Contract Language

One of the activities I was involved in before retiring was helping draft changes to our health insurance contract. This involved a team of at least a dozen people working with the lawyers to draft language that clearly defined our contractual obligations. You’ve all seen a 30-page contract and wondered why it had to be so detailed and long. Let me explain.

When one party drafts the contract and the other can only accept it or not, this is called a contract of adhesion. Any ambiguity or vagueness in such a contract is usually legally interpreted against the drafting party. This, in a nutshell, is why such contracts are as detailed and extensive as they are. This applies to all contracts drafted by one party, such as software agreements that you scroll to the end to and click “agree” without reading.

While driving today, I saw the billboard announcing, “God made Trans People,” and I remembered Patrick’s message on Sunday. He described this billboard message as blasphemous. At the time, I remember questioning whether it was truly blasphemous. Did God create people who now identify as Trans? Sure. 

See, the emphasis is on whether the billboard author meant God created people who are trans without the possibility of individual responsibility or whether God created people of whom some of them are trans by their sin. I’m assuming the billboard author meant the former. That is problematic because you could say the same thing about murderers, pedophiles or rapists. I don’t think hardly anyone would be okay with that description.

Along those same lines, a pastor went to a college campus to talk to the students and was confronted by a young person who suggested she was created as a lesbian by God. I thought his response was inspired. He said he was made with lots of sinful urges, and he was also made with the ability to avoid those sinful urges. In fact, he suggested he was made with the urge to sleep with as many women as possible, but he was also made with the ability to commit to be with only his wife.

“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” - Romans 3:21-26 ESV

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.” - Romans 6:1-7

Language is amazing, but we, as sinful humans, constantly look to exploit it for our own benefit. It is just a symptom of people focusing on themselves and not on worshipping God.

The bottom line is that while I want to find a way not to refer to the billboard as blasphemous, in my heart I know it was.