When I last got groceries, I brought my teenager along. When I drag a 14 year old to such places I try to get something fun to let him know I’m not a grocery store bore, and maybe influence him toward perceiving the menial duties of life as joyful. I am not saying this works, but it’s worth a shot.
We bought a twelve pack of the new spiced raspberry Coke (hurry if you’re so inclined to try it; they are phasing it out).
At checkout, I cracked open the box and slid a can to the person behind the register.
“Have you tried one of these yet?” I asked. Behind their drooping mask and false eyelashes I detected a shy smile.
“No…” they mumbled.
“Well, us neither. But you try it out and I’m gonna find you next time I come shopping and see what you think about it,” I said, grinning.
They nodded in agreement, chuckled, and set the can next to their cellphone.
It’s Walmart where I interact mostly with this younger generation, of which now nearly a third identify as LGBTQ. I’m not in a life situation that affords me constant contact with this populace, but a Walmart run allows it, since Walmart offers the best pay in town to working college kids.
It breaks my heart, the complications that accompany youth and young adults today who do not think they fit in any box, as if even checking a box would add meaning to one’s life. Some are conspicuous and proud, baiting attention with shock value and impropriety. But there are silent others—they mask their discomfort and pain with clothes and makeup and a hopeful glance cast for acceptance. What grieves me so much is the obvious despair.
And the walls between us…The fallacy of genderism has deceived all of us into thinking we are too different to co-exist.
No doubt they’ve believed the lie that this is the only way forward.
Without question the potential soul conversations have been fouled and muddied by loud gender warriors. Their incongruous propaganda (Less homogeneity! But let’s all be fluid!) has led to hopelessness and self-harm—less than half of Generation Z (those born 1996-2012) report having feelings of hope about the future.
I’ve heard more than a handful of friends my age muse on how thankful they are to have not been born later when this kind of sexual revolution (if you call it that) was unfolding. Because—here’s the truth from your elders—we would have been the same fodder for the machine, questioning and longing for acceptance.
Who truly met their lifelong mate as a teenager? Who even really knew what love was back then? Who of us didn’t get into a sticky situation and then regret it? Who hasn’t said things they wished they hadn’t?
The best of our generation was busy trying out orangey tanning lotion from Bath and Body. The worst was memorizing naughty Juvenile lyrics in the locker room.
Babies, we were—along with the internet. The messages we got were tied to landlines or Seventeen magazine. The reactions we got were from our parents in their living room, not the instant emojis from a thousand quasi-“friends”.
I can’t imagine the pressure to also align myself with a lifelong queer/non-queer agenda. With my romantic prospects, I certainly would have leaned into the former, just to have an easy excuse as to why I didn’t like boys in high school, why I dressed in my brothers’ hand-me-downs, why social anxiety kept me in its grip to the point of taking anti-depressants.
Today has arrived; this is reality. Our kids see it; they are experiencing it. And we cannot ignore it, as much as we’d like to turn away and pretend it doesn’t affect us.
It does affect us, and how we approach the culture around us matters. Here are a few thoughts to chew on—the overarching themes with which we must encourage the young believers in our homes:
1. Life is about who you are becoming and the choices you make. Choose wisely.
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes:
“People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.
And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself.
To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”
2. Romantic love (hetero or queer) as the highest lifelong-satisfying, fulfilling goal is not just a lie, it is idolatry.
If life boiled down to happiness was a matter of romantic fulfillment, how disappointing our lives would be! And yet, judging by every other picture or post we see our friends make on socials, it would be easy to conclude that a romantic partner would solve all our problems and finally make us happy.
Idolatry in Scripture is a huge theme, if you’ve never read the Old Testament. God’s people were always falling for idols, something that promised them health, wealth, and happiness.
I heard J. Vernon McGee speaking once on Jeremiah, a prophet who lived in a culture that was steeped in idolatry. The people were going to serve their idols “under every green tree.”Asherah and Baal required sexual encounters as their temple worship. McGee commented that idolatry is never a hard thing to fall into because idols don’t require anything a person isn’t willing to give into quite easily. Sex as worship? That was right up the culture’s alley. Incredibly depraved, yes—but look around! Our nation throws a month long party in June to celebrate a free-sex lifestyle.
But we serve a holy God —the One who transforms and renews our mind to make us more like His son, Jesus. We are asked, as believers, to serve only one master, one God, to make His name great, to bring Him glory, and not make ourselves the main focus. And when we recognize life isn’t all about serving ourselves through whatever false gods we put before Him, including romantic love (because, let’s remember, hopelessness, self-harm, and suicide is sky-rocketing today—what favors is “love” doing us?), we realize our yearning to be conformed to His likeness.
And this is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 1 John 4:10
3. Following culture for clues to acceptance is, historically, a recipe for disaster.
In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sketch, After Ten Years, he muses on how the years pre-World War II led to the moral failure of Germany to address evil in their society. Bonhoeffer observes that “against stupidity we are defenseless”—then goes on to detail how, “under certain circumstances, men are made stupid” when, “under the overpowering impression of the development of power, man is robbed of his inner independence, and that he now—more or less unconsciously—renounces any attempt to find his own relation to the situation that has developed.”
Basically, Bonhoeffer concludes that a strong influence in society (and here I think it applies to the LGBTQ agenda and pervasive “progressive” politics) quickly gains control of many folks, both the intellectual and not, who simply have listened too long to rhetoric and preaching. Tired of thinking it over, much less fighting it, they give up and follow dumbly along.
“In conversation with him (the follower) it is felt that you are not dealing with the person himself, but with cliches, slogans, etc., that have gained dominance over him. He is under a spell, he is blinded, he is misused, mishandled in his own being. Thus having become a will-less instrument the stupid person becomes capable of all evil, and at the same time incapable of recognizing it as evil…In this way men can be destroyed forever.”
How familiar this is in our own generation! Tiresome rhetoric that begins to feel like the law, and not the exception to it—this dumbs down our senses into accepting that which is foul and unreasonable. The antidote, Bonhoeffer concedes, is not arguing against the mainstream thinking, because no one is really thinking at all. Rather, he writes, “‘the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Ps.111:10)’ says that the inner liberation of man to responsible life before God is the only real conquest of stupidity.”
Our aim is not to convince the world they are wrong; it is to tell them of the holiness of a God who loves them, which will in turn open their ears and eyes to the truth, and initiate an inward change.
What can we do now? What shall our song be to sing over a younger generation?
Model choices that mirror Jesus—choices that keep us humble, like Him. Choose to speak words that uplift, not argue. Choose to be responsible with your money, your time, your attitude.
Keep speaking of a holy God, keep speaking of your own weaknesses and tendencies to stray from Him. Not one of us is without sin, and not one of us isn’t in need of a Savior.
Love—love in a way that disarms.
Be salt, which flavors and tenderizes and punctuates the culture around us. Set examples for our own kids of friendly, kind words that open doors, not close them. Offer a Coke, a smile.
Snatch some from the fire—the ones who are silently begging to be rescued from a culture they got wrapped up in and now desperately want out of… A culture that will knock you to your knees to stick a label on your forehead.
