The Pride of “Pride”: God's Assessment of Today's Cultural Idol
For the past two decades—a relative blip on history’s radar—a new month of celebration has been forcibly entered into our digital calendars, splashed across our screens, and slipped into our common consciousness. That month is the month of June, which LGBTQ advocates have called “Pride Month.”
Now, as the clock prepares to strike midnight each May 31, an angsty mix of emotions sweeps through churches, homes, classrooms, boardrooms, businesses, and government agencies as decisions have to be made about which side of the fence to sit on, how much virtue signaling to engage in, how not to be accused of saying too much (or too little), and how many colors of the rainbow flag should be flown.
In the midst of all the hand-wringing over concerns about being canceled, and the politicking involved in what has become a hot-button issue in our day, a very simple question is often overlooked: what does God think of all of this? What is the Lord of Heaven’s take on the whole idea of “Pride Month”?
This article presents ten truths about God’s perspective on the LGBTQ movement as a whole, and His assessment of our culture’s wholesale devotion of an entire month each year to worship at the altar of “Pride.”
First, God has given us clear directions and prohibitions on a variety of subjects, and related to a variety of sins, in His Word—the Bible.
God has made no mistakes in anything He’s said in His Word. He wasn’t half-in and half-out when He gave us His Word. He didn’t stutter when He gave us His Word. He hasn’t moved on from what He has said in His Word.
On the contrary, God has spoken clearly, directly, and timelessly in His Word. And this means that each of the behaviors, practices, tendencies, predispositions, attractions, and feelings that any of us have—no matter how societally accepted they are or have become—must be held up to the penetrating light of God’s Word.
What God says, goes. What we want, what we feel, what we crave, and what we desire, ultimately doesn’t matter. What matters is what God says, what He has said, and how He wants us to live. “O send out Your light and Your truth, let them lead me.” (Psalm 43:3)
Second, God has clearly outlined His design for marriage, sex, and procreation in the Scriptures.
His design is laid out with simplicity and clarity in Genesis 2:24, which says: “a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”
That is, a man, a biological male (the only kind of man there is), and a woman, a biological female (the only kind of woman there is), are to be joined together in marriage. They then will grow their family through the addition of children, playing their part in fulfilling God’s mandate to populate the earth (Genesis 1:28), and then their kids will go on to start their own families and do the same.
These God-honoring (not to mention species-preserving) cycles of procreation may not be in keeping with what is being taught on college campuses or through the mainstream media these days, but going back to the first truth mentioned above, ultimately it makes no difference what professor so-and-so or a talking head or Elon Musk thinks. It’s God’s perspective—and His alone—that matters.
Third, God has clearly condemned as sinful any corruptions of His design for sex and gender and marriage.
And contrary to the arguments of those who would like to argue that God was grumpily anti-gay in the Old Testament, but that by Jesus’ day, He had evolved into a more friendly, more LGBTQ-affirming “god,” consider the divinely-inspired words of the Apostle Paul, who wrote the following in the New Testament:
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.”
Fourth, “there is no partiality with God” (Romans 2:11).
Or as it says in the King James Version, “God is no respecter of persons.”
So, while the sin of homosexuality is, in fact, enumerated as a sin in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, it isnot the only sin listed there. It is not the unforgivable or unpardonable sin.
Nevertheless, God hates all sin (Psalm 5:5), and we cannot ignore that homosexuality is listed among that catalog of sins for which those who are unrepentant will face eternal condemnation and wrath in hell at the hand of a holy God.
Fifth, God opposes the proud (James 4:6).
Pride was at the heart of Satan’s fall. Pride was at the heart of Nebuchadnezzar’s demise. Pride was at the heart of Judas’ betrayal. Pride is at the heart of every self-seeking, self-protective sin we’ve ever committed.
Pride is not something to celebrate. Pride is something God Himself says He opposes. According to Psalm 138:6, “the haughty”—meaning, the prideful—“He knows from afar.” Pride, in other words, is not something to rejoice in. Pride is something to repent of.
Sixth, God does not change.
The Old Testament records this truth: “For I, the LORD, do not change” (Malachi 3:6). In the New Testament, the author of Hebrews says that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
To the one who has put their faith in Jesus Christ, who has been washed by His blood, and who is now committed to walking in His ways, this truth—that God does not change—is a great comfort, for it means that He will never turn His face from us, or take away His love from us, or revoke His promises to us.
But for those who reject Christ—and by definition, all who practice or identify with any aspect of the LGBTQ movement reject Christ both by identifying with and indulging in the very sin for which He died—they ignore (and they do so to their own peril) the fact that the God they are rebelling against does not change. He doesn’t evolve or get with the times. He didn’t do so in the days of Israel’s idolatry. And He isn’t doing so in ours.
Seventh, God will not be mocked (Galatians 6:7).
And make no mistake: the LGBTQ movement’s hijacking of the rainbow symbol—a symbol which, ironically, represents a promise by God never to flood the earth again in judgment (Genesis 9:8-17)—is an outright mockery of God. The LGBTQ movement’s appropriation of the sin of “pride” as the twisted badge of honor it now wears, is an outright mockery of God.
God sees it all. He is being unbelievably patient and forbearing as He witnesses it all. He is storing up wrath against it all. But He will not be mocked.
Eighth, God answers prayers (James 5:16b).
What this means, among other things, is that there is not a person on this planet right now with breath in their lungs—including any person who is confused about the gender God assigned to them at birth, and any person who would identify today as homosexual—who is outside the reach of the grace of God.
So, as you pray for more souls to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, make it a practice to pray for those who are trapped and ensnared by this particular sin. Pray for the scales to fall from their eyes. Pray for the light of the gospel to penetrate their hearts. And pray they would come to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
Ninth, God saves souls.
As noted above, “homosexuals” are listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 as being among those individuals who will not enter the kingdom of God.
It’s important to note that in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul was writing to Christians. He was writing to a church, that is, to those who had come to faith in Christ. And some of them, apparently, had abandoned their former homosexual lifestyles as they trusted in Christ, which is why Paul, in 1 Corinthians 6:11, could say: “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”
Surely, there will be those who one day will see the kingdom of God who were saved out of a homosexual lifestyle, or out of a period of gender confusion. They might have said they were “born this way” at an earlier point in their lives, but then they met Jesus Christ, believed in His name, and were “born again.” At some point they might have thought that they were in the wrong body and that they needed to undergo some form of external bodily transformation to match who they believed themselves to be internally, only to learn that it was an internal transformation—a heart transplant (Ezekiel 36:26)—that they needed all along.
Knowing that God is a God who delights to save, don’t become slack in sharing the gospel with people of every tongue, tribe, and nation—and of every sexual orientation and other persuasion. The gospel is true, the gospel is powerful, and the gospel transforms.
Tenth, God is building His church.
He is doing so globally and locally as more and more people come to saving faith in Jesus Christ.
He saved down-and-outers in the Depression. He saved military vets following the wartime atrocities they witnessed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He saved drugged-out hippies in the middle of the sexual revolution. And surely, He will save LGBTQ people in our day. As His gospel is proclaimed, He will rescue some LGBTQ people from the domain of darkness (Colossians 1:13) and qualify them “to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light” (Colossians 1:12).
When that happens, and when those who once proudly draped themselves in a rainbow flag are now clothed in the righteousness of Christ, will you be ready to minister to them? To teach, train, and disciple them? To spur them on in their newfound faith? To walk alongside them?
This June—in what the culture wants to call “Pride Month”—don’t be discouraged or grow weary. Pray that God would enliven your heart to remember that God is good, and always does good (Psalm 119:68). Pray that God would soften your heart to those who are enslaved by those sins that are now being championed by the LGBTQ movement. And pray that God would give new hearts, through faith in Jesus Christ, to those who now bow down before today’s rainbow-cloaked idol of “Pride.”
