The new ad from Twix is a tale of the witch, the wardrobe, and the woke agenda.
At the start of the commercial, a young boy is seen wearing a princess dress when he is greeted by a woman at the door, his new nanny dressed in a witch’s outfit. After he lets her inside, he goes outside to play, where a couple neighborhood girls question why the boy would be wearing a costume when it “isn’t Halloween yet.”
The ad, as reported by CBN News, picks up again with the boy and the nanny in a park, where an older boy begins to bully the child, who is still wearing the princess dress. The older boy asks the kid why he is dressed “like a girl,” and, in response, he says, “Dressing like this makes me feel good.”
Unsatisfied with the answer, the older bully tells the boy he and his nanny “look weird.”
The nanny — perturbed by the elder boy’s lack of affirmation — then uses her magical powers to conjure a violent wind storm that vanquishes the bully, seemingly forever.
Remember: This is an ad for a candy bar. At no point are Twix mentioned.
At first glance, we might be inclined to dismiss commercials like these, to think nothing of them, to roll our eyes, and to move on. The truth, though, is the ad puts on disturbing display what has gone so very wrong in our culture.
The ad, which is targeting children, paints all those who reject the transgender agenda as bullies and pests whose only goal is to malign and belittle. Certainly, as Christians, we can — and should — actively oppose bullying of any kind toward any person. But failing to affirm a lifestyle or behavior that contradicts God’s design for human sexuality and identity is not, in and of itself, bullying.
But that’s the message this commercial sends. In two minutes, it deceptively reorients the moral error — the belief that our sexuality is fluid and up to individual interpretation — as the moral good. It likewise suggests the objective truth of the sexual binary — that human beings are designed as male and female for a purpose — is untrue.
In the Old Testament book of Isaiah, the prophet pronounced judgments on the people of Judah, who were so focused on their sins, namely drunkenness, they didn’t see their wrongful deeds as bad. Instead, they had become so accustomed to their sin, they began calling it “good.”
Isaiah wrote, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20 CSB).
Those words ring just as true today.
As Christians, the onus is on us to break that cycle, to reject the suggestion that those whose views are opposite ours are our enemies, that people who fail to affirm the latest social trend are pariahs to be eliminated.
There should be space for counterweights in culture.
Christians have a role to play in communicating God’s perfect design for sexuality: for men and women — with their distinct characteristics — to commit to one another in mutual submission and to see the two sexes, male and female, as innate, immutable gifts created in the image of God.
To do that well, we have to be gracious, compassionate, and clear. The late Warren Wiersbe said it this way: “Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.”
We should remember, as the Apostle Paul wrote, that our battle “is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens” (Ephesians 6:12 CSB).
Unlike the Twix commercial suggests, our enemies are not those whose views are different from ours. Our enemy is Satan and his fleeting dominion — and that’s where our focus should be.
Christians are faced with a biblical mandate to communicate truth — the ultimate truth of the Gospel — and we should do so counter-culturally, not by demonizing, dismissing, or villainizing our ideological opponents; instead, we ought to pray for them, relate to them, listen to them, and speak truth in love to them.
The content we consume has power. Don’t let the subliminal — and often perceptible — messages of the secular world lure you in.
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