I wrote this in 2015; it is now 2025; I neglected to post it.
I didn’t know who Bruce Jenner was until he ‘identified’ as a woman. The story of his gender identity complex has prompted me to tell my own coming out story, which I will do here. To announce that you’re queer or that you are not the gender that you biologically are, this is not very brave in a culture that celebrates perversity. I would not say that my coming out story is brave either. But it’s closer to bravery than Bruce Jenner’s is.
Between 1995 and about the year 2000, I identified as a Fundamentalist-Dispensational Christian. Then, due to circumstances that I now interpret as the Providence of God, I began to identify as a Puritan. True, I can never be a bona fide Puritan because they lived from about 1550 to 1700. But in 2000 or so I began to identify as a Puritan theologically. The Fundamentalist-Dispensational school of thought began with characters such as Edward Irving and John Nelson Darby in the 1800s; and by the year 1900 it was gaining popularity broadly and swiftly. C. H. Spurgeon lived late enough to witness its ascension, and this lower-grade theology is what took over his Puritan-minded church after his departure from this world.
The Fundamentalist-Dispensational theology is rudimentary, unrefined, unfinished, inexact, and erroneous on many points. You may be a Christian if you are of its mindset. But if you are truly seeking God for better understanding, and if God answers your prayers for more light, you will not remain in that camp. This camp sees Christianity this way: accept Jesus by your own free will; make your decision to receive forgiveness; then join programs with other Christians while resting on the assurance of eternal security while you focus on end-times. Puritanism sees Christianity this way: receive forgiveness by faith in what Christ accomplished in his life and on the cross; by this you may know that you are accepted by Christ based, ultimately, on God’s election from eternity; then you will gain confidence to persevere to prove your faith until the end by studying the whole counsel of God, focusing on mastering the main and plain things of Scripture. Fundamentalist-Dispensationalism is about free will, accepting, deciding, and resting. Puritanism is about irresistible grace, acceptance, reception, and perseverance. Fundamentalist-Dispensationalism is about you entering in; Puritanism is about God ushering you in. Fundamentalist-Dispensationalism makes it sound like you work to get in the door; Puritanism knows better: that it is the work of God to get you in. Fundamentalist-Dispensationalism likes to bask and laze in the notion of security. Puritanism knows better: that a person has a right to feel secure only insofar as he works his salvation out. Fundamentalist-Dispensationalism tends to make little distinction between theism and Christianity. This is why Fundamentalist-Dispensationalists tends to treat, as Christians, any person who professes to be one based on a confession of a bare belief in the existence of God. Puritanism knows better: that even the demons are theists. Fundamentalist-Dispensationalism is more about God’s love for everyone than his sovereignty over any; Puritanism is about God’s right to single out the objects of his special love and to limit this special love to them alone. Fundamentalist-Dispensationalism believes that Jesus died for all; Puritanism knows better: that it is logical that Christ died for persons that God has ordained to single out, which agrees with Jesus praying for saints and future saints alone (John 17.) Fundamentalist-Dispensationalism believes that a Christian ought to love his neighbor as if he were as special as a fellow Christian; Puritanism takes note of that word ‘especially’ in Galatians 6.10, and subordinates neighborly love to love for fellows in the Faith. Fundamentalist-Dispensationalism limits itself to faith and blood; Puritanism links faith to justification and links blood to redemption. Fundamentalist-Dispensationalism speaks of Jesus as an exemplar: what would Jesus do? Puritanism speaks of what Jesus did: taking man’s place, and through this act fulfilling the law of God by his life and satisfying the wrath of God by his death.
That is just a summary sketch, from memory, of what I have learned—of what identifying as a Puritan is about. If you think that becoming a Christian draws opprobrium, try identifying as Puritanical! It is no brave act to identify as gay or queer or transgender in a current that is winding its way towards degeneracy. It is no brave act to wear pink shirts where to refuse to do so would single you out as intolerant to gays. It is no brave act to ‘walk a mile in women’s shoes’ when to play the man instead might get you fired. It is no brave act to paint your nails in support of Bruce Jenner’s new identity when to refuse to do so would single you out as a bigot. It is closer to bravery to identify as a Fundamentalist-Dispensational Christian. But it is closest to bravery to identify as Puritanical because even the loving Fundamentalist-Dispensational saints will hate you then, or at least treat you as an outsider.
Sometimes I think that we Puritan-minded Christians should wear some piece of Puritan garb and begin wearing it in support of the doctrines of God that the world, the churches, and almost all Christians of every stripe, do not regard and would rather shun than tolerate. Then we might notice each other and become supportive friends. How many people are accepting of Jenner, and even praise him, even though they don’t want to? Is that brave? Here is something approaching to bravery: opposing in word and deed: abortion, feminism, the queer agenda, Islam, environmentalism, and the pseudo-civil-rights movement that opportunistic blacks and radical whites are coercing everyone to accept.
Bruce Jenner got a million followers in four hours when he came out with his sappy transition story. Will I get a million followers in four hours for stating my theological change? A man who’s attempting to transgender (an impossibility) will gain a large following in a society that resembles Gomorrah and celebrates the behavior of Sodomites; but a Puritanical character will be ignored, and if not ignored, then vilified, in that same society. Who is brave? The man who announces that he will conform even more to what a lewd culture accepts? Or the Puritanical person who announces that he opposes what the lewd culture celebrates?
Know this, however. I believe that most people in the USA and Canada would like the queer thing to go back into its closet. But the media, the politicians, the teachers, the entertainers, and the queers make the LGBT movement appear much larger than it is. In truth, it is a tiny movement that our societal megaphones blow out of proportion in order to scare traditional citizens into obeisance to new, perverted norms. They are trumpeting like the seven priests in Joshua 6 to make it look like there is more support on their side than there actually is. Today’s Christians and moralists are so far away from their Bibles that heathen people who are as ignorant as Old Testament Canaanites were, are fooling them by biblical tricks. And the remnants of our virtue, freedom, and peace are being plundered by these tricks. These neo-Canaanites are as ruthless as the pilgrims who settled America were holy. If we had just one Puritanical Christian for every ten of them, though, they would soon be eying their closets for a refuge once again. “And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight” (Leviticus 26.8.) With just a little religion like that which came down from heaven during the days of George Whitefield and William Grimshaw, the wicked would make themselves scarce indeed! It would be like in the phrase that is found near the end of Proverbs. “The wicked flee when no man pursueth” (Proverbs 28.1.)