Yesterday, President Biden issued a Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility, 2024. Among other things, the proclamation seeks to “honor the extraordinary courage and contributions of transgender Americans” and “Send a message to all transgender Americans: You are loved. You are heard. You are understood. You belong. You are America.” The unqualified support from the President and his administration of our culture’s current fascination with sexual perversion is no surprise. What is shocking about this proclamation, though, is its timing. The Transgender Day of Visibility is set to occur, of all days, on Easter, the one day in the year that Christians, for millennia, have celebrated the resurrection of Jesus. This is no coincidence. This is the latest attempt of America’s godless leaders to defile and eclipse Christ’s name.
In light of God’s desire that his people discern everything (Pro.14:8; 1Thess. 5:21), there are numerous considerations for us to ponder, regarding the President’s sacrilegious proclamation.
THREE LIES IN THE PROCLAMATION
- Perversion can be dignified. This administration wants those who are members of this sexually perverse group to “live openly, in safety, with dignity and respect.” This is the first lie, that what God calls sexual perversion can be dignified. When Scripture speaks of dignity (Ti. 2:2), it references behavior that commands respect and is worthy of imitation. Transgenderism is anything but worthy of imitation. God calls the practice and its practitioners abominable (Lev. 18:22; Deut. 22:5).
- The good life is one of unrestrained living. The proclamation says that “the most fundamental freedom” for all people is the right to “be their true selves.” Apparently, among “our most basic American values [is] the freedom to be yourself.” But this is simply not true. One of the Bible’s most basic, clearly revealed truths is that we ought not to be our natural selves, that what comes to us most naturally is only evil continually (Gen. 6:5); that we can naturally do no good thing (Jn. 15:5; Rom. 3:10-18). This is why we, by God’s undeserved kindness, need to be rescued and remade with an entirely different nature than the one with which we were born (Eph. 2:1-9; 4:24). We must be born again (Jn. 3:2-5).
- Autonomy is the path to life. “The bullying and discrimination that transgender Americans face is worsening our Nation’s mental health crisis, leading half of transgender youth to consider suicide in the past year.” The truth is the exact opposite of what this statement claims. Transgender people so often resort to suicide, not because of bullying and discrimination, but because “The sorrows of those who run after another god shall increase” (Ps. 16:4), and because “He who fails to find [God’s wisdom] injures himself; all who hate [God’s wisdom] love death.” The suicide rate among those who practice this form of sexual perversion is tragic. But God’s word tells us that the end of choosing what seems right in our own eyes inevitably leads to death (Pro. 14:12). In other words, the idolatrous pursuit of autonomy, which always involves rejection of God’s word in favor of one’s own mind, is tantamount to preferring death. “Length of days and years of life and peace” come to those who trade the folly of their own way for God’s superior, counterintuitive wisdom (Pro. 3:1-2, 13-18; 8:32-35).
THREE TRUTHS FROM PSALM 2
- Worldly rulers will rebel against God. Though the words of this proclamation should grieve us, they should not sock us. The rulers of this world have consistently taken their stand against God and Christ. This is what Psalm 2 so poignantly reveals — “Why do the nations rage And the peoples meditate on a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against Yahweh and against His Anointed, saying, ‘Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!” (v. 1-2). Besides the practical benignity of the proclamation, it is merely a way for God-hating rulers to shake their powerless fists at their ultimate Ruler and King.
- God laughs at such tyranny. God’s response to our President’s proclamation is laughter and mockery. “He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord mocks them” (v. 4). God himself is not troubled in the least by this administration’s rebellion. And Arthur Pink reminds us, “Were all the denizens of heaven and all the inhabitants of the earth to combine in revolt against him, it would occasion him no uneasiness, and would have less effect upon his eternal and unassailable throne than has the spray of [the] Mediterranean’s waves upon the towering rocks of Gibraltar.” Christian, do not be troubled by the words from the White House. Reassure your heart with the more sure, more enduring, superior truth of the unassailable sovereignty of God in Psalm 2.
- God’s resurrected Son will reign. This is the truth to which Psalm 2 calls us to look. Jesus, God’s Anointed, God’s King, God’s Son, will ultimately, eventually, reign on David’s throne in Jerusalem, God’s chosen city. “But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain” (v. 6). Tomorrow, on Easter, while our government celebrates rebellion against God, we call this to mind: our God reigns; His wrath is coming; Jesus, the resurrected king, will have his day; his kingdom will come; and he will have the nations as his inheritance, the ends of the earth as his possession.
“Blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” — Psalm 2:12