Tranny Nannies & Christian Freedom

Introduction
There is an anarchist demon in every human heart. Every fallen man, woman, and child is born with original sin, that primordial instinct to be god – to be the highest power and therefore, hate all other claims to power and authority. That is the essence of anarchy. It’s a raging contradiction, but it’s a powerful one. It bucks authority, all authority – why? Because *I* want to. Because *I* feel like it. Turns out anarchy is just a ploy, a farce, a lying attempt at a coup. And the same goes for all the intersectional deconstructive nonsense. You want to tear down the power structures? Says who? By what standard? And just to be clear, libertarianism is often just the slightly better dressed bucktoothed, in-bred cousin of anarchy. 

Because we have this anarcho-libertarian enemy on the one hand, Christians are frequently slow and shy to defend the notion of true Christian liberty and freedom. It can sound or look like we’re defending self-centered individualism, get-off-my-lawn libertarianism, or straight up scofflaw anarchy. Aren’t Christians supposed to give up their rights? We have a hard time telling the difference between the love of and stout-hearted defense of true Christian liberty and that gout-faced imposter anarchy and his ugly relatives.

So, many soft-hearted Christians are completely unprepared for the flanking attack of this same enemy, done up like a tranny doing children’s story hour. And what I mean is that this same anarchic thug frequently shows up in the drag of “Christian service.” It’s the same me-god demon, only it’s wearing nylons and a miniskirt over its rebellious hairy legs, trying to cop a Sunday School smile. Don’t you care about the poor, the weak, the sick, and the elderly? Don’t you care about the “common good”? Pulling the heart strings with the fishhooks of tyranny. Their point being, that if you truly care, you will do whatever it is they think you ought to do. Didn’t Christ sacrifice His rights? Can’t you go without church for a few months? Isn’t love not self-seeking? Can’t you close your business for a while and stay home? But just because some dude put on lipstick, it doesn’t make him a woman. And just because your state made him the director of health services doesn’t mean he knows anything about love.

What is Christian Freedom?
So let us say it plainly and then try to push it out into the corners. Freedom is found in Christ alone, and that means freedom is found in following the law of Christ alone – regardless of what anyone else in the whole world says, regardless of their panic, regardless of their eye-rolling, regardless of their virtue-shaming, regardless of guilt-tripping, emotional appeals, or what they call laws. We are Protestants – Sola Scriptura – Scripture is our only ultimate, infallible rule for life and godliness. A Christian may sometimes voluntarily go along with their games if they do not contradict God’s law, but a Christian is not bound by them and refuses to make peace with any aberration from God’s Word. We owe no one anything but the debt of love. And love is defined by God, not the Supreme Court, not the LGBT gestapo, not media mobs, and not how anyone feels next Tuesday.

This kind of freedom, this kind of wisdom and courage is only possible by the power of the Spirit of God living inside of us. “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:17-18). 

There is no liberty except that which is given by the Spirit of God. And what does that Spirit do? He removes the veil of sin, the veil of blindness, so that we can see Christ in all of Scripture, and particularly in the Old Testament (2 Cor. 3:13-15). Why? So that we can be changed into His image from glory to glory, which is freedom. Where is that freedom found? It’s found in Christ, in His Word. “And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts” (Ps. 119:45). 

Three Different Jurisdictions
Now you can’t say that Christian freedom is defined by God’s Word and trundle off into the world making it up as you go along. If God’s Word truly defines what Christian freedom is, then we need to, you know, study God’s Word and find out what it actually says. And what it says is that Christ has established different authorities with different responsibilities in this world. To say that Jesus Christ is Lord is to say that He is in charge of all the authorities and they must obey Him. And all of this is to say that Christian freedom is not a gigantic wet blanket of guilt trips and emotional manipulation and rules and regulations.

Christian freedom is actually quite simple and can be boiled down to two commands: love God and your neighbor. It was also spelled out a little further with the Ten Commandments given to Moses. But one of the gaping holes in the conscientious Christian’s armor is the loss of understanding that God has established three different governments in this world with distinct responsibilities and assignments: the family, the state, and the church. And the reason why this matters so much for the principles of freedom and liberty is that getting these spheres right and fencing them fiercely is one of the key defenses of freedom.

Because freedom is found in Christ and in His Lordship, the jurisdictions He assigns to each sphere of authority are central to maintaining Christian liberty. Keeping the civil government out of the sanctuary and the family government out of the civil government and keeping all of the spheres in their respective lanes is key to maintaining Christian liberty because obedience to Christ is freedom. Incidentally, and for similar reasons, keeping men out of dresses is also key to Christian freedom, but I digress…

The Freedom of the Family
God has assigned to the family the responsibilities of health, welfare, and education. We see this where husbands are commanded to nourish and cherish their wives, as Christ loved the Church (Eph. 5). “Nourish” and “cherish” literally mean to feed and keep warm. A husband is required by God to provide food and clothing and pay the rent and heating bills. In the Old Testament a man with the kind of brain damage tempting him to take a second wife had the standing warning that if he diminished the food, clothing, and sexual rights of his first wife, she was free to leave and find a man who would actually provide for her (Ex. 21:10-11). Likewise, James, that great champion of the orphans and widows, clearly requires the family to be the first line of defense for their welfare, and those men who do not provide for their own families are worse than unbelievers (Js. 5). 

The church is the backstop for the family, but even that ecclesiastical safety net primarily consists of carefully shepherding the vulnerable back toward families (Js. 5). Nowhere is the State given care for orphans, widows, or the education of children, which incidentally precludes welfare, social security, and public schools. Fathers are responsible to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). Those words “nurture and admonition” mean “culture” and “counsel,” and they cover everything needed for living life under the blessing of God, an education that teaches children to love God with all that they are, all day long (Dt. 6). Schools that are required by law to ignore the Lordship of Christ in every class all day long cannot be considered a viable option for Christian parents who take the Bible seriously.

Based on these commands given to the family, the duty of self-defense, physical protection, and long-term provision are all included in this. A man who will not defend his own life or the life of his wife and children or his ability to protect and provide for them is also worse than an unbeliever. “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children…” (Prov. 13:22). Therefore, it is a basic Christian duty for a man to defend his family, property, inheritance, and freedom – and notice that this freedom is principally the responsibility to fulfill these duties before the Lord. This is how a man loves his God and neighbor. And this freedom is what was enshrined in our US Constitution. A man who fiercely defends this freedom is defending his duty to love God and neighbor. And a godly man who fights the civil government’s encroachment into this freedom is not defending anarcho-libertarianism or self-centered autonomy; he is actually defending the Lordship and love of Christ.

Freedom to Obey God
And this is exactly what we see in Scripture. In His first sermon, Jesus quoted Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Lk. 4:18). So this is the Spirit of liberty – the Spirit of the Lord. It heals, delivers, and sets free. True biblical freedom serves. But it serves in obedience to Christ and His Spirit. Jesus is the one who was filled with the greatest measure of this Free Spirit, and He came to obey His Father, not ‘make it up’ as He went along or do whatever the pharisaical Nannies thought He should do. The freedom of the Spirit is the freedom to obey the law of Christ, not freewheeling, capricious warm fuzzies. And therefore, neither is freedom a limp weathervane that blows in whatever direction the coolmob-wind is blowing or whatever direction the panicmob-wind is blowing.

Biblical freedom has a Spirit-wrought steel backbone. Yes, it sacrifices, bleeds, and dies for the protection and provision of those whom it loves in obedience to Christ. And it fights for the freedom to continue to do so. And yes, it gives up particular rights when the Author of those rights requires it, but it does not acquiesce to the whims of men. The rights enshrined in our constitutions were the inalienable assignments given to men by God. Therefore, it is thoroughly unChristian and frankly rebellious to lay down any of those rights or abdicate any of those responsibilities given to us by God.

This real freedom, true Christian liberty is hated by the devil and all men enslaved to their sins, and so the accusations and temptations come from both directions. Anarcho-libertarians want to steal freedom by divorcing it from the law of God and reducing it to self-centered individualism — which we reject, but the Tranny-Nannies want to steal your freedom by shaming you into giving up the responsibilities that God has given you to provide for and protect those He has put under your care. That theft of freedom is actually a theft of care, a theft of provision, a theft of protection, a theft of your duty to love. And usually that theft comes with a bribe, a stimulus check, a tax credit, or federal grant of someone else’s money.

Conclusion
We’ve just been given the 30 day trial version of this liberty mugging in the recent corona panic where the body count is not yet known for the Statist salvation foisted upon us. And I don’t mean the body count of the victims of the virus (which also seems somewhat elusive); I mean the body count of the victims of the State’s good intentions. The one-size-fits-all lockdowns are claims to know better than God, and all in the name of love. But Peter says, “For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God” (1 Pet. 2:15-16). And this applies to the magistrates as much as to any man. They are servants of God (Rom. 13), and they are required to use their liberty to do good and that means staying in their lane and acknowledging their own limitations. The state has been given the sword. Their job is to punish evildoers. They are not to provide care for the elderly. They are not to tell families how to be healthy or safe from viruses or how to run their businesses. When the state starts swinging its sword in the house, people always get hurt. 

So this is love of God and neighbor: receiving and maintaining the assignments that God gives to each sphere of authority. And this is Christian freedom: obeying God and guarding that obedience fiercely.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash