Alistair Begg, gay weddings, and love

In terms of confrontation, let’s look at the real world. Within my circle of friends and my church community, I for all practical purposes will never be in a situation where I would need to choose pronouns. That leaves confrontation being in the a public space, such as the grocery store, or work. I have been corrected before in the check out line of a grocery store. My choice is to confront that individual, or nod kindly and apologize for any offense. Confrontation in a public space would not make one iota of difference in terms of getting an individual or any individual to change a personal behavior. So I choose not to confront on any topic such as this in a public space, when I am interacting with someone briefly. In terms of work, I have indicated how I have chosen to respond. I make a conscience decision to be kind in spaces where I may not agree with someone’s choice. Someone who is struggling with money comes to me at work and shows me their new tattoo. While I don’t agree with the choice, I nod and say nice. I could go into a diatribe about how it is a foolish use of their money, it damages their body, it has long term consequences…. But would that be the right avenue at that moment in time? Would my confrontation be a catalyst for them to change. Most likely not. Besides it is not the behavior that needs to change it is the heart. Have a strong personal testimony, live that testimony in front of other people, and share the gospel when the situation arises, and you have a greater chance at bringing someone to Christ and having the Holy Spirit transform them. Confronting them in a confrontational way publicly and hoping that this will cause them to change a practice and thus become righteous, does not do anything.

I could even start espousing how bad they are, how what they are doing is evil and how dare they force me to adhere to their wishes and/or belief system. I will at the end of the day get nowhere.

I clicked "like" on your post, even though I don't agree with it.

I have insisted through my career (medicine) on not working for a system or hospital, for reasons like this. If I was employed, I would face the exact same scrutiny you're describing.

I asked a question (or made a challenging statement) about your idea that pronoun meaning can be different in different languages. I think that's worth talking about. I know you to be reasonable and desirous of following Jesus. Obviously, the end of the discussion might be self-convicting, which in your professional situation is really tough.

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Pronouns?

I see no way around it for myself. The most open argument would be that "she" has taken a new meaning. And that would be fine since words do change in meaning over time. But I'm not sure that actually helps justify it.

For this to be a language change, one would have to argue that while "she" previously meant 3rd person nominative for a female, now the meaning of "she" has shifted and it refers to both 3rd pers N female and male who believe they are female. And that would be fine if that's what how culture was truly defining "she." But it isn't. They actually say that a trans woman is a real woman. So for them the pronoun meaning has not changed. "She" still means woman. They just want to use it to say a man is a woman, which is a falsehood.

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For Biblical support for what you're doing, I suppose 2 Kings 1-18.

Naaman gets leprosy. Healed by Elisha. States exclusive faith in the God of Israel. Then...

v.17 And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the LORD.
v.18 In this thing the LORD pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the LORD pardon thy servant in this thing.

(Elisha's response): v.19 And he said unto him, Go in peace. So he departed from him a little way.

I work at a fairly prestigious university in the South, one that has fully embraced all the "woke" agenda that you would expect from a major secular university. I am very conscious of needing to be extremely careful in how I speak to others. I have definitely "misgendered" people, but not trans people, just those who have ambiguous first names, like Kim, and there was no issue because they get it often. I generally try not to use pronouns if I have any doubt, and so far I've been able to navigate things without too much of a problem. I'm so sensitive to this stuff, that I probably do a better job at "fitting in" than some of my secular/unsaved coworkers. For example, in my field, I will never use the terms "whitelisting" or "blacklisting" now, but I hear them all the time in meetings and emails, even from people who supposedly would be offended at their use. I use "allow list" or "deny list."

At another job I had a Mormon friend who always "corrected" people when they used the Lord's name in vain. He never had a problem with "confronting" people on things like that. I never did anything like that and I sometimes wonder if I was being too accommodating.

On the other hand, I don't drink, or swear, or laugh at dirty jokes. I guess that is a passive-aggressive way of confrontation.

I would not classify this as the House of Rimmon. I am not committing an act of sin. I am just not actively confronting an underlying sin that someone may be committing. I am carefully navigating it intentionally, not affirming behaviors. The pronoun issue is so nuanced. Many people who are requesting different pronouns are just trying to jump on a bandwagon. If someone is biologically a male, identifies as a gender male but wants to be called they, is there some sin that needs to be confronted here? We used to call girls who liked to fish and play baseball as tomboys. Were they really boys? Was it a sin to call them that when we were younger? This is just so nuanced in a lot of the edge cases, that to state that the only right way to handle this is to actively confront someone in public, makes no sense to me. I would prefer to navigate it more carefully and more intentionally.

The reason I brought up language, is that language changes. We don’t use the same pronouns from the 1500’s. Yes, I understand the underlying behavior that is trying to be forced on people, but in the end it is 3 letters that were ascribed arbitrary value by a society. Like I said above, if someone is biologically a male, identifies as a male, but wants to be called they, they are not ascribing an underlying behavior here. They are picking a plural pronoun that doesn’t make sense. But I have had people ask me to call them by a nickname that doesn’t even look like their formal name.

I would not classify this as the House of Rimmon. I am not committing an act of sin...

Well, that's my point. Naaman is saying, Hey, I only worship God. So when I go into the house of Rimmon, I won't mean it. I only do it because my job requires it.

Elisha, by saying, "Shalom," seems to agree that this puts him at peace with God. (Though some commentaries don't agree with that.)

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Re: Tomboys and pronouns...

The definition of a girl who does boy type stuff. A girl with a "personality."

Calling boys "girls" is abuse. Saying people can have different personalities is fine.

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EDIT: I do see this as a matter of conscience. I know others who believe they are able to use other-pronouns. I am not able in faith to do that. I'm weak in that regard. So I need to not judge you. I know that.

I don't mean belligerence. I guess the connotation of "confront" has an edge to it, but what I mean is just talking. "What makes you say that?" "Why would you ask someone to do that?" "What if someone insisted you accept their moral values in conversation?" "Should we make ordinary speech a battleground?"

I realize that it is not possible in every situation to have time for these conversations, but I guarantee you that if these conversations never exist, you will never have an opportunity to point either the unthinking or deliberately immoral in the right direction.

Yes, we need to be wise, but we need to think of how to reach people. Silence will not reach them.

In a different venue, I recently read a book by an author you would all probably know. He has a reputation as a conservative. I hated his book, thought he failed to make his case, but a lot of my friends like the book. One of the maddening things he does in the book was to constantly use the "generic she" -- normally, we would refer to a generic "someone" as "he," but this author went out of his way to almost always use "she." This was in a book critiquing the present mood! It seemed to me as a capitulation to the very culture he was critiquing.

So, my point is: we need to figure out how to wage this war, and we need to be wise in how we do it, but we have to realize we are in a war whether we like it or not.

In the end, what I state are my own opinions and my own approaches. I fault no one for taking another approach. I am not blinded there is a war. Instead I tend to focus on the underlying issue that is at hand. When I confront someone, does it allow me to have a greater testimony longer term? The real issue is the heart. Plain and simple. It is not abortion, it is not pronouns.... We should not be surprised when a sinful world acts in sinful ways. They are following their nature. A redeemed world will have righteous ways, but righteous ways do not redeem anyone. Pronouns, sanctity of life and so on, do not redeem a single individual. So the lens I view things, is how can my testimony and my life be an example for others. If I confront someone on something like a pronoun, does it so offend them that they reject me or does it drown out any chance of a testimony. Or am I better off letting them call themselves whatever they like, and still have a relationship with them that I can confront them on heart issues, or things they are really struggling with. I have been profoundly impacted in a number of ways throughout my life, by being circumspect in certain areas (without embracing sin), which later helped me be a true testimony to someone, when that individual sought me out because they saw my life and wanted to be like that. I get that there is a fine line here, and if you go to far over than you are just accommodating all kinds of things, that is why I view it more as threading a needle and not a brute force black and white scenario.

I think we need to be thinking and creative about how to get conversations started, rather than just going along. And I don't think your goals are different from mine in this.

I read a book a couple of years ago by James Lindsay (I know!!) and someone else on How to have Impossible Conversations. Lindsay is an atheist, and in the latter half of the book, I think he becomes quite manipulative. However, some of the things he suggests in the first half of the book or so are good ideas about how to at least turn situations like this into constructive conversations.

That's what I have in mind. If we can engage minds, we might get a chance to point them to the truth, without getting into a fight, or other bad consequences.

Some people won't engage, so you do have to walk away and avoid an argument, though.

This discussion has changed from an article mostly about attending a same-sex wedding to a discussion about pronouns. The first response was Aaron’s why. Let me quote that here and I’m hoping he will chime in to say whether he agrees or disagrees with my reasoning to not attend a SS wedding. The pronoun discussion, while similar, is not equivalent. Here are Aaron’s words:

”Why?

As usual, the claim is made that the act of using a pronoun or attending an event conveys a certain message, but little or no supporting argument is made as to why that must be the case. This sort of writing assumes what it needs to prove.”

Would love to hear your opinion of my post about attending a SS marriage brother.

I have found the "Got Questions" website to have some good insight on a variety of topics. Today I found this in my email and since it pertained to this thread, I figured this was a good place to share the link:

Should a Christian attend a gay wedding? | GotQuestions.org

Alistair Begg has provided a response to this controversy, which is well worth your time to watch...

https://youtu.be/t2bmFuA40T4?si=xSLOdy_0D-mlb928

Thought this was pretty good albeit short.

https://clearlyreformed.org/the-case-against-christians-attending-a-gay…