Compassion Anchored In Origin
By: Zach Collins
Recently on The View, Andy Beshear articulated his position on transgender ideology through the language of Christian faith: “Most of the decisions I make are based on that Golden Rule that says we love our neighbor as ourself, and that parable of the Good Samaritan that says everyone is our neighbor… My faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn’t want people picking on those kids.”
Many Christians heard those words and felt torn. The language is biblical. The appeal is emotional. Compassion for children is non-negotiable. Every believer should recoil at bullying, cruelty, or dehumanization. Emotional appeals, when allowed to outrank Scripture, do not clarify truth; they distort it, trading divine guidance for human confusion. Christians have a duty to test every appeal to Scripture, asking whether God’s Word is being rightly divided, or used carelessly as a tool to sanctify a political position.
The issue is not whether we should love our neighbor. The issue is how the Bible defines love and whether love can be separated from truth. Christianity does not stop at asking what feels loving. It asks a deeper question: What does love mean according to truth?
To answer that, we must walk upstream, back to our origin.
If you find a small stream in the woods, and walk upstream long enough, you eventually reach a stream’s source. The same principle applies to sexuality. Where we arrive morally depends entirely on where we begin spiritually.
Scripture begins with our origin, “So God created mankind in His own image… male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27)
Sexual identity is not a cultural invention. It is part of creation. The Creator understands His design better than His creation understands itself. This is not oppression. It is grounding. It tells us our bodies are not accidents. It tells us our design is intentional. If God is origin, sexuality is not invented, it is discovered.
In defending efforts to redefine what God has created, Governor Beshear unintentionally reshapes two of Scripture’s most sacred principles.
First, he appeals to the Golden Rule. Christians cherish that command. It stands at the heart of Christian ethics. Yet Jesus never used love as a tool to dissolve moral boundaries. His compassion was fierce, His mercy wide — but His love was never detached from truth. To the woman caught in sin He offered dignity without denial: “Go, and sin no more.” Grace did not erase holiness; it made holiness possible.
Second, he invokes the parable of the Good Samaritan. In its fullness, that story is a call to mercy that crosses every social line. It teaches us to kneel beside the wounded, not step over them. But the Samaritan healed wounds; he did not rewrite reality to comfort the injured. Biblical mercy meets people where they are without pretending that truth has moved.
Christian love is deeper than affirmation. It seeks not only relief in the moment, but restoration for a lifetime. Truth without love becomes harsh and crushing. Love without truth becomes soft and shapeless. The gospel refuses both distortions. In Christ, love and truth walk together, strong enough to heal, gentle enough to restore, and faithful enough to tell us who we really are.
In Genesis 2:24 establishes a consistent biblical framework. It unequivocally teaches that sexual intimacy belongs within marriage, between a male and a female. That boundary excludes many behaviors modern culture celebrates — heterosexual promiscuity, pornography, adultery, and homosexual practice alike. Scripture does not single out one group. It calls all sexuality back to the same design.
In Romans 1, Paul teaches that sexual confusion is never merely behavioral, it is spiritual at the root. He traces, step by step, the quiet unraveling of a soul that drifts from its origin. This is not a sudden collapse, but a slow exchange, a tragic trade of glory for illusion. He speaks of people who knew God, yet loosened their grip on truth until truth slipped from their hands.
God is no longer honored as God. Worship fades, and when worship fades, the center cannot hold (Romans 1:21).
Then gratitude withers. The heart that stops thanking God soon stops seeing Him (Romans 1:21).
As a result, thinking becomes futile, brilliant minds wandering in darkened corridors, reasoning without anchor (Romans 1:21).
Hearts grow dim, not for lack of intelligence, but for lack of light (Romans 1:21).
Truth is exchanged for a lie. It is not that they rejected truth violently, but traded quietly, as if fantasy were safer than reality (Romans 1:25).
And, finally, the body follows where belief has already gone. What the soul surrenders, the body enacts and we serve creation, rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25).
Paul’s warning is not written to mock the fallen, but to awaken the drifting. The crisis begins long before the visible sin; it begins when the Creator is replaced, gratitude dries up, and truth becomes negotiable. In Romans 1, we do not merely find a condemnation of behavior, but a call to return to origin, to worship rightly, to think clearly, and to live in the light again.
The invisible governs the visible and, as a result, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie…” (Romans 1:25). The Bible is diagnosing a collapse of worldview, not mocking broken people. Sexual ethics do not drift in isolation; they shift when origin is abandoned. When God is removed as Creator, identity does not disappear — it is rewritten by the self. The crisis we face is not first sexual but spiritual, not merely behavioral but theological.
Modern culture teaches that sexuality defines a person. However, Scripture anchors identity elsewhere, “And such were some of you…” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) The church is not a museum of moral superiority. It is a hospital of redeemed sinners. Heaven will be filled with former adulterers, former idolaters, and former sexually broken people of every kind. No sin becomes a permanent label in Christ (Romans 8:29). Christian identity is Christ-shaped, not desire-shaped. That is not condemnation. That is hope.
Here is the heart of the Christian response to Beshear’s appeal: To love your neighbor does not mean redefine your neighbor. It means serve your neighbor according to God’s truth.
If God is Creator, His design carries authority. If Jesus is truth, compassion cannot contradict Him. A faith that quotes Scripture to abandon Scripture is not mercy — it is confusion wearing religious language. Jesus never sacrificed truth to appear loving. He never sacrificed love to defend truth. He held both perfectly. Christians are called to do the same.
The public square does not need less compassion. It needs compassion anchored in reality. Christians should be the safest people for struggling individuals to approach, the clearest voices about biblical truth, the most humble confessors of personal brokenness, and the strongest defenders of human dignity.
We must return to our origin because origin determines meaning, identity, and destiny. If we are created by God, then every conversation about sexuality must bow before His design while reaching outward with unrelenting compassion for those made in His image. That is not hatred. It is love strong enough to tell the truth, mercy brave enough to stand firm, and grace steady enough to hold both conviction and kindness in the same hands. That is Christian love with a backbone.
In the end, this conversation is not about winning arguments or scoring political victories. It is about souls, truth, and the God who made us. A Christian response to Andy Beshear, or to anyone, cannot be driven by outrage, fear, or cultural panic. It must be driven by allegiance to Christ. We refuse cruelty because every person bears God’s image. We refuse confusion because every person deserves God’s truth. And we refuse to separate the two, because the cross itself stands as proof that love and truth were never meant to be enemies.
The church does not stand above the broken; it stands among them as fellow recipients of mercy. We speak with conviction not because we hate sinners, but because we know the freedom of forgiveness. We defend God’s design not because we fear the world, but because we trust the Creator. And we extend compassion not as a concession, but as a command.
If our origin is in God, then our future is found in returning to Him. And the most loving thing Christians can offer this generation is not silence, not surrender, not softened doctrine but the steady, radiant union of grace and truth in Jesus Christ. That is our hope and that is the love that will outlast every cultural step toward serving the creation rather than the Creator.
