Light in the Lord

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but given recent developments in our culture, I’ve felt the Lord’s promptings to resume doing so. Thanks for reading.

Last weekend, the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Year A), we read the poignant account of the man born blind, recounted in John 9. The blind man’s encounter with the healing love of God provides a metaphor for all who have come to see Christ as the light of the world. Like him, we were all blind, but now we see. In the gospel Sunday, Jesus says, “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” And that’s our job now. Through baptism, we are “enlightened” and become (and are commanded to be) the light of Christ in the world. What that demands is made clear in last week’s second reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians:

Brothers and sisters: You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth. Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness; rather expose them, for it is shameful even to mention the things done by them in secret; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. (Ephesians 5:8-13, emphasis added).

The chapter begins as follows:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is fitting among saints. Let there be no filthiness, nor silly talk, nor levity, which are not fitting; but instead let there be thanksgiving. Be sure of this, that no immoral or impure man, or one who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not associate with them. (Ephesians 5:1-7, emphasis added)

These sober words are difficult to accept and to live by. But we must! We Christians, regardless of what the world or our friends or family tell us, need to live as light in our time. And that’s true even if it means being thrown out of the “synagogue of polite/elite culture” or the “synagogue of social media.” The man born blind testified simply to what had happened to him. And he suffered as a result. The lesson is clear: Even if many reject Jesus and/or the teachings of the Church, we don’t have that option. We are commanded (and, thanks be to God, given the grace) to live as the light.

Living as the light might well cause us to be rejected, excluded, or persecuted on account of Christ and the truth we find in Him. Even so, that’s still our job: to be the light. To do so, we must be men and women of the word, and to be prayerful and docile to the Holy Spirit, and to meditate upon the truth. The truth is not merely spiritual, but about all aspects of creation itself. To live truly, responsibly, we must cling to the truth about ourselves, about reality itself, and about the Lord. And we are commanded, as the blind man did, to bear witness in simple, straightforward ways. Be assured. People are watching us, especially children. Let us be witnesses then, and take heart, even (perhaps especially!) when we are rejected. Jesus told us to expect just it:

“Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man! 23Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” Luke 6:22-23

Blessed are you! That’s impossible to believe unless we hold onto Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life. We are all invited, even commanded to do so. And it is vital for all of us to live this way.

Now is the time for us to recognize the speed and trajectory of gender ideology, and to do what we can to hold the line. With many others, religious and otherwise, I am convinced that it is a fitting, necessary, place for all of us, each and every one of us, to “take a stand.” In response, we need to offer common sense responses to things that have been “problematized,” issues like gender that have been cast as “in doubt” or deemed “complicated.”

The recent NCAA swimming and diving championships brought international attention to the “transgender” question, since Lia Thomas, who competed for years as a man on the University of Pennsylvania’s swim team, “transitioned” and now swims competitively as a “transgender woman.” I put the word transitioned and transgender woman in scare quotes because there is no such thing as “transitioning” from one sex to the other or truly being “transgender,” whatever current cultural elites, including so-called “experts” in gender, might claim. That sounds harsh, I know, but it’s the simple, plain truth. And we need to hold onto it because we are called to live as light, in the truth, and to expose the fruitless works of darkness.

Confusion around sex and gender has grown. That is clear. As a second prominent example, it is timely to note that Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was explicitly nominated to become a supreme court nominee because she is a “woman of color,” claimed that she was not qualified to answer the question “what is a woman?” when asked. She knows what a woman is; everyone does. (The sad condition of being born intersex does not change the fact of dimorphic human sexuality.) But today even things as fundamental as sexual dimorphism are doubted, questioned, made “problematic.” Her answer is a sign of the times.

Those who, like Ketanji Brown Jackson, claim that we need experts to help us understand the complexity of sex and gender remind me of the intellectuals and leaders George Orwell described when he described the workings of the “Party” in his 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-four:  

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the earth’s center. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. (Emphasis in original)

This is not complicated. Two plus two make four. And don’t trust anyone who tells you otherwise. And don’t argue with them. They are sophists.

Given that we (you and I) are the “light of the world,” we must speak up when lies about sex/gender are presented as truths. That’s true not just in this arena, but it is essential for us to do so now, given the trajectory and speed of the assault upon sexual reality in our time. It is well to remind ourselves of these (formerly) self-evident truths:

• Men cannot get pregnant.
• Women cannot have penises.
• Sex is not “assigned” at birth.
• There are two sexes, male and female.
• Top/bottom surgery is not “gender affirming;” it is mutilation.

I could go on and on. And you could too. The issue is not to formulate a list, but to pay attention to the lies, reminding ourselves and others of the truth. We renounce lies and announce the truth in Christ for our sake, for those we love, and for the culture in which we live. We are the soul of the world, and serve as its conscience.

In a future post, I’ll talk about how we as Christians should grapple with the tension of exposing the fruitless works of darkness and ministering to those who are trapped within the orbit of the evil one. But we don’t do well to “go along to get along.” It is not pastoral to affirm something that is false. The transgender push, like much of the sexual revolution, is rooted in lies. It is the work of evil, even if those who are advancing it have the best of motives. Let’s pray for those who are deceiving and deceived, all the while striving, through with and in Christ, to recognize and expose the fruitless works of darkness. After all, it’s our job.