Perhaps my parents were naïve. They raised me to respect my teachers, the government, and other authorities, and to believe these entities acted in my best interests and certainly wouldn’t lie to me. I was warned about the duplicity of politicians and used-car salesmen, but they were mostly grouped in classes by themselves.
Now I know I was misled by these authorities on some very important things. For instance, in biology class I was taught as scientific fact a totally fanciful—and atheistically religious—story that “survival of the fittest” caused the evolution of life on Earth. Disseminating that lie was an abuse of youthful trust in authority.
The lying has gotten far worse. Back then, I never felt institutional coercion to join a perverse government-led movement that affirms as truth many things I and most other people can clearly see are false. For example, until recently it was basic common sense to recognize that male and female are the two biological sexes. Today, anyone daring to speak common sense is publicly pummeled with disparaging names (or worse) by members of a rapidly growing deviant movement. They use a hostile crowd to systematically isolate people from each other by making everyone afraid to be associated with the pummeled person lest it also happen to them—a method to strong-arm conformity in thinking and control the behavior of an entire group.
As many Christians ponder whether to acknowledge more than the two sexes Christ created, they need to consider more than the “science” that floods schools and the media. The real issue is whether Christians, pastors, and seminary presidents will reject clear biblical teaching just to avoid the nasty social outrage against their ministries or themselves if they dare speak a truth the world finds offensive—that male and female are the only two human sexes.
Christians have faced the decision of whether to cast aside clear biblical teaching and embrace the world’s so-called science for a far longer period when it comes to Darwinian selection and evolution. Lies spread by government-sponsored institutions can be so absurd that they require years of forced, repetitive indoctrination for people to believe them. One government lie sits atop them all: that over a time frame far too slow for anyone to observe—and without the mind and power of God—life spontaneously started and nature exercised a type of selective agency to mold that “proto-life” into the diversity of creatures on Earth. We may not know how many people silently question this lie because dissenting views are quashed through government-tolerated academic oppression.
For illustration we’ll consider the above-mentioned lie that humans can be classified into a sex other than male and female. Perhaps it will serve as a contemporary wake-up call for Christians to refuse to live by the world’s lies.
Biological Sex and the Institutional Lie
In George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, the Ministry of  Truth produced lying propaganda and the Ministry of Love dispensed torture. In Orwell’s farsighted story, reality was totally inverted through the government’s highly coordinated actions to manipulate its citizens’ thinking. What’s remarkable in the book is that almost all citizens eventually became willing promoters of government lies themselves.
An NBC News report demonstrates the combined power of government, academia, and the media to bring about a 1984-like adoption of total nonsense. In this case, even highly educated leaders of independent corporations participate. NBC stated that “[the brand] Always announced it will remove the Venus symbol from its menstruation products packaging” in response to protests by “transgender and nonbinary people” who were born female but now believe they’re male.1
Procter & Gamble, Always’ parent company, has come to regret placing the female symbol on their packages. In response to the outrage of these “men,” Always now recognizes that the packages were offensive “by not acknowledging that they [men], too, can experience menstruation,” and they dismiss the criticisms of people upset over the symbol’s removal as being “rooted in the misconception that [male] transgender and nonbinary people cannot experience menstruation—a claim medical experts have debunked.”1
How do you get people to assent to completely bizarre flights of fancy? By repeating them incessantly. Several months after their story on Always, NBC added a personal account and reported, “When transgender model and activist Kenny Ethan Jones experienced his first period, he faced both physical and psychological pain.”2 Kenny Jones was born female but is now considered by many (including “medical experts”) to be male. Perhaps to make it easier for readers to jettison their common sense, NBC adds Jones’ personal testimony:
“Having a period already causes me a lot of [gender] dysphoria, but this dysphoria becomes heightened when I have to shop for a product that is labeled as ‘women’s health’ and in most cases, is pretty and pink,” Jones explained.2
How powerful are the combined forces of government, academia, and the media targeted against individual citizens? Pretty powerful, it seems. After presenting stories like that of Kenny Jones, it’s as if those in power sit back and watch to see if ordinary people will compliantly speak about “his first period” without a tinge of humiliation over the mental confusion or muddled judgment needed to state something so nonsensical. A power that conditions a mass of people to embrace such ridiculous notions should grab the attention of Christians.
We are witnessing authorities use the stamp of scientific authority as a propaganda tool to dishonestly assert that something everyone knows is true—that men cannot have monthly cycles—has been debunked. Most people likely resent being coerced into accepting something that has never been observed and is utterly foolish.
What many Americans don’t recognize is that the train long ago left the station and took our country along the line to nonsensical beliefs. That happened when they swallowed the lie that over a long period of time one kind of creature can morph into another—something else that has never been observed. What’s worse is that these lies about both evolving creatures and interchangeable sexes are not just ludicrous, they’re intellectually and morally perverse.
Government Perverting Its God-Ordained Role
God denounces the government-sanctioned corruption of truth: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20). Moral perversion goes hand in hand with governments acting in perverted ways.
Two passages in the New Testament detail the God-ordained role of government. Those in authority today should rule by these mandates: “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil….For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil” (Romans 13:3-4); and government leaders “are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good” (1 Peter 2:14).
The Bible’s teaching is plain. Government is responsible to promote good and punish evil, but today’s rulers often oppress—if not outright persecute—people doing good and exult in the evil behavior they promote, which they mischaracterize as good. The destruction of the moral fiber of its citizens through lying and coercive tactics is a perversion of government’s mandate and authority.
Lessons Learned from the Soviet Union
Citizens of the United States now face increased institutional deception. People in other lands have endured habitual governmental lying, and their experiences may prove useful to Christians who refuse to live by the world’s lies.
Last year someone forwarded the link to a very helpful essay titled “Live Not by Lies” written in 1974 by the late Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn’s essay isn’t long, and I’d recommend that everyone read it since the actions he encourages other Soviets to adopt are valuable for Americans today. He sets the stage of the sad state of isolation and fear oppressing the Soviet people.
There was a time when we dared not rustle a whisper….[We] heartily complain to each other of all they [the government] are muddling up, of all they are dragging us into!…They put whomever they want on trial, and brand the healthy as mentally ill….Already a universal spiritual demise is upon us…while we continue to smile sheepishly….We have so hopelessly ceded our humanity that for the modest handouts of today we are ready to surrender up all principles, our soul, all the labors of our ancestors, all the prospects of our descendants—anything to avoid disrupting our meager existence…..[We] fear only to take a civic stance! We hope only not to stray from the herd, not to set out on our own.3
Solzhenitsyn then explains why government-sanctioned violence alone can never enslave an entire population. Real enslaving power is wielded through institutional lying.
But it [breaking the oppressive cycle] will never come…if we all, every day, continue to acknowledge, glorify, and strengthen it, if we do not, at the least, recoil from its most vulnerable point. From lies….Violence ages swiftly….To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally—Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence. And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: It demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit—and this suffices as our fealty.3
Thus, the road to freedom is to refuse to live by lies. “And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies!...For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person.” The first of eight vital behaviors Solzhenitsyn says are necessary to shake off enslavement begins with each citizen declaring they “will not write, sign, nor publish in any way, a single line distorting, so far as he can see, the truth.”3
Creationists have historically demonstrated the courage to resist institutional lying. Maybe that’s why the world uses the name “creationist” as a title of derision. Nevertheless, we must remember “let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). If we don’t want to unknowingly advance any of the world’s lies, shouldn’t we examine ourselves to see whether our own minds have been “evolutionized” to some degree?
Recognizing How Lies Are Built into Terminology
Evolutionists invent terms all the time that simultaneously express evolutionary concepts and are used as more evidence for evolution. For instance, the literature is full of terms like convergent evolution, vestigial organs, pseudogenes, and highly conserved sequences. These terms have a built-in presupposition of evolution that makes them inherently misleading. Thus, just by speaking the jargon, a person is assisting the deceitful evolutionary indoctrination of society. The same type of built-in lying occurs when we talk about people as being transgender—as if that’s a real state of being—just because the world imagines more than two human sexes.
Evolutionary theory is full of imaginary, misleading scenarios. The most egregious is when nature is personified, presented as exercising agency, and then invoked as a substitute god to explain the origin and diversity of life. Selectionists project onto the environment abilities to “select,” “favor,” “act,” “send information,” and similar verbs indicating the work of an intelligent agent. The terminology they use therefore embeds a potent lie—that nature has some type of innate volition. The constant personification of nature as exercising creative agency transfers credit from the Lord Jesus as Creator to the creation itself…the principal lie described in Romans 1:25.
The denial of two biological sexes as illustrated by the Kenny Jones nonsense shows how serious the scope of these institutional lies and the coercion to conform is. The challenge facing Christians is whether we will cast aside clear biblical teaching and embrace the world’s so-called science. We belong to the Lord Jesus, who promised, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32). Christians need to be a sanctuary of truth; we must refuse to live by the world’s lies.
References
- Aviles, G. Always to ax female symbol from sanitary products packages in nod to trans users. NBC News. Posted on nbcnews.com October 21, 2019, accessed February 4, 2021.
- Atkins, C. For transgender men, pain of menstruation is more than just physical. NBC News.Posted on nbcnews.com January 11, 2020, accessed February 4, 2021.
- Solzhenitsyn, A. Live Not by Lies, February 12, 1974. Posted on solzhenitsyncenter.org.
* Dr. Guliuzza is President of the Institute for Creation Research. He earned his M.D. from the University of Minnesota, his Master of Public Health from Harvard University, and served in the U.S. Air Force as 28th Bomb Wing Flight Surgeon and Chief of Aerospace Medicine. Dr. Guliuzza is also a registered Professional Engineer and holds a B.A. in theology from Moody Bible Institute.
