Ethics and Morality

Critical Theory Legitimization of LGBT. Homosexual Practice & LGBT Sexual Revolution. Part 5/5

Critical Theory Legitimization of LGBT. HPLSR Part 5/5

Central Ideas of Critical Theory
A. Premises: Western culture is being strongly influenced by contemporary critical theory, which makes claims regarding (1) the social binary, (2) hegemonic power, (3) lived experience, and (4) social justice and praxis, or the implementation of critical social theories to effect social transformation.

B. Defining ideas.
1) Social binary, 2) Hegemonic power, 3) Lived experience, 4) Social justice and social transformation.

* The lived experience of minoritized and oppressed groups rivals and at times is prioritized over objective evidence and reason when it comes to understanding the world.
* Oppressive structures/institutions must be overturned.

C. Case study by Jeffrey Satinova on how the LGBT as a powerful aggressive activist movement successfully forced the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to redefine homosexuality, although the redefinition was a result of political activism rather than on scientific evidence.

D. Conclusion
1) LGBT is not just a lifestyle choice. It is an aggressive ideology which seeks power to impose its ideas as the basis of social policy to reshape social reality.
2) The LGBT movement is a well-funded, efficiently organized & aggressive movement seeking to drive the church & Christians from engagement with the public square.
3) Arguably, the LGBT movement is this generation’s signature rebellion against God’s moral law and order in the West.

E. Heb 12:14. Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

Challenge: We must courageously declare the truth of biblical teaching & humbly seek to share the wholeness found in God’s grace that brings liberation and real substantial healing to our brokenness.

You can view the full video at:
Critical Theory Legitimization of LGBT. HPLSR Part 5/5

Collated Posts on homosexuality & LGBT

The Rise & Dominance of LGBT Movement. Homosexual Practice & LGBT Sexual Revolution. Part 4/5

The Rise & Dominance of LGBT Movement. HPLSR. Part 4/5

Question – how did the Christianized West abandon biblical morality & how did the LGBT movement become the dominant social-cultural revolutionary movement today?

A. Historical Developments
Pre-modern world mindset: “Mimesis” – discover meaningful moral order instituted by God & conform to it vs Poiesis – Modern technological mindset: “Poiesis” – sees the world as raw material out of which meaning and purpose can be created by the individual.

B. Prioritization of the individual’s inner psychology (Rousseau) – we might even say “feelings” or “intuitions” – for our sense of who we are and what the purpose of our lives is.
Result: Expressive individualism (Charles Taylor) and autonomous self, plastic people who make and remake personal identity at will.
Judith Butler: gender is not identical to biological sex. It is rather, “acts and gestures which are learned performance.

C. Contestation: Biological sex vs claim that gender identity is determined by one’s inner feelings (and beliefs), not by physical reality. Premise: Disorders in sexual development (DSD) do not constitute a third sex. Rather, DSDs are disorders in the development and formation of the male or female body.
Problem with Sex reassignment surgery (SRS).

D. Revolutionary imperative against sexual distinctions
Wilhelm Reich claimed that sexual distinction is a form of social repression. Transgenderism is a rebellion to overcome sexual distinctions.

Herbert Marcuse – To transform society politically, then, one must transform society sexually and psychologically. Logical outcome – the revolutionary imperative in response to the view sexual distinction is repressive.

You can view the full video at:
The Rise & Dominance of LGBT Movement. HPLSR. Part 4/5

Collated posts on Bible and Homosexuality

Paul’s Teaching on Homosexual Practice. Homosexual Practice & LGBT Sexual Revolution. Part 3/5

Paul’s Teaching on Homosexual Practice. HPLSR Part 3/5

A. Rom. 1:22-27 The traditional interpretation of Rom 1:26–27 makes the following points: (1) homosexual and lesbian sex result, as do other sins, from rejecting God’s truth; (2) same-sex sexual relations are a judgment upon those who engage in them (“God gave them over”); (3) same-sex sexual relations are contrary to the ordinances for sex and marriage revealed by God in Scripture (Genesis 1–2) and in nature itself; and (4) thus, such sexual activities are immoral and disobedient to God, i.e., they are sinful.

B. The following LGBT claims are rejected
Claim 1. Paul talking about pederasty (sex with boys). No relevance to loving, consensual, monogamous, same-sex relations.

Claim 2. Paul talking about heterosexuals having homosexual sex – no relevance to people born with homosexual orientation. BUT para physin refers to unnatural relations contrary to nature.

C. Paul underscores his rejection of homosexual practice by using the Greek words for “male” and “female” rather than the more common words for “man” and “woman.” He is quoting from Gen. 1:27.

Meaning of the phrase “homosexual acts are ‘intrinsically disordered’ and ‘contrary to natural law’,” means.

D. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1Tim. 1:10
Meaning of the phrase, “men who practice homosexuality [oute malakoi oute arsenokoitai.”
Meaning of the terms, arsenokoites, ἀρσενοκοίτης and malakos, mαλακός

E. Homosexuality is contrary to the creation order of God. Hence, it is condemned by God, but it is not the last word of God. The message of the Bible: God’s grace and salvation is extended to everyone – to both heterosexuals and homosexuals who believe in Christ and repent from their sins.

You can watch the video at
Paul’s Teaching on Homosexual Practice. HPLSR Part 3/5

LGBT Ideology & Activism in Social Context. Homosexual Practice & LGBT Sexual Revolution. Part 1/5

LGBT Ideology & Activism in Social Context. HPLSR Part 1/5

A. Two Opposing Reactions to Homosexual Practice
1) Inclusivist Liberals: Emphasis on LOVE with a loose attachment to biblical law.
2) Historical church 2000 yr Tradition.

B. Application – Welcoming, but not affirming
Speak God’s truth in love BUT no place for self-righteousness.
Differentiate between people struggling with same-sex attraction from militant homosexual activists.
Main focus on homosexual practices tho’ may make reference to the sexual dysphoria and transgender debate.

C. Basic Facts
Relevant statistics about homosexual practices today
Multiple causes of homosexuality.

D. Biblical Focus on Acts, Not ‘Orientation’
The Bible knows nothing of “homosexual orientation.” The church’s moral focus is not fundamentally with homosexual orientation, no matter how it is supposed to develop.The church’s moral concern is with what an individual does with his or her experiences of same-sex attraction.z

You can watch the video at
LGBT Ideology & Activism in Social Context: HPLSR Part 1/5

Related Posts:
Collated posts on Bible and Homosexuality

The Triumph of the Therapeutic and the LGBTQ Sexual Revolution

Philosophical and Social Origins of Identity Politics and the LGBTQ Sexual Revolution. Part 3.

A. The Autonomous Self and Expressive Individualism
Recent Gallup surveys show that the number of people in the West who identify as LGBTQ and reject the heterosexual family in preference for “non-binary” sexual relationships is increasing. This extraordinary development is the culmination of a sequence of historical developments in the West beginning from the 17th century. This includes the decline of Judeo-Christian religion, the influence of the Enlightenment-Romantic philosophy of the autonomous self, the erosion of community relationships in secular society, and “expressive individualism”, the modern notion that one must be true to oneself to be authentic.¹

Historically, the individual in the West based his identity on his relationship with God and the community he belonged to. The role of religion and pastoral care was to help individuals to be integrated with their community. The good life required the individual to order his life in conformity to God’s created order, in accordance the mimetic view of life. But skeptical Enlightenment philosophy dispensed with the idea of God. Consequently, nature and social order became desacralized and may be manipulated and exploited to serve the welfare of individuals and society, in accordance with the poietic view of life. If there is no created order, then society and culture are merely social constructs, and if nature possesses no intrinsic meaning or purpose, then human beings must create meaning and moral values for themselves. This led in the emergence of the autonomous individual who defines for himself his moral values, and sets the goal of self-fulfillment on his own terms. Continue reading “The Triumph of the Therapeutic and the LGBTQ Sexual Revolution”

1
“Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized…In the twentieth century, it shows affinities with the culture of psychotherapy.”Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen et. al, Habits of the Heart (Uni. California, 1985, 1996), pp. 333-334.

All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Recentred but Empty Self

Philosophical and Social Origins of Identity Politics and the LGBTQ Sexual Revolution. Part 2.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

A) Loss of meaningful sacred order and providence
Since antiquity, people acknowledged that there is a natural order of law and morals. Life is best lived when it is lived in accordance with the requirements of natural order. Among the Greeks, the Stoics taught that man must live in harmony with the rational and purposive order in nature. Ancient Israel also acknowledged a natural order, one that is implanted into creation by the Creator. According to the sages of ancient Israel, knowledge of God comes from experiencing God’s activity in the world. Faith in God’s providence means trusting in the reliability of the creation which the benevolent God has ordered to support human life and guide man in his moral knowledge and action. Gerhard von Rad explains, “This order [of creation] was, indeed, simply there and could, in the last resort, speak for itself. The fact that it quietly but reliably worked towards a balance in the ceaselessly changing state of human relationships ensured that it was experienced over and over again as a beneficent force. In it, however, Yahweh himself was at work in so far as he defended goodness and resisted evil. It was he who was present as an ordering and upholding will in so far as he gave a beneficent stability to life and kept it open to receive his blessings.”¹ Continue reading “All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Recentred but Empty Self”

1
Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (SCM, 1972), pp. 191-192.

The Vanished Soul and Quest for the Authentic Self in Modern Western Thought

Philosophical and Social Origins of Identity Politics and the LGBTQ Sexual Revolution. Part 1.

Due to the influence of the Bible, the majority of thinkers in Western society for centuries have acknowledged the reality of the soul which is distinct and yet intimately linked to the body. According to the Christian tradition, what we refer to as body and soul are aspects of one unitary reality and process, that is, the body and soul are viewed as a psychophysical unit, the human person. The physical body changes through time but the soul persists as the person interacts continuously with the world. It is the continuity of the soul, with its faculties of intellect and will, which ensures coherence and defines the personal identity of the person.¹

Knowledge of the soul is inseparable from knowledge of God.² However, from the 17th century, many Western scholars and scientists began to reject both the idea of God and the soul. Indeed, the soul has become absent or irrelevant in contemporary intellectual discourse. How did this happen?

To answer this question, we begin with the French philosopher, Rene Descartes. Continue reading “The Vanished Soul and Quest for the Authentic Self in Modern Western Thought”

1
Due to constrains of a short article, the words “soul”, “self” and “mind” are used in this post interchangeably in the light of overlaps in their semantic domain. For example, the immortality of the soul is linked to the immateriality of the mind and the mind is a power of the soul. However, we should be sensitive to the nuances of each thinker in how he uses these words.
2
John Calvin notes, “true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. In the first place, no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he “lives and moves”… Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Westminster, 1960), Book 1.1.1, 2.