Why Target Can’t See Straight

I am usually not surprised when sinners sin. Nor am I caught off guard when mud is muddy or when dogs bark. When you have not been “delivered from the domain of darkness and been transferred to the kingdom of his beloved son” (Col 1:13) then you will continue to “walk according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Eph 2:2). I mean, why wouldn’t you? The Bible says that you will choose according to your nature until you are given a new nature.

So, when US retail giant, Target, ramped up its support of the LGBTQ+ community by adding to its longstanding Gay Pride clothing line “tuck friendly” children’s bathing suits for boys who want help hiding their boy parts to become trans girls, and books marked as appropriate for children ages 2-8 titled “Bye Bye Binary” and “I’m not a Girl,”  as well as nearly 2,000 other homosexual-themed products, including “Gender Fluid” mugs and “Queer All Year calendars, I shouldn’t have been shocked at all.

But I was.

I was astonished at how un-capitalist the chain had become. I expect the world to act like the world, but I assumed that the god of greed would keep them in check. I just figured that the love of money, harvested from the pockets of mostly straight, suburban, soccer moms with young kids, would override the impulse to pander to a minority preference rather than alienate the bulk of their customer base. If Target’s marketing department had done even the most basic demographic survey of its customer base (or had visited one of their own stores on any given weekday) they could have predicted the consequence of liberally lacing their product line with toxic grooming propaganda.

The self-proclaimed transgender Satanist, Erik Carnell, whom Target tasked with designing this line is openly taunting Christians on his/her/them/their/its social media accounts wearing ram’s horns and a “Satan respects pronouns” t-shirt. Carnell’s designs that have been included in Target’s Gay Pride Month collection include “Happy Coming Out” greeting cards and a “Cure Transphobia” sweatshirt.

Target’s stock price has plummeted as the company hemorrhaged billions of dollars of value in just a few days, as observant investors are predicting another Bud Light fiasco.

And that is what makes Target’s misfire so jaw-droppingly tone-deaf… this justhappened to Anhueser-Busch’s stock when they promoted transgender influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, the girly poster boy for Bud Light, a beer that is synonymous with the flannel shirt and trucker cap wearing,  football-obsessed, Ford truck driving, masculine middle-America. Now they literally cannot give away free beer to any man who identifies as a man, which it turns out is every person in their customer base, to a man.

So, Target’s marketing department watched Bud Light make one of the most breathtakingly costly blunders in marketing history, and a few weeks later said… “Hold my beer.”

Target’s decision is doubly dumb because they have no excuse. Or do they?

What could possibly account for educated, experienced, world-class retail marketing executives making such a bad decision on the heels of the failed experiment they just witnessed? How could they not know this would happen? I have only one Scripture that keeps coming to mind as I constantly feel like the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes.

I think I know why Target missed the mark by so much: they can’t see straight (pun only slightly intended). And I think I know why they can’t see straight…

2 Thessalonians 2: 9-12

The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, 12in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

This explanation is the only one that makes sense to me that accounts for the bewildering, widespread, delusional decision-making lunacy of educators, medical practitioners, lawmakers, political leaders, and corporate executives throughout the world: that God is supernaturally sending a strong delusion to they will whole-heartedly believe what is clearly false, untrue, not real. This explains the travesty of women’s sports being overrun by lying or delusional men. It explains how supreme court nominees and esteemed professors can’t answer Matt Walsh’s simple question, “What is a woman?” It explains why parents who love their children would subject them to experimental hormone treatment and surgery, and why their doctors don’t advise against it. And it explains why Target can so completely miss the mark. They just can’t see straight.