Today, Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent, a church tradition that dates back centuries. Ashes are smudged across foreheads with these words, “You are but dust and to dust you will return.”

Recently, some churches have replaced ashes with rainbow glitter, to express what’s called LGBTQ affirmation. Affirmation, however, is the wrong word for rejecting observable realities about the human body: That men’s bodies were made for women and vice-versa, and that this design is good, life-giving, and irreplaceable. Rejecting God as creator by rejecting His created order is a sin, one of which we are all guilty of, according to the Bible.

Imposing glitter says that such a rejection isn’t sinful. But that’s not loving. After all, the cruelest thing you can tell someone who’s not okay, is that they are.

Lent begins by telling us we’re not okay. Thank God it ends by telling us how to be forgiven.