2021 | Week of June 28 | Radio Transcript #1418

Reality declares that the opening statement of the inerrant, unchanging, eternal Word of God is “In the beginning God…” It’s not “In the beginning, I” or “In the beginning me.” Functionally, however, many people operate today as if this rewrite of Scripture is reality, is truth. They believe they are autonomous beings, self-made and self-determining.

That’s one of the results of decades of public schools and the media declaring and teaching evolution to be fact, the courts determining that prayer and Bible reading cannot be done in public schools, and humanism being the dominant ideology—if not a religion—not just in schools but in the culture at large.

Believing humans are autonomous is at the root of abortion and the sexual revolution. A woman’s right to choose. My body, my choice. That’s the long-heard, oft-repeated mantra of the pro-abortion folks. The argument is that as an autonomous person, I am the only one who gets to determine what happens to my body.

There’s some truth in that belief. For instance, we all have and make choices every day. But our choices are always limited by reality. I can, for instance, walk into a Culvers and demand that they sell me hand-dipped strawberry ice cream. I can claim my autonomy—my right to the choice I want—all day long, but that won’t change the reality that Culvers doesn’t have any ice cream; they sell exclusively soft custard. Reality just trumped my autonomy.

Autonomy in the abortion argument seems to me to be trumped by the reality that it’s not just the woman’s life and body that is involved, but the unborn baby, and dare I say the baby’s autonomy? Of course, pro-abortion advocates never acknowledge the personhood of the unborn baby. By referring to the unborn human as a clump of cells, the product of conception, or the fetus, they are doing their best to deny the reality, the truth, that there is another human being involved in this life-taking decision the woman claims is hers and hers alone to make. That’s a reality that rightly should limit the mother’s autonomy.

In the sexual revolution area, reality also rears its head. For instance, biological reality is that one’s sex is determined at the moment of conception. A person is either XX or XY, female or male. That’s an unchangeable reality. Men can masquerade as women or women as men declaring they are acting on their autonomy. They can even autonomously demand doctors give them hormone therapies and perform irreversible surgeries in an attempt to change reality, but nothing will make a man a woman or a woman a man.

Another reality in the sexual revolution is that it takes both male and female to create new life. Egg and sperm must get together to make a new human. That’s a scientific reality. So, two men or two women cannot, acting as an autonomous couple, cannot create a new human being on their own. It’s just not possible. They have to go outside themselves and involve the opposite sex to do that. That’s an uncomfortable truth and reality for those who want everyone to believe that same-sex “marriage” is the same as heterosexual marriage. It’s not.

In every area of life, our proclaimed autonomy will be met with reality. And when that happens, autonomy will, at some point, be forced to yield to reality. Simply put, as humans, we can make our choices, but we don’t get to decide the consequences.

Those women who choose to abort their unborn babies will at some point be faced with the consequences of their choice. Those may come in the form of physiological, emotional, mental or spiritual consequences. But reality will ultimately prevail.

Individuals who have bought the lie that their autonomy gives them license to quote “change their sex,” will at some point be forced to face the reality that they are attempting to do the impossible. Reality will win.

“In the beginning God” is a reality unlike any other. We are created beings, created by a wise, loving God, Who is incapable of making mistakes. The creature asserts its autonomy against the Creator to our peril. Autonomy is what Lucifer asserted—and He ran right smack into the reality of a holy, righteous God. We do well to live our lives in obedience to our great God and to lovingly showing and sharing the truth to those around us who are so very often on a collision course with reality.

This is Julaine Appling for Wisconsin Family Council reminding you the prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”