This week of Pride Month featured the pride flag flying high over the White House like a triumphant banner over a conquered foe. This was then accompanied by a pride celebration at the capital in which pushback against flashers forced the present administration to admit that it took things just a bit too far.

The reaction to such things by many who know the answer to today’s most perplexing question is often along these lines: where did all of this come from, and how did it escalate so quickly? How did things go so far off the rails?

In asking such questions, we would do well to remember that fruit always begins as seeds. Or, to speak less cryptically, Pride Month did not happen overnight.

I feel compelled to make such a statement because I live in a largely conservative small town, where most of my fellow citizens can recognize at least some of the vanity within Vanity Fair. Those who don’t know the difference between a man and a woman are ‘out there;’ we are rooted in reality.

But are we?

You see, Pride Month really is about pride, what Lewis called the great sin, for it was in pride that Satan rebelled against the Most High, it was in pride that Adam and Eve plunged humanity into sin, and it is pride that has our culture openly rebelling against the ethical norms of the past. And while the month-long celebration of pride certainly is recent, the vice has held fast the heart of the West for quite some time, specifically since the jettisoning of our belief in God.

In Genesis 1, we find three distinctions that are fundamental to understanding ourselves as humans. First is the distinction between the Creator and His creation. The second is between humans and animals. The third being the distinction between male and female. In fact, these three distinctions are made in that particular order within Genesis for a reason. The Creator-creation distinction is the vastest because an infinite gap lies between the Infinite One and His finite works. The human-animal distinction is narrower since both are creatures and bear a number of similarities; however, humans are given dominion over animals and are said to be made in God’s image. The male-female distinction is the narrowest because both are expressly said to be human and to reflect the image of God.

The moral deterioration of the West has roughly followed that trajectory as well. The Creator-creature distinction was the first to go. With the Creator rejected, the human-animal distinction then quickly followed, since there was no longer any reason for holding onto the imago Dei. With these two toppled, the male-female distinction had to fall sooner rather than later. Indeed, being the narrower distinction, it ought to be the easiest to muddle.

You see, the slope of sin really is rather slippery. Although Adam and Eve were not responsible for Cain murdering Abel, their original sin really did start it all. Their treason against God’s command was like a snowball rolling down a mountain. Their first sin opened the floodgates for all other sins, and it was inevitable that their descendants would become murders, adulterers, liars, etc. In the same way, atheists and secularists as a whole are not responsible for the craziness around us, yet this certainly is the consequence of their worldview.

Sadly, that secular worldview has a nasty habit of working its way like leaven among Christians as well. Although still holding onto belief in God, many Christians over the last couple of centuries embraced evolution and the notion that humans are highly evolved animals, while also having their value of marriage as a divinely established institution eroded. The latter, of course, being the source of much apathy toward no-fault divorce and cohabitation, which were simply harbingers of things to come.

Now to be a bit more optimistic, I will admit that this Pride Month feels different. Maybe it’s the boycotts of Budweiser and Target, but I think it’s something deeper. The religious festivities have never been more blatant, yet there seems to be a general exhaustion with the whole display, especially when it comes to the T in LGBT. As subjective as those feelings of mine are, I hope we are coming to a point, to a moment of decision culturally.

You see, as tired as many people may be of all the talk of queer pride, the transgender issue has been the real pivot. To be even more specific, “gender reassignment therapies” for children has been the breaking point. For even more liberally minded folk who advocate for an adult’s right to surgically alter their own body have rightly recognized the horror of permanently mutilating a child’s body because they have called themselves transgender.

I am thankful for that shift in the tide, however slight it may be. I really am. But my point in all of this is that I do not want us to be content with merely cutting off the transgender branch of the pride tree; I want to uproot the tree as best we can. Now I am no postmillennial, so I have no doctrinal confidence that the world will become Christianized before the return of Christ. But as an amillennial, I don’t think that is off the table either.

I do want to see overall culture of the West return to faith in Christ via a revival and awakening in peoples’ hearts. I do not merely want the LGBT ideology rejected; I want secularism to be overtaken by Christianity. I want our society to embrace the beautiful distinctions between men and women, but I also want to reclaim our belief the Creator and the imago Dei. I want us to recognize pride as a vice again rather than treating like a virtue. I want marriage to be held in honor once more.

Of course, Pride Month didn’t happen overnight, and it likely won’t be uprooted overnight either. But we can start that hopeful cultural shift by uprooting pride, in all of its forms, within our own hearts.