Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long~ Psalm 25:4-5 NIV
There was a time in the not-so-distant-past when facts mattered and feelings were considered immaterial to most discussions. Those days are in the rear-view. Few people care about facts anymore. Even in the very rare cases where logic and reason are allowed entrance onto the debate stage, the facts nearly always take a backseat to whatever emotion is driving the aforementioned argument.
Feelings have become the god we worship.
This truth is most clearly revealed in the whole transgender bathroom debate. The kerfuffle over who gets to pee where is not really about fairness; if it were, we would be done discussing it already. Nor is it about men dressed convincingly as women using women’s bathrooms.
Like it or not, that sort of thing has been going on for as long as there have been bathrooms in public places and most folks have been none the wiser. Contrary what the LBGTQ community would have the world believe, conservatives do not routinely do “parts” checks or demand to see birth certificates at the entrance to public toilets.
The real issue at hand is a small minority of men who do not routinely dress as women who claim there are times when they suddenly “feel” like women and should therefore be treated like women. These men are demanding the right to enter women’s restrooms whenever that feeling happens to strike them. According their supporters the “needs” of men caught in deception outweigh the rights of everyone else.
The notion that men ought to be permitted to use any restroom they wish based on something that simply cannot be proven (feelings) is clearly absurd and obviously rife with potential for abuse. However, the brave few left clinging to reason are losing this debate. Not because the truth isn’t evident or because the facts aren’t compelling; but rather because the debate is being framed around feelings rather than facts or common sense (Isaiah 59:14).
Sadly, the proclivity to allow feelings to drive every argument is not restricted to men who wish to have access to women’s bathrooms. Now we are expected to use the any pronouns a person chooses and Feelings rule the day in all sorts of different situations and it seems everybody is hopping on the feelings bandwagon.
Decisions are made, marriages dissolved, political opinions shaped, and votes cast. Not based on promises made, facts examined or the painstaking vetting of views, but rather on the basis of how we feel about those things. Commitment, character of the individual and reason all take a backseat to feelings.
Feeling statements are oftentimes cleverly disguised as “I don’t think” declarations. Usually an “I don’t think” declaration will follow the delivery of an irrefutable, but unpleasant fact or the teaching of an exceptionally clear but hard Bible passage. The hearer will scrunch-up their brow, take a deep breath and state, in a very serious tone “I don’t think a loving God would ______________” or “I don’t think _______________ is actually true”. “I don’t think” declarations rarely involve any deep thought; rather they reveal the hearers’ feelings about the fact stated.
When facts are ignored or dismissed as irrelevant, society quickly devolves into the messy muddle described in the book of Judges: in those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes~ Judges 21:25. The only discernible difference between our time and theirs is that we do have a king, we are led by king feelings and feelings are proving to be more tyrannical and terrifying than any human leader.
The American public and even those in the Church have been conditioned over the course of several decades to buy the lie that a hurt feeling is every bit as serious as a broken bone and perception is reality. The truth is that hurt feelings do hurt.
Sometimes they hurt a lot.
However, a hurt feeling only causes permanent damage if someone allows the hurt to take root and grow into bitterness (Hebrews 12:15). Perceptions are essentially just feelings with a fancy title and should never be treated as facts and it’s a dangerous form of lunacy to kowtow to anything as capricious as a feeling. Therefore, Christians should be very careful in this area. It’s critical we remember that we are breaking the ninth commandment and the heart of God every single time we concede that a man is a woman or a woman is a man (Exodus 20:16). It’s critical Christians be kind and compassionate to EVERYONE (Ephesians 4:32, Colossians 3:12).
However.
It’s just as critical God’s people be true to what’s real and true (1st Thessalonians 5:22).
