This past Wednesday, May 19, 2021, it has been reported, “After debating the meaning of God’s love, the Texas Senate voted along party lines (18-13) to give final approval Tuesday to a bill that would ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender Texans who are 17 and younger.”
To clarify, we are not talking about medical care in general, no “trans” minor is being deprived heath care with the passage of Bill SB 1311, they would merely be deprived of “gender-affirming” medical care. Specifically, “Under SB 1311, doctors who provide gender-affirming care would lose their medical license. The bill would prohibit liability insurance coverage for banned treatments.”
At this writing, the bill faces an uncertain future in the Texas House of Representatives, but the debate over the bill in the Texas Senate centered on the meaning of God’s love.
Texas state Senator Beverly Powell said, “I am concerned, and I don’t want to let this go without saying, that transgender people will hear this argument and will conclude there is no place for them in the church, or worse that God doesn’t love them exactly as they are.”
Texas state Senator Kelly Hancock countered, “God created man, and woman as we are, and the most important thing to understand is we are loved in that way, as he made us. He created us, and he did not make a mistake when he created us, and therefore his love is shared among those just as he created us, and I think that’s what this bill seeks to recognize.”
Here we have to views of God’s love that are opposed to one another that determined how each senator responded to the legislation in question. But for a believer, the Scriptures should dictate what is meant when we talk about God’s love, a meaning that is not dictated by how we feel or what we think, but an understanding revealed to us in God’s Word. After all, God is the One who can tell us what He means by His love.
The Scriptures declare, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life,” John 3:16. God loves everyone and has made sufficient provision in the cross of Christ for everyone to be saved from their sin whatever form that sin takes when we confess our sin and repent of it.
God loves us, but that does not mean He loves all the decisions we make or all the things we do. To assume that would be to ignore what is clearly taught in the Scriptures. King David was “a man after [God’s] own heart,” (1 Samuel 13:14), but God clearly showed His displeasure with David when he committed adultery with Bathsheba. Paul admonishes believers “be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,” Romans 12:2.
God loves us exactly where we are, that doesn’t mean He wants us to stay there.
Leave a Reply