The Equality Act, Male and Female, and the Image of God

In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the Equality Act, its impact on churches and Christian organizations, and the void in our culture concerning what it means to be male and female.

• The Equality Act is a very serious piece of legislation. If it were passed in the form in which the senate has received it, it would have the greatest impact on the social life of Christians of probably any other single act since the Bill of Rights in 1791.
• The Equality Act stretches the definition of sex.
• We (Christians) have to make sure we go the extra mile also in expressing love and care for every human being.
• Conservatives have gotten the reputation of people who are adamant and harsh in our advocacy for legislation or Supreme Court action but who have forgotten the person.
• We do not have to compromise our stance on what being fully human is but neither do we have to compromise our love and recognition of them as still being creatures for whom Christ died.
• For Christians it is paramount that we accept other human beings as human beings, creatures in the image of God. That does not mean we have to approve behavior—the way a person is trying to live our their humaneness.
• Christians ought to be known for our eagerness to love our neighbor as ourselves and also for showing forth what real humanity is by living a Christ life.

• The Equality Act reflects a great void in our culture—not merely in what it means to be male and female, but what it means to be human.
• As pastors and teachers, we need to disciple, teach, and preach on what it means to be a human being—especially what it means to be made in the image of God, who is Christ.
• We lack a basic understanding of who we are and why we’re here. We don’t have a shared understanding anymore in our society of these fundamental truths. It leaves open a vacuum to be filled by secular ideologies and understandings of what it means to be male and female.
• The culture knows what Christians are against but does not always know what we are for.