World of Equality

We’ve just had Pride weekend. Steve Chalke has tweeted to say 

I love Pride weekend; it’s the public declaration by the LGBT+ community (and committed allies such as me) that despite the homophobia and transphobia that still seeks to exclude & discriminate, we will celebrate as we work to give birth to a world of equality!

He probably ought to read Brendan O’Neil’s Why I’m Sick of Pride piece in The Spectator. It addresses the achingly woke desire of our institutions and corporations to seize upon the rainbow flag, assuring us all of their wholehearted subscription to the new moral orthodoxy. He writes:

It’s no longer enough to leave homosexuals alone to live however they choose and to inflict on them no persecution or discrimination or any ill-will whatsoever on the basis of their sexuality, which is absolutely the right thing for a civilised liberal society to do. No, now you have to validate their identity and cheer their life choices. You must doff your cap to that omnipresent bloody rainbow. Today it isn’t homosexuals who are persecuted; it’s their critics, whether it’s Ann Widdecombe or Tim Farron, with their well-known aversion to gay romping, or those Muslim parents in Birmingham who don’t think six-year-old Muhammad needs to know that some men sleep with men.

This secular writer’s refreshing critique of our culture is more meaningful than Pastor Steve Chalke’s osmotic recitation of the liberal script. Still, it was Chalke’s final line which really grabbed my attention. Our birthing a ‘world of equality’ is the chief aspiration of many today, not just Marxists. We Christians believe that all people are of equal value- because they were created by the same awesome Maker. In our churches, social and racial distinctions are neither recognised nor endured, ‘for all are one in Christ’. Yet this world of equality and mutual affection will not come from Pride marches, nor from left wing revolution, and not from the churches. The utopia of which he so glibly speaks will only come when Christ comes. Whereas we Christ-followers should be heralds and distributors of equity, justice and righteousness, these virtues will only ever be established on the earth when He who is the source of such goodness establishes His kingdom here.

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

-Isaiah 11:6