Would You Swallow That?

       A story tells about a mother who was sick in bed with the flu. Her darling six-year-old daughter wanted to be a good nurse. She fluffed the pillows and brought Mommy a magazine to read. She even showed up with a surprise cup of tea. “My, you’re such a sweetheart,” the mother said after swallowing several sips of the tea. “I didn’t know you even knew how to make tea.” The little nurse replied, “I do, Mommy. I learned by watching you. I put the tea leaves in the pan and then I put in the water, boiled it, turned off the stove and then I strained it into a cup. But I couldn’t find the strainer, so I used the fly-swatter instead.” Horrified, Mom screamed, “You what?!” And the little girl said, “It’s okay Mom. I didn’t use the new fly swatter. I used the old one.” The moral of that story: know what we swallow, but also what kind of strainer was used as a filter for what is served up to swallow! Strainers filter and separate out stuff we don’t want in what we prepare to eat or drink, etc. Who would knowingly drink tea strained through a used fly-swatter? Yuk! Flies are nasty, disgusting, disease-ridden creatures. They feed on stuff you consider to be trash and sewage! They get into your trash, load up on all kinds of pathogens and bad bacteria, then land and walk their filthy little fly legs all over your food or the rim of your glass. Gross. Would you willingly and knowingly swallow tea strained through a flyswatter?                       
    I think of all this when I hear somebody spout off some kind of morally and / or spiritually extreme idea. One example (by no means the only one) is when someone insists that gender is not “binary” but multiple. A computer search on “how many genders do progressives say there are” revealed an article entitled, “68 Terms That Describe Gender Identity and Expression” (@ healthline.com). A summary statement declared, “Gender is a spectrum, and there are dozens of ways to describe your individual gender identity. Man, woman, cisgender, and transgender are just a few options.” The article went on to say many people grew up with the idea that there are two sexes, male and female, that “match” with two genders, male and female. That view is condescendingly described as “simplistic.” In no uncertain terms it is stated, “In reality, neither gender nor sex is binary” (composed of two).  We are asked to swallow that, and many do. But what kind of filter is that kind of thinking slipping through? A fancy name for the philosophy is autonomy, the idea that each person is self-governing, self-ruling, and totally independent, free of any kind of control beyond each person. You’ve heard it expressed as, “This is my authentic truth.” Gender autonomy allows a man to say, “I identify / feel like a woman” or vice-versa.” I don’t pretend to know how people feel. I do know this — that kind of autonomous, feeling-based thinking, untethered from the idea that objective truth exists and is knowable, is not new. Long ago the inspired ancient wise man said, “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death” Proverbs 14:12). That’s God’s truth. The folks who insist there is no absolute truth expect you to accept that statement as absolutely true. Forgive me for being simplistic, but I can’t swallow that.

            “ ... He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female’” — Jesus, Matthew 19:4 

by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN