Nearly everyone who has been listening to the news knows about the vote of the Loudoun County, VA school board this last August to allow transgender students to use school bathrooms matching their gender identity, and Loudoun County resident Scott Smith’s attempt to speak at a schoolboard meeting prior to that decision about the sexual assault of his daughter in Stone Bridge HS girl’s restroom by a boy wearing a skirt. In an interview with the Daily Wire, Smith claimed that he had attempted to bring up the assault of his daughter at a school-board meeting on June 22, but he was arrested by police before he could speak. This past week, the 15-year-old boy about whom Smith was speaking was convicted by a Loudoun County judge of the sexual assault of his daughter. Although it is always hard to get at the facts, especially in the midst of a red-hot political battle going on at the time for the governorship of Virginia, we still must ask, How can Christians view this event through a biblical worldview lens and help our rising generation of teens do the same? This episode makes some suggestions.
The term, worldview, describes a person’s assumptions about reality—the picture he uses to make sense of the facts. Because our sinful nature darkens our understanding of reality, one of the most foundational of all discipleship principles, is that Christ’s followers resist being conformed to the culture’s false views about the world, building, instead, a worldview perspective transformed by the Spirit of God using his tool, the Word of God to renew our minds. But our Lord does not call us to correct worldview thinking so that we can just withdraw from the world and criticize the awful people who hold mistaken worldviews. God has always intended his chosen people to bless those around them by engaging with them and helping them see how much better the biblical worldview corresponds to reality than any other view. A worldview addresses at least these 5 component parts of reality.
- Our Origin. Where did we and this world come from?
- Our Identity. Who am I? What does it mean to be human?
- Meaning. Why am I here. Do I have a purpose that matters?
- Morality. What is wrong with the world and how do we fix it?
- Destiny. What happens when we die? Where is history headed?
We’ve identified foundational truths in Genesis 1 and 2 regarding our origin, identity, and purpose. Today, we look to Genesis 3 to answer the fourth question, What is wrong with this world and how do we fix it? We can’t think biblically about the Loudoun County bathroom issue without understanding this component of biblical worldview. What is wrong with the world?
As we ended chapter 2 of Genesis last week, Adam and Eve were joyfully married and ready to live happily ever after in Camelot, with a lot of grandchildren! But chapter 3 begins ominously,
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths (vs1-7).
The distinctive answer of the Christian worldview to the question, What is wrong with the world is that the human heart has been invaded by the moral cancer of sin. The only tree from which Adam and Eve could not eat was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. One commentator explains what this tree symbolized. It was a restraint on them. It was to remind them that they were not God and that they were responsible to him…. “Adam, in full knowledge of what he was doing looked at the one tree and said, in effect, “I don’t care if I am allowed to eat of all the trees north of here, east of here, south of here, and west of here. So long as the one tree stands in the garden…. to remind me that I am not perfectly autonomous —so long as it is there, I hate it! So I will eat of it and die” (James Boice, Genesis).
Sin is saying, “I will not submit to God.” I may go along with God 99% of the time because I want to. But the cancer of sin will eventually cause my heart to say, I will not submit to God at this point. And Adam passed on his sinful nature to every one of his descendants. This reality is called the doctrine of original sin. Paul explains, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin….Because of one man's trespass, death reigned….As by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners (Rom 5:12, 17,19).
Every human sins because he inherited a sinful nature from Adam. I have yet to meet a parent who does not believe that every child comes into the world with a sinful nature! God appointed Adam as the representative head of the human race, guaranteeing in perfect justice that Adam acted exactly as Gary Yagel would have acted. If I think it somehow unjust that Adam’s representative action caused God to impute unrighteousness to ME and every one of his descendants—then I am in deep weeds concerning MY OWN SIN! Why? Because God declares Christians free from guilt for our sins, on the basis of Jesus’ righteousness that is imputed to us, causing us to be justified.
Four Major Consequences of Human Sin
A. Sin shatters shalom (peace and well-being) in four spheres of life.
- Internal peace, which could be called his relationship with himself. The shattering of this inner wholeness is seen immediately after Adam and Eve eat the fruit. Their inner soul experiences, shame, fear of God, and guilt.
- Disharmony occurs in his relationship with others. Immediately after the fall, Adam blames Eve for his disobedience to God.
- Disharmony occurs in their relationship with God. Adam and Eve hide from God, feel ashamed in his holy presence, and Adam even blames God for giving Eve to him—the woman WHOM YOU GAVE TO ME gave me the fruit.
- Disharmony occurs in their relationship to the physical world. The moment Adam and Eve ate the fruit the biological clock of their human body wearing out began to tick. Physical (as well as emotional) pain in bearing children begins and God curses the ground, which Adam is called to work.
B. The sinful nature passed on to Adam’s descendants produces sinful heart attitudes that lead to sinful, destructive behavior. This “fruit of the sinful nature” from Galatians 5:19-21, seems to fit four categories of human life. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality (our SEXUALITY is corrupted), idolatry, sorcery (our WORSHIP is corrupted), enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy (our RELATIONSHIPS are corrupted), drunkenness, orgies, and things like these (our PARTYING—THE WAY WE SOCIALIZE is corrupted.) This is THE ANSWER to the worldview question, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD.
This text also proves that Christians still must fight their sinful nature. When Paul writes, in Romans 6 that the old man was crucified Paul is not saying that our old sinful nature is dead, but that our former self is dead. As the ESV says, We know that our OLD SELF was crucified with him. The reality that Christians all still struggle with sin is a profoundly important part of our worldview. It is one we need to communicate to non-believing friends, many of whom think that Christians are morally better people than they are. Letting them know how much we struggle to do the right thing is a great way to draw them to us and talk abut how much we need Christ’s help.
C. The institutions we build are corrupted by sin. God dealt corporately with whole nations upon which he brought judgement through Joshua entering the Promised Land. Cornelius Plantinga explains how corporate sin arises.
All sinful lives intersect with other sinful lives—in families, businesses, educational and political institutions, churches, social clubs, and so forth—in such a way that the progress of both good and evil looks like wave after wave of intertwined spirals….The result of all this spiraling and inheriting is devastating. Whole matrices of evil appear in which various forms of wrong-doing cross pollinate and breed….We are born into a world in which for centuries sin has damaged the great interactive network of shalom—snapping or twisting the thousands of bonds that give particular beings integrity and that tie them to others. Corruption is thus a dynamic motif in the Christian understanding sin (Engaging God’s World).
D. Sin corrupts human thinking. Paul taught Titus that behind an argumentative attitude towards biblical teaching is human sinful nature, Steer clear of stupid arguments, genealogies, controversies and quarrels over the Law. They settle nothing and lead nowhere. If a man is still argumentative after the second warning you should reject him. You can be sure that he has a moral twist, and he knows it (Titus 3:8-11). Paul made it clear that human sinful nature causes people to cling to refuted arguments, and faulty logic. We must make sure our children and grandchildren heading out into today’s culture understand this reality. One of the most terrifying consequences of sin is that it corrupts our thought process, like a virus that systematically destroys your hard drive, without you even realizing it. Author, Lewis Smedes, recognizes this deadly result of sin. He writes, “Nobody ever says to himself, ‘I think I will lie to myself today.’ This is the double treachery of self-deception. First we deceive ourselves and then we convince ourselves that we are not deceiving ourselves” (A Pretty Good Person).
Viewing The Loudoun County Bathroom Incident Through the Lens of Biblical Worldview
A. The biblical worldview of the radical depravity of all men begins with radical humility. I, myself, am saved by grace alone. If I see errors in the thinking of others, it is only the grace of God that allows me to see them. Any hint of hostility towards those holding anti-Christian views betrays my disloyalty to Jesus’ call to love my enemy. Any condescension convicts me of the sin of being judgmental, since the formula for judgmentalism is discernment + pride. Alexander Solzhenitsyn astutely said, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
B. The biblical worldview of radical depravity tells us that minorities and members of the LGBTQ community will be bullied. The intent of many, who support very misguided policies on behalf of transgender people, is to protect their dignity. We must teach our children, especially our boys, to step in and stop others from bullying those who are transgender or gay, whenever and wherever they see it. Our Christian worldview tells us that protecting transgender students from verbal or physical assault comes not from foolish bathroom policies, but from treating every human being with dignity because he or she, no matter how troubled, is made in the priceless image of God. That is the way Jesus treated the outcasts of his world—women, lepers, tax collectors, the poor. We need to lead our kids to demonstrate this biblical solution to the mistreatment of transgender students.
C. The biblical worldview tells us that God created every human as either male or female. Every society in the history of the world has recognized this fact, which is proved by the sciences of biology, genetics, sociology, and history, to name just a few. To deny it is like denying gravity; it sounds cool on Twitter, but when you fall off a roof, REALITY WINS. There is no human right to deny reality and demand to be treated as if you are a boy when you are a girl. The right to be disconnected from reality is not a human right. It HARMS HER TO LET HER CONTINUE TO BELIEVE THAT! A girl who thinks she is a boy in a girl’s body is mentally ill. Such a break with reality is called psychosis and was called “gender identity disorder” before it become politically correct for the American Psychiatric Association to change the diagnosis name. It is time for Christians to stop fearing the label transphobic and stand up for the teen girls who are being victimized by transgender ideology. A staggering 41% of transgender people commit suicide compared to a little over 1% in the general population. The rapid onset of gender dysphoria among adolescent girls in 2021 has reached epidemic proportions. Gender identify confusion was nearly non-existent in girls before 2012 and the Internet. Dr. Lisa Littman (an OBGYN turned public health researcher) found two “origins” of the conclusion girls came to that they were transgender.
- First, the clear majority (65%) of the adolescent girls who had discovered transgender identity in adolescence—“out of the blue”—had done so after a period of prolonged social media immersion. There are numerous social media sites and online forums that facilitate the discovery of a trans identity, all popular hubs for documenting a physical transformation, seething over transphobia, and celebrating the superpowers of testosterone treatments.
- Second, the prevalence of transgender identification within some of the girls’ friend groups was more than seventy times the expected rate. (Ibid). The atypical nature of this dysphoria—occurring in adolescence with no childhood history of it and spreading through teen’s peers caused her to postulate a hypothesis that is not politically correct. It is caused in part by peer contagion. In other words, this researcher, who makes no claim to being a Christian, believes that adolescent gender dysphoria has exploded in the past few years because a percentage of adolescent girls who reject their female bodies have found a peer group (online or in person) that feels the same way. (Cited in Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, by Abigail Shrier.)
D. The biblical worldview tells us that the first and most fundamental institution of society is the family. Local schoolboards should be accountable to parents. If Christians in any given community believe that an ideological agenda is being foisted upon their children, they should oppose it by speaking up at school board meetings and/or running for office on the schoolboard. The attempts to muzzle Scott Smith by the Loudoun County school board and the national teachers’ union, appear to reflect the view that a minority of ideologues know what is best for kids, not parents.
E. The biblical worldview recognizes the reality of sinful human sexual behavior. Rape happens; it has taken place all through history. The argument that Loudoun County’s bathroom policy is wrong is NOT based upon the assumption that transgender students are sexual predators. It is based upon the way this policy opens the door to males who are! The fallen nature of sexuality guarantees that boys will exploit this policy to invade the privacy of young women if not their bodies through sexual assault. The #MeToo movement ought to tell something to schoolboard members. Boys will take advantage of a policy that allows them to pretend they are girls and use the same locker room or rest room as women.
F. The biblical worldview understands the problem of racism to be sinful fallen human nature. Scott Smith’s attempt to get a hearing with the Loudoun County schoolboard was delegitimized because he was accused of being a white supremacist. Such an accusation was clearly the result of Critical Race Theory ideology. Looking at CRT through the lens of Scripture demonstrates that this view is false, at innumerable points. However, Christians can and should agree with some CRT principles, but not the movement. Racism has been structural in the United States. In my view, understanding the biblical truth that structural sin is real ought to lead white Christians to listen to our black brothers tell us how our majority culture thinking as white men harms them and those they love. The biblical worldview should also make us willing to admit that Christians are never fully sanctified and that often the treatment of black people by white Christians has been a horrific stench in the nostrils of God. Christians need to own this fact.
But, as a whole, CRT is an ideology that should be opposed by Christians. The solution to racism is neither reparations, nor blaming majority culture whites for being white. The biblical worldview, along with all of history shows that every race around the world has oppressed other races. This includes genocide committed by many black tribes against other black tribes in southern Africa. The disease of sin is not limited to Caucasians. There is only one solution to racism; it is treating every single human being as one made in the image of God. This worldview truth is at the core of the Bible’s command to love our neighbor as ourselves. Christians know that it is only they who can point the world to Jesus, whose power alone can enable fallen humans to treat other humans with the dignity they were created to experience.
Christians alone, through the lens of biblical worldview have the truth to prevent incidents like that at Stone Bridge HS in Loudoun County. The question is whether we will keep those truths to ourselves, or share them, winsomely with others.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- Why do you think the Biblical answer to the question, What is wrong with the world, is relevant today. How might you winsomely introduce this biblical answer into conversations at your workplace?
- Which of the four aspects of the fall seem most relevant to your everyday life?
- Would you say it is critical for our Christian children and grandchildren to understand that sin darkens human understanding. If so, why?
- Which biblical worldview principles seemed most important in understanding the Loudoun County bathroom incident?
