture is destined
to collapse, because its roots are in man’s imagination rather than in
God’s created reality.
(Rushdoony, Noble Savages (2005), page 66.)