“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” - Isaiah 9:2
Christmas is the time for remembering the incarnation and its significance—the fact that we were rebels, dead in our sin, but God broke into our darkness. God owed us nothing, yet he chose to take on human flesh and to cover our sin by his perfect life and death. In a world full of sorrow, violence, and evil, the baby in the manger brought joy, peace, and hope. That incredible reality, and the fact that through Christ, God is reconciling us to himself shapes every element of how we interact with the world around us, including how we approach cultural engagement.
It isn’t a stretch of the imagination to believe that everyone, at some point, has asked, “Why is the world like this? Why is there so much brokenness? Why so much darkness?” There is reason to grieve the brokenness of the world, but we must not forget that, thanks to the incarnation, the darkness that we see and feel around us has already been broken. As the old Christmas carol reminds us, there is “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!” At the incarnation, a new day has dawned.
Last week, four members of Congress sent a letter to Attorney General Barr calling on the Trump administration to follow through on a campaign promise to enforce obscenity laws to stop the spread of pornography.
The letter, sent by Jim Banks (R-Indiana), Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina), Vicky Hartzler (R-Missouri), and Brian Babin (R-Texas), points out that the explosion of pornography coincides with increases in human trafficking and violence toward women. It also makes the point that children are increasingly exposed to pornography on the internet.
Pornography takes sex, something designed by God for good, and distorts it by divorcing it from its purpose. Rather than an expression of intimacy between husband and wife, pornography treats sex as a commodity in which human beings become objects to be viewed and used the sexual gratification of another.
Although many defenses of pornography emphasize “consenting adults,” the reality is that pornography is fed by and fuels human trafficking. Content on pornography websites frequently shows the rape and abuse of sex trafficking victims. When people are treated as objects rather than humans violence follows, and there is no way around the fact that pornography monetizes sexual violence. Pornography commodifies women (and men) and this is not without consequences. Violence is mainstream in the pornography industry, and it isn’t just conservatives who are pointing this out. Feminist activists, and even porn producers have called attention to the increasingly violent behavior that is normalized through pornography.
A Minnesota middle school is being sued for not allowing a female student to change in the boys’ locker room. The student’s mother, Helene Woods, claims that this was an act of discrimination and has filed a lawsuit against Buffalo Community Middle School. Her daughter began to identify as a boy when she was eleven, changed her name to Matt, and asked to be referred to with masculine pronouns. In September of 2015 she made it clear to school officials that she wanted access to the boys’ bathroom and locker rooms. The school offered her access to a single-occupancy bathroom instead.
The school made special arrangements for Matt, but according to her mother, these were not the right special arrangements. Buffalo Community Middle School made accommodations that rightly acknowledge that Matt is female, and as such, did not arrange for her to disrobe in the boys’ locker room. In the lawsuit, this is being described as an act of isolation.
Preventing a student from disrobing in front of a member of the opposite sex is not an act of harmful isolation. Rather, it is a protection of everyone involved. Unfortunately, many adults have bought into a radical sexual agenda that not only permits but encourages policies that remove privacy protections and place children and teenagers in harm’s way, regardless of objections from the student body.
