On Friday, May 13, the Obama administration gave notice to U.S. public schools that transgender students must be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice.1 The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) responded. Ronnie Floyd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, stated this as “an outrageous attack on our Creator Himself, human sexuality and morality, and an advancement of the attack against religious freedom.”2 As a matter of fact, a number of Southern Baptist leaders have made statements on this issue – all of which I agree with.
Having said all of that, I must ask the question: What do my Southern Baptist leaders expect? Just about three years ago, the Southern Baptists made a statement against the Boy Scouts allowing openly homosexual scouts. My book, Why Should I Believe?, has an e-mail that I sent to the San Antonio Baptist Association and a letter that I sent to Frank Page, the then president of the SBC. I explained to them then that you cannot expect people to have biblical values when they do not believe the Bible. We need to start teaching people that they can believe the Bible.
In my book, I tell how I did get a response from the SBC. They referred me to various commissions, such as the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. I told the commission the same thing in more detail. I explained to them how the president, a professing Christian, is a Darwinist and does not believe the Bible – which explains his positions. I quoted Obama where he said in the York Daily Record on March 31, 2008 “I’m a Christian, and I believe in parents being able to provide children with religious instruction without interference from the state. But I also believe our schools are there to teach worldly knowledge and science. I believe in evolution, and I believe there’s a difference between science and faith. That doesn’t make faith any less important than science. It just means they’re two different things. And I think it’s a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don’t hold up to scientific inquiry.” The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission never did get back with me.
In 2014, the Southern Baptist Convention made a declaration against the idea of transgenderism.3 And again, I would agree with everything in the declaration that the Southern Baptists made on the subject. But I still did not see any concerted effort on the part of the Southern Baptists to start teaching people that they can actually believe the Bible, starting with Genesis. Now look at where we are in 2016. We have this idea that a man is a woman if he wakes up in the morning and says that he is a woman. I talked about this insanity in my June, 2015 article: A Matter of Rights? And here are my fellow Southern Baptists, still putting out declarations about sinful behavior – all of which I agree with; but they are still afraid to deal with the root problem.
I always include scripture in my articles. I think a number of scriptures could work. But I think the most fitting is II Peter 3:3-6 – “Most importantly, I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own desires. They will say, “What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again? From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created.” They deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago by the word of his command, and he brought the earth out from the water and surrounded it with water. Then he used the water to destroy the ancient world with a mighty flood.”4 So what is Peter saying here? Chapter 3 is a continuation of chapter 2 where Peter talks about “false teachers” and “scoffers” and people “mocking the truth and following their own evil desires.” And why does Peter say this is happening? In chapter 3, verse 5 Peter says very explicitly it is because people do not believe the creation account in Genesis. – “But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water.” And in verse 6 Peter very explicitly states people do not believe the Genesis account of Noah’s flood – “By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.”
So the problem, as Peter saw, is people do not believe the Bible starting with Genesis. Now readers, what is your church doing to teach parishioners that they can believe the Bible – starting with Genesis? If your church is not addressing this core issue, ask them “Why not?”
Terry Read
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