The Gospel of Christ vs. the Gospel of the World

I have a friend from the neighborhood whom I have known for seven or eight years. Knowing that I am a pastor, he texted me one day out of the blue:

I am so confused, and I need your help. Why is DEI opposed to “Christian values”? I have not read the whole Bible, but the “Cliff’s Notes” say that diversity, equity, and inclusion were really important in the second half of the book.

My friend’s question is reflective of a significant shift that has taken place in the West concerning the claims of Christianity. Thirty years ago, the most common and significant barrier to belief was probably the Bible’s doctrine of creation – how can one believe, considering all that science has demonstrated regarding evolution? But now, I cannot remember the last time an unbeliever showed the slightest interest in that question. Today, the main issues that make Christianity seem implausible (at best) or loathsome (at worst) to so many are those relating to gender, identity, and sexuality.  

And so, while many Christians may be gearing up for another Pride Month with a sense of dread, it strikes me that we can also pray that the Lord would give us opportunities to share the hope of Jesus with the people in our lives who do not know him. For example, the friend who texted me his question has never shown any interest in talking about spiritual things. From his perspective, the only place where the Venn diagram of “things Christianity talks about” and “things he cares about” overlap is “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” And while he disapproves of what Christians believe, his question shows that he is interested enough to talk about it. And that represents the first good opportunity I’ve had to talk to him about Jesus. 

As our conversation progressed, my friend was surprised to learn that Christian “values” (to use his word) are rooted in a much larger worldview. A lot of people in the wider world assume that Christians oppose “DEI” because we are bigoted, hateful, and opposed to people who are different than us. Were the Christian sexual ethic and understanding of gender merely random and arbitrarily adopted positions, they might have a point. But Christians don’t oppose the world’s agenda on these matters because we hate others but because we have fundamentally different answers to some of the most fundamental questions people will ask. 

As pastors, we need to ensure that we have equipped our people well enough to know, believe, and explain what and why the Bible says. Here are four things that the members of our congregation need to understand for the sake of their own faith and the strength of their witness to the world.

First, our understanding of human purpose, sexuality, and gender is rooted in God’s creation. Our view of the world begins where the Bible begins, with a God who has always existed, creating a world out of nothing by the power of His Word for His glory. Everything that happens after that is to be understood in that light. Ironically, diversity, equity, and inclusion (properly understood) are ideals built on the Christian view of the world. Even my unbelieving friend had a sense of that when he asked why these things are considered to be opposed to “Christian values.” 

But we understand that it pleased God to create all of humanity everywhere in his own image (and thus diversity is God’s idea), and so we should treat all people with dignity and justice (that’s Biblical equity) and called into God’s people (that’s inclusion). You will find no solid philosophical foundation for those concepts in Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism, and certainly not in a materialistic atheism in which we are purely the products of natural selection. Thus, while we do not affirm everything the world celebrates under these concepts, we can explain that their impulses are rooted in the very Christianity they oppose.

Second, human beings are meant to be meaning receivers, not meaning creators. After God creates the first humans, He speaks to them and interprets their world for them. He tells them what to do (Genesis 1:28-30) and what not to do (Genesis 2:17). God didn’t leave them alone in the world to try to understand who they were and how they were to live. Part of God’s love for them was his instructions to them. God did not give human beings the task of discerning, deciding, and creating their identities and the meaning of their lives. Instead, God gave them to us.

For this reason, Christians cannot affirm the “DEI” impulse to celebrate a kind of self-creation where we decide who we are and how we want the world to understand us. Recently, my wife met the mother of a beautiful 3-year-old girl. Upon introducing herself, my wife asked the little girl for her name. The mother intervened and asked the preschooler who she felt she was today: a boy or a girl? James or Kylie? Laying aside for a second how strange that probably seems to you, think about how disorienting and destabilizing that must be for that little girl. Her own mother doesn’t know her name or gender; she is burdened with figuring those out every day as a young child. That mother might feel like she is giving her daughter the gift of freedom, but she is placing a heavy burden on her. 

That brings us to the third thing that we need to understand in light of these matters – the good life is found in conforming to God’s commands. One of the foundational assumptions of our world’s sexual ethic is that we can only be happy when we are expressing ourselves, being true to our impulses, and indulging our desires. It doesn’t seem that many people stop to think about why rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicide have exploded in the wake of our society’s jettisoning of Christian morality. But the book of Proverbs shows us that living with wisdom and self-restraint – working hard, saving money, being monogamous and generous and self-controlled – are the ways to live happily in this life. 

It’s not hard to understand – we find freedom within constraints. The owner’s manual of your car is not an oppressive imposition of teleology. It’s a guide to how the manufacturer designed the machine to run. A train engineer might long to jump the confines of the tracks and run the train through a cornfield, but he would quickly find out that the train could only achieve its purpose – it could only be what a train was meant to be – if it runs on tracks. In the same way, our longings for meaning, happiness, lasting pleasure, and solid joy will only be found within the confines of obedience to the will of God.

That brings us to the fourth thing we need to know: the gospel of Jesus Christ speaks a word of hope far better than the “gospel” of self-expression. 

• The gospel of Christ tells us that God created us in His glorious image for a purpose. The “gospel” of self-expression tells us that we have no source of meaning beyond that which we find ourselves.
• The gospel of Christ tells us that our sinful desires enslave us. The “gospel” of self-expression tells us that our sinful desires form the most important parts of our identities.
• The gospel of Christ tells us that God loves us deeply – not because of what we find in us, but because of what is in God. The “gospel” of self-expression says we only get the love we deserve.
• The gospel of Christ tells us that when we come to Christ in repentance and faith, God gives us eternal life and all that it entails – adoption into His family, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, and forgiveness of our sins. The “gospel” of self-expression offers no hope or reward beyond what one can accumulate in a life lived according to one’s strength.

Pastors must ensure that the members of their churches understand what the Bible says regarding matters of identity, sexuality, and gender and why it says it. This will bolster their faith and inoculate them against the lie that tells us that we find life in “being ourselves.” It will also help them as they interact with their unbelieving neighbors and co-workers. This Pride Month, let’s help our churches hold out a far greater hope to the world than the one that the world is celebrating.

© 2024 Michael McKinley. Used with permission.