The sermon for July 31st 2022 is now available on the New Life web site. In this sermon, which is based on Matthew 6:5-15,I talk about Praying the Lord’s Prayer.

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This distinction between gender and sex is now a basic element of contemporary notions of identity. The whole transgender question depends on it, for if sex and gender are inextricably connected, then a mismatch between what one is biologically and who one is psychologically must inevitably be regarded as a dysfunction of the mind. Once the two are detached from each other—something that can only really be plausible in a world in which psychology rather than biology is seen as fundamentally determinative of identity—then the problem becomes one of the body, to be treated with medication and surgery. Technology therefore makes the whole claim plausible. Carl Trueman

The notions that political freedom is sexual freedom and that shattering heterosexual norms is a vital part of transforming society for the better are now intuitive cultural orthodoxies. Carl Trueman

Another frosty morning.

Sex is no longer a private activity because sexuality is a constitutive element of public, social identity. Patterns of private sexual behavior are not simply private; they are public and political because they constitute a significant part of how our culture thinks of identity. Carl Trueman

Another cold morning but good for riding.

Contemporary education has become in some quarters preoccupied with the liberation of children’s sexual instincts and the elimination of any religious influence whatsoever. Today’s education as therapy exhibits these two pathologies: a liberation from traditional sexual codes and (given its role in maintaining traditional sexual codes) liberation from religion. Carl Trueman

Cold morning with minimum temperature just below freezing. Not too much wind, so a pleasant ride.

And the result is that, before Freud, sex was an activity, for procreation or for recreation; after Freud, sex is definitive of who we are, as individuals, as societies, and as a species.  Carl Trueman

And as Freud makes sexual desire fundamental to human happiness, one might go as far as to say that sexuality is the primary and most important part of being human. Carl Trueman