This month many folks must endure workplace propaganda that contradicts their personal beliefs. Friends have told me how tiring and oppressive the continuous onslaught can be. I am no longer employed but similar promotions appear in businesses and media I come across. ‘Pride’ ideology is massively divisive. For this reason, my post features words directly from the Author of Life, letting Scripture speak for itself to the issues at hand. My compilation spans the Old and New Testaments and various Biblical genres of history, poetry, the Gospels (of Jesus) and the Epistles (letters). The prudent practice of comparing multiple passages is referred to as “the whole counsel of Scripture.”
Genesis 1 v 26-27 NIV
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Genesis 9 v16-17 NIV
16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” 17 So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”
Psalm 139 v 13 – 16a NLT
13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
16 You saw me before I was born.
Proverbs 8 v 13 ESV
13 The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil.
Pride and arrogance and the way of evil
and perverted speech I hate.
Matthew 19 v 4 – 6 ESV
4 He [Jesus] answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Romans 1 v 21, 24 – 27 ESV
21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Galatians 6 v 14 CSB
14 But as for me [Paul], I will never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The world has been crucified to me through the cross, and I to the world.
2 Timothy 3 v 1 – 5a CSB
But know this: Hard times will come in the last days. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, demeaning, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, 4 traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to the form of godliness but denying its power.
To briefly summarize, some of you may think these are intolerant words. I believe them to be God’s perfect plan for what He created. God’s way is worth celebrating! As the Apostle Paul put it, we take pride only in God’s work on the cross for us. With humility, Brenda.
*Note – the abbreviations following the references indicate the Bible translation used: Christian Standard Bible, English Standard Version, New International Version, New Living Translation.
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