In America there has recently arisen a huge controversy over gender specific bathrooms. I do not know how the rest of the world handles this problem, but let me explain how things used to be in America.
Public bathrooms mainly take the form of gender specific, being fairly non-private once inside the gender specific room. The men's room has multiple urinals on the wall with a few stalls with doors that have toilets in them. The women's bathroom have multiple stalls with toilets and both bathrooms have several or a row of sinks. Now these stalls are not what you would call completely private. They do not begin at the floor, but about a foot or so above it. The tops of the stalls end at about six feet from the floor, so just above a woman's head height. There are small gaps between the doors and the door jambs where they are hinged together, so that one can glance in to see if a stall is occupied, without having to test the door. One can look under or over the stall without too much difficulty if one is inclined to do so. One can even crawl from stall to stall by sliding underneath the partitions. So privacy is a relative term here.
There are some places who have created separate family/handicap/non-gendered bathrooms in addition to or in place of the gender specific bathrooms. These are rooms large enough to accommodate wheelchairs and a few people comfortably (so a parent can take in multiple children), which simply have a single handicap facilitated toilet, sink, and baby changing station, rather than multiple toilets and sinks. This is your basically like your home bathroom. But these kind of bathrooms are the exception and unusual and not the rule.
The ruling has come down that now there should be no such thing as gender specific bathrooms and that you can choose to go into whichever one you identify with, regardless of the gender of body you are actually inhabiting. Needless to say the LGBT people are very happy about this, but the vast majority of people are not, especially parents of small children.
In addition to this, the schools (and public gym type businesses) are opening the locker rooms (where in many schools there are rows of showers with no curtains) to either gender, so girls/women can go shower with boys/men and vice versa. It does not take a rocket scientist to see where there might be a problem with this.
So where is a Christian supposed to stand on this issue? Many are speaking out about it and saying that we should not be tolerating this. They are concerned that this is going to lead to abusive situations with voyeurs and pedophiles. In fact it already has as men are going in with cameras and taking pictures. Parents are terrified of allowing their children to go into a bathroom or locker room alone, and with good reason. Pedophiles are naturally going to take advantage of this and use it to provide resources for their sins and perversions. How some people can ignore the safety of children to force people to cater to their "feelings" is beyond my comprehension.
Other Christians are on the fence saying that we should just pray and do what is "right." By being "on the fence" I mean that they aren't sure that these issues are sins, so therefore they do not want to judge or be less than loving toward these people with these issues as they feel that tolerance toward their sin is the preferable way of representing Christ. Funny that I don't remember Christ ever telling people that their sin was okay with Him. He forgave them, yes, and we should not hate the sinner ever, but He also always followed offering forgiveness with the command to "go and sin no more." He didn't tolerate the sin, He forgave it, but warned them to not continue in it. So Christians who are equating tolerance with love are sadly mistaken in what they are doing. We cannot tell them that their sin is not a sin, for that is not honest. We need to tell them that their sin is a sin, but that Christ forgives sin and that we all have sins that need forgiving. Our problem has become that we are no longer labeling certain sins as sins, and in that we cross from being loving in Christ to being an enemy of Christ, for we no longer stand for what He stands for.
The second thing that these people say, and I can agree with this, for prayer is a mighty and powerful weapon against the enemy, is that prayer is necessary. The problem has become, that while they give this lip service, people are not really praying. How can I know this? Because this country is not changing. God has said in 2 Chronicles 7:14 "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and
pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I
hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." If Christians really were on their knees praying, we would see change in this land. But the only change we see is that things are getting more ungodly every day. That would force the conclusion that Christians are not praying at all. Or the alternative to that, which might be the more accurate conclusion, is that their prayers are hindered and not heard. Why is that? Because when we have sin in the way, God cannot hear our prayers for they are hindered by our disobedience. The Church today is in great apostasy. God is not hearing the prayers of those who so disregard His Word and His standards.
The last problem is when a Christian says that we should do what is "right." What exactly is meant by that? Do they mean do what is tolerant? Or do they mean do what is right in God's eyes? Which one is the "right" way? Which one is truly the loving way? Is condoning sin loving? Or it is more loving to tell people the truth, that what they are doing is sin and if they don't repent of sin, it will lead them to hell? It may seem more loving to be tolerant, for when one is tolerant, one will find that people who want to sin will react back in a loving manner, for they are not feeling that their behavior is coming under condemnation. As love is being returned to the Christian, they feel that they have been loving themselves. But this is not the definition of real love. On the other hand, a Christian who stands up and proclaims God's Word, which is the most loving thing you can do, and condemns sin will always be hated. For we are told that the world will hate us, if we choose to stand for God. I think that is the real situation here. Christians are afraid. They are afraid of taking a stand for Christ, because that will bring persecution. How much easier to stay quiet and be seen to be tolerant and loving so that you do not have to fear the hate that the world will give you for standing for Christ.
Matthew 10:22 " And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved."
Matthew 24:9 "Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake."
Mark 13:13 "And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved."
Luke 21:17 "And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake."
John 15:18 "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you."
There are many Christians who say that we should not judge others, for we ourselves are not without sin. Well, there is judging and there is judging, as they say. It is not our place to decide the motives of another person's heart, nor are we to absolutely declare that a person is going to hell, for many have had deathbed conversions in spite of the life they have led. And we are not to worry about an unbelievers particular sin, for the objective is to share the gospel. With believers that changes. We are supposed to watch their behavior and if it needs correcting, we are to speak to them about it. God lays out a procedure for how to handle that starting with a one on one conversation to removing them from the church.However, we can say with absolute authority and without judgment that there are behaviors that are called sins by God and we are to state what those are regardless of whom we are addressing. We do not just condemn others in doing that, we condemn ourselves as well, for none of us are without sin. What is happening is that people are not distinguishing between condemning the sin and condemning the sinner.
Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Romans 3:10 "As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one." There is not a single one of us that is without sin, so we should not act with a self-righteous attitude toward the sinners when we speak out against sin. But we are to speak out against sinful behavior. What is happening nowadays is that sin is no longer being labeled as sin in some cases, and the main subject where that is happening is where sex and gender come into question. Christians are buying into the lie that these behaviors, which God calls perversions and the depravity of man, are being said to be genetic problems, not the sin nature of man or the giving over of oneself to demonic control. They are making excuses for these perversions in complete disregard of what the Scriptures clearly teach on the subject. (See my articles on transgenderism and homosexuality in the archives.) Even when shown what the Bible says, many will cling to the "evidence" and I use that term very loosely of "science" and I use that term very loosely also, as being the last word on the subject, and therefore they must act in tolerance of these sins, so that they are being Christ-like. They see those who take a stand against these sins as being very hateful and unloving, and very unChrist-like. I think they have forgotten what Christ did in the temple when He overthrew all the tables of the merchandisers, because they were robbing the people blind. He was also not very nice to the Pharisees. Somehow His behavior in the face of blatant sinners who would not acknowledge that what they were doing was a sin has been swept under the carpet. Yes, the sinners who fell at His feet in repentance got a loving response from Him, although it was followed with a warning. But they acknowledged their sin. They knew they needed forgiveness. They were not arrogant in His face. The Pharisees and moneychangers were. And He reacted quite differently to them. If we are to act in the same manner as Christ, we are not to tolerate blatant sin that is going on with no acknowledgment that they are doing anything wrong. We are to cry out, "The Emperor has no clothes on." (For those of you who don't understand that, check out the children's story The Emperor's New Clothes.") It is the non-politically correct thing to do, but it is the truth. And we will stand out for saying it. And we will be hated for saying it.
In a public statement that I made, I suggested that as we are being ignored and our voice is not heard in this matter, that to be heard we must carry out the passive (not aggressive) actions of withdrawing our support of those institutions who are taking up this cause. We need to boycott the stores, we need to pull our children out of the public government assisted schools (for their government assistance is based upon their enrollment numbers). One reaction I received to this was that we needed to pray and do the RIGHT thing. (Caps were the commenters, not mine.) So as I said above, if what I suggested is not the right thing, to speak out to keep the genders as created by God separate, to protect the modesty, privacy, and safety of adults and especially children, and show our passive disapproval in our actions, then what is the RIGHT way?
It was once said that "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." By sitting back and saying we are praying (when many really aren't, they merely are saying that to look more righteous - and the proof of that is that nothing is changing) and then taking no action, because to do something is seen by the world as being hateful and intolerant, we are doing nothing. Evil continues to triumph because Christians are mistaking tolerance (out of fear for their safety) in place of real love, which is to proclaim God's love and God's wrath. I fear evil is triumphing, because Christians tremble in fear. If they fear reprisals from the LGBT group for not approving gender neutral bathrooms, what will they do in the face of the antichrist and his demands and wrath?
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