With the Vanity Fair cover making a media splash and Bruce Jenner's gender reassignment surgery front page news, it's likely that you or I or another Christian is going to be asked to comment on it. So what do we say? What emotions do we express? Sadness, anger, happiness?
Alex Duke has a wise response.
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By now, you’ve probably seen the Vanity Fair cover where Bruce Jenner introduces the world to his new persona: Caitlyn.
It’s the kind of image that takes your breath away, eliciting all sorts of panging emotions—aversion, compassion, and deep, deep sadness. It’s also the kind of image that will become a cultural lodestone for generations to come, like one of those classic Life magazine covers.
It’s an image that crystallizes a national metamorphosis as much as a personal one. It’s proof of micro-evolution—of a man, a magazine, a world shedding its skin. It’s also an image that resists complacency. Once you’ve seen this magazine cover, you are without excuse. You are forced to choose: Are you now looking at a man or a woman?
The future tense gave room for breath, room for thoughts and prayers and well-postulated arguments. But that time’s gone now, so somewhere—and likely sometime soon—you will be asked, “Did you see that Vanity Fair cover? What did you think?”
Christians are called to give a reason for the hope we have in the gospel. We are expected to do so with gentleness and respect, with a clear conscience, so that the ones who are speaking maliciously of our good behavior in Christ would one day be ashamed of their slander (1 Pet. 3:15–16).
Working backward through these verses, we find a useful template for thinking through our response to culturally celebrated icons that stand in proud opposition to the hope we have in our Lord Jesus and his finished work in our place.
Read the rest here.
Alex Duke has a wise response.
----------
By now, you’ve probably seen the Vanity Fair cover where Bruce Jenner introduces the world to his new persona: Caitlyn.
It’s the kind of image that takes your breath away, eliciting all sorts of panging emotions—aversion, compassion, and deep, deep sadness. It’s also the kind of image that will become a cultural lodestone for generations to come, like one of those classic Life magazine covers.
It’s an image that crystallizes a national metamorphosis as much as a personal one. It’s proof of micro-evolution—of a man, a magazine, a world shedding its skin. It’s also an image that resists complacency. Once you’ve seen this magazine cover, you are without excuse. You are forced to choose: Are you now looking at a man or a woman?
The future tense gave room for breath, room for thoughts and prayers and well-postulated arguments. But that time’s gone now, so somewhere—and likely sometime soon—you will be asked, “Did you see that Vanity Fair cover? What did you think?”
Christians are called to give a reason for the hope we have in the gospel. We are expected to do so with gentleness and respect, with a clear conscience, so that the ones who are speaking maliciously of our good behavior in Christ would one day be ashamed of their slander (1 Pet. 3:15–16).
Working backward through these verses, we find a useful template for thinking through our response to culturally celebrated icons that stand in proud opposition to the hope we have in our Lord Jesus and his finished work in our place.
Read the rest here.