Gender-bending and a weak church

While much attention is being rightfully directed at three major judicial rulings about the definition of marriage, there is another threat that continues to insidiously work itself into the system like a deadly virus. Radicals on the left long ago understood that frontal assaults can serve a purpose, but the indirect approach is often much more effective.

B.H. Liddell Hart, author of "The Classic Book on Military Strategy", one of the epic military training manuals used in our war college since the early 20th century, asserted after studying military strategy utilized over the past millennium:

During this survey one impression became increasingly strong – that, throughout the ages, effective results in war have rarely been attained unless the approach has had such indirectness as to ensure the opponents unreadiness to meet it. The indirectness has usually been physical, and always psychological. In strategy, the longest way around is often the shortest way home.

Thankfully, we are much better at both recognizing as well as employing this strategy in the battle for the spiritual, moral, cultural and political soul of our nation. However, the assault on marriage is not just found in judicial activism by judges like Massachusetts U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro, who ruled the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.

That case as well as the well-publicized trial on California's Proposition 8 (decision pending) and the Washington, D.C., court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in the nation's capital command our attention.

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But wait – don't forget your local, state, civil and family-law courts.

Today in Wharton, Texas (a small community northwest of Houston), Texas state civil court Judge Randy Clapp granted an injunction freezing a death-benefit settlement for the "widow" of a fallen firefighter – because it turns out the "she" is a "he."

The essence of the case is that Nikki Araguz was born a man, had his name changed to a female name and underwent a sex-change operation. "She" then married Luis Araguz who apparently did not know of his "wife's" biological transition at the time.

Front and center is the question of what legally defines a man and a woman. This is not a new issue, as the escalation of transgenderism has forced the addition of "natural man" and "natural woman" to defense-of-marriage amendment language.

In this particular case, a state court decision from 1991 is the guiding legal precedence. It stipulates that "three factors – a person's gonads, genitalia and chromosomes – determine gender at birth."

I know – duh. Everyone else seems to know that, so why are we having this debate?

What is "the way home" of those pushing this agenda, referencing the Hart quote above? I submit that their conquest is not marriage or gender identity as much as continued perversion of all moral standards, destruction of absolute truth and rejection of the Author of that truth.

In other words, the battle over gender identity is really only about whether the words "male and female He created them" (Gen. 1:27), the book that contains those words and the God Who spoke them are real, relevant and worthy of reverence.

Here is the conundrum. In the "Art of War," Sun Tzu asserted:

Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from the high places and hastens downwards. So in war, the way to avoid what is strong is to strike what is weak.

If the United States was morally strong, these efforts would have been crushed at their first evil emergence. Of course, the U.S. as a nation cannot be morally stronger than the collective state of its institutions, determined solely by the morality of the people – all utterly dependent on being nurtured by the supplier of moral truth.

That would be the church.

Weak church, weak morals. Weak morals, weak nation. Weak nation, moral anarchy.

It is true that the church itself is a "catholic" or united, universal body of people who profess common faith and belief. If we the people are weak and shallow, not living or proclaiming the principles of our faith as evidence of the transforming power of Jesus Christ, will not everything up the flow chart necessarily collapse?

Going back to the "case of the woman who was a man," this is very specifically part of an indirect strategy to undefine and destroy marriage laws and marriage. The attorney for "Nikki" is Phyllis Frye, also transgendered, who is responsible for feeding dozens if not hundreds of this name-change strategy through the Texas courts.

Pastors must more boldly "connect the dots" between truth as contained in Holy Scripture and every sphere of the life of those in our churches. We must then "reconnect the dots" between those truths and the laws of our land.

We must be less concerned with filling our pews (or chairs) and more concerned about filling the minds of those sitting under our stewardship with the power of God's word.

Then and only then can we be agents of change and take back the ground the enemy has stolen on our watch.