Never Forget . . .

I had the honor and privilege recently of having a long, tear-filled conversation with someone who has struggled with same-sex attraction. They have literally taken a bullet, and watched a friend die by the bullet, of someone who simply hated gays. They shared how, without a legal commitment of relationship, the family of someone they loved (and had loved for decades) could cut them off from even seeing that person in the hospital if that person was unconscious. They shared how they couldn't find the depth of love in someone of the opposite sex they found in someone of the same. They shared their deep longing to love and be loved and to not grow old alone.

We talked. We listened to one another. We honored one another with listening and trying to hear one another's hearts. It was an amazing experience.

I still believe the Bible is clear about God's stand on homosexuality. I still believe that we, as Christians, can't legitimatize by law something we believe God says is sin. But it was a powerful reminder to me—one I hope I never forget—that this whole battle (or any battle, for that matter, be it abortion, etc.) is not about "them." The "them" are (granted there are extremists on both sides who make a genuine discussion hard), but the "them" are people with feelings, people who love, people who often want to please God, people who are hurt. They are real people and if we ever forget that, and walk not in love (which doesn't mean compromise), then no matter how correct our theology is, we will not be representing God.

I talked extensively about this with our fellowship yesterday, and I felt God bring two questions to my mind. They are questions the church must grapple with if we want God to wash this nation with His Holy Spirit (and I believe that is the only answer for us, that the individuals in this nation choose to love and obey Him above all else). Those two questions were:

1. I, who am so passionate and patriotic about America, am I even more passionate and "patriotic" about the true nation I am a citizen of, the eternal nation, the holy nation, that is God's Kingdom, His body, and about the eternal effects of it expanding and reigning or not?

2. I, who am so indignant about our nation's laws and direction, am I even more indignant and passionate and vocal about God's laws in my own life and within the church?

I do not believe God will pour out the only true answer—His Holy Spirit that draws men unto Jesus—if the church is not passionate about Him, about eternity, about holiness and purity in our own lives and ranks first. Why would He?

Nothing  I am saying here is a call to compromise on what we believe is true and right before God, who does declare some things as true and right. But it is a call to never forget. To never, ever forget. That our enemy is not flesh and blood. That the "them" are real people whom God loves, with hurts and hopes and needs that are real and deep, with tears that flow like ours do, and hearts that hurt like ours do. May we live and love like Jesus. May we be humble and broken in our hearts toward our own sins and violations of God's laws, and living toward others as one saved only by the grace of God to another.

May we never forget the tears. God doesn't, and won't. Rather, it says, He will one day Himself wipe them from our eyes.

I am deeply concerned about this nation, and the nation I will hand my children and their children. I am deeply concerned it not longer puts God or His heart as the top of its list. I am concerned by it, and grieved by it, and I intend to continue to teach and live what I believe is truth. But as I do, in these days ahead, if I ever have to error, may it be on the side of love. May I love with a passion born of God's love for me and my love for Him. May I love in a way that the lost, the hurting, the confused find in me such a picture of His love that they run into His arms, and find their a Holy Spirit willing and ready and eager to lead and guide them down the road into His truth.

May I never forget the tears.

Make No Mistake . . .

This post is long, but I believe it will be of value to you, as a Christian, as you process the course of our nation and seek to understand things through a Biblical perspective. I believe it will help you clarify the true issue at work.   —Erick

As the nation awaits the Supreme Court's decision on gay marriage we can not make the mistake of assuming that this is simply about marriage, or even the rights of homosexuals. It is a decision that will affect most Christian institutions, colleges, businesses, etc. It will be a decision that forever alters the fabric of our nation, and Christians in it who stand on Biblical principles and world view.

And, we can't make the mistake of seeing this as anything other than what it truly is—it is our nation's decision on what the very essence of its (our nation's) being will be. This is a decision that defines this nation at the core of what it is, and as such it carries a weight that is larger than we can fathom . . . and, unfortunately, is a battle it seems we've already lost.

As soon as this issue became defined as a civil rights issue it was lost to Christians who actually believe the Bible is God's inspired, written word to us, revealing Himself and His nature and heart. As a civil rights issue, as a fairness issue, I don't see people having a right to deny marriage to homosexuals—just as they wouldn't have a right to deny polygamy, or any other thing or type of marriage or lifestyle in the future that society may not embrace now but will embrace later as it gets more "tolerant" and more "progressive."

The thing is, this is not a civil rights issue, and as Christians we must understand this, as our resolve will fade eventually under the withering bombardment of being called small, hateful, intolerant, old-fashioned, fundamentalist, etc. This is not a civil rights issue, it is an issue at the very core of how we define right and wrong: Is there a God, above all, Who defines right and wrong, Who gives rights, and Whom we choose to submit to . . . or are right and wrong and rights something a majority or a legislative body or a court can decide and confer?

This question defines our nation. Our Declaration of Independence says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This sentence, taken in part, could be used to argue for the right of homosexuals to be happy and marry. But it is not written in part, but in whole. These rights come from a Creator, therefore the Creator must be considered in them . . . and the Creator, the God of the Bible, has very specific things to say about what is right and what is wrong, and homosexuality is absolutely wrong in His eyes, therefore giving it legal blessing in marriage is only further going against our Creator. (Note: He also calls adultery, lying, fornication—sex outside marriage, etc., wrong, and the church is, sadly, inconsistent and much less vocal about these things, even in our own ranks.)

How we stand on this issue—and other values issues the Bible has something to say about—will define us individually and as a nation. The moment we leave the argument that God is God, and God is real, and the Bible is His written revelation, and He says something about the issue, we have entered the moral quicksand of morality being defined by the masses or a despot or a court. We have given morality over to legal briefs and influential people, and we have walked away from God.

Over and over in the Bible it talks about something being evil or good in the sight of the Lord. No matter what man thinks, what matters is how God sees something. That is all that matters. And whether our nation embraces that as the foundational truth of itself, or whether it rejects it, we as Christians can not leave that moral high ground and try and argue morality on "practical" levels or we have left the only rock of truth we have to stand on. And if our nation does go that way (and it seems it already has), we, as Christians, must be firm in why we believe what we believe. And that is why, I believe, God calls the church which is the body of Christ and His bride, a holy nation, His own special people, citizens of Heaven. We live in America, but our citizenship is the Kingdom of God. We are His, and that identity transcends lines on a map. We were His when America embraced Him as their foundation, and we are His when it turns from Him. We are His, and that is eternal, and He knows who are His and who are not, and He holds eternity in His hands.

This issue will write into law the future of our nation. It, like Roe vs. Wade, will absolutely solidify and codify that we, as a nation, have no regard for what God says is right or wrong. It will say, "We, as a nation, have risen above God, knowing right and wrong, and conferring rights on people." Whatever the court decides, we as God's children must know, He loves the lost and desires to draw all men to Him . . . and He will never leave or forsake His children, whether America a few decades from now loves Him, or whether we are living a persecuted minority.

A Side Note—But Important Note—On Genesis and All of This
If you've known me, or read this blog, any length of time you know that defending the first ten chapters or so of Genesis as a literal record of Creation and a global flood is a passion of mine. In these decisions our nation is wrestling with we are seeing one of the strongest evidences for that importance play out before our eyes.

If we discount those chapters as allegory—submitting them to "science" instead of submitting science to the Bible, we have begun down a slippery slope we can't recover from. The church in the early 1800s found this out. They collapsed on the age of the earth (inventing Day Age Theory, or Gap Theory, to try and reconcile "science" and the Bible) and then along comes Darwin and they've already, as the church, climbed into bed with the major requirement of Darwinian evolution—vast periods of time. Suddenly the church is left holding a bag with a hole in it. They've already embraced the unBiblical vast periods of time. They've already said a key component of Genesis is allegory . . . and so they had no leg to stand on arguing the creation of man in God's image from the start was literal.

When we embrace those things, putting "science" (I say that loosely since many brilliant scientists whose voices aren't heard embrace a literal reading of Genesis) above the Bible, we are then hypocrites to defend a virgin birth, a resurrection, angels and demons, a parting of a sea, a feeding of thousands from a few loaves and fish, the turning of water to wine, etc. Each of these are areas "science" has no room for, and we are inconsistent and hypocritical to fight for them as true when we've already let "science" define the Bible for us.

And so, down the slippery slope, the Bible becomes untrustworthy, and subject to man's interpretation and molding to fit man's "wisdom." Does anyone else see a correlation between a nation professing to be Christian but embracing values that the Bible clearly speaks out against? When we start to see the Bible as a childish book, not able to stand against the progressive wisdom and mind of man, then we really shouldn't be surprised when we give it no authority on moral issues as well. It is truly the next logical stage of descent off the high mountain of the Bible (hence God's) authority. Why, oh why, church, are we so surprised. We who've watered down the very book God gave us?

And . . . should it be any surprise to us, and could it underline the argument I am making any better, then to see the very side defending traditional marriage argue before the Supreme Court use evolutionary terms, ". . . the marriage institution did not develop to deny dignity or to give second class status to anyone. It developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, arise from biology. Now, imagine a world today where we had no marriage at all. Men and women would still be getting together and creating children, but they wouldn’t be attached to each other in any social institution." (In fairness, he has made it clear the issue he was arguing is not about the definition of marriage, but if the people or the courts will decide it. Again . . . already lost . . . God is not even in that. He may be the reason the people—the states in court who are standing against homosexual marriage—voted against it, but whether or not their will stands is not about God, but about legality.)

Genesis does matter. Marriage hasn't "evolved," it is a God-ordained institution present in the first chapters of Genesis. It doesn't need to be defended on "practical" basis, it is what God has ordained and for us that is enough. And God has said certain lifestyles are wrong, and that should be enough for us as well. He is the only basis for the argument . . . and He is enough. For those who don't recognize that . . . those who may define much of our lives left here on earth . . . they will recognize it—on one side of the grave or the other.

Worth Reading

In light of my recent post, "What Are You a Citizen Of?", this article by Todd Starnes called, "Christian Bakery Closes after LGBT Threats, Protests" is well worth reading . . . and pretty sobering for Christians attempting to stand up for what they believe. It talks not only about a bakery in Oregon and the cost one family paid, but it summarizes other recent decisions in the United States. We are not far behind Europe, Great Britain and Canada. I can not repeat it enough—Christian, you'd better have already made the decision whose laws you will honor, and what you are a citizen of, because the time is coming when you and I will have to choose between God and man at a much more public and costly level than we have been used to in the past. Another article about them, listing other similar things, can be found at: http://www.katu.com/news/local/Sweet-Cakes-responds-to--222094901.html

Monotheism and Gore Vidal

I have either written about, or alluded to, the arguments about moral relativism multiple times. Basically, either there are absolute truths and absolute rights and wrongs, or it is all relative and what is right for some is right for some, but not necessarily for others. This morning Albert Mohler published a very good blog on Gore Vidal and his war on monotheism called Gore Vidal and the Sky God. I would recommend reading it. You can see it by clicking here.

In his blog Mohler captures what Vidal realized—that the absolute of truth and right and wrong lies in monotheism. Apart from one god (I leave it lowercase because he is talking about multiple monotheistic religions) there is no case for absolute truth that says something is absolutely right and other things are absolutely wrong. I'll quote a few parts of the article below, but I recommend reading it and reflecting on it. I think this whole argument is also, probably, one of the reasons evolution is so appealing. If we take God out of the picture and deny His existence then we don't have to make our lives accountable to Him or to face the fact that what may seem right to us may, in fact, not be right to He who defines right and wrong.

In the blog Mohler writes:

In his essay, “Monotheism and its Discontents,” based on the lecture at Harvard, Vidal perceptively and blasphemously blamed the existence of a binding sexual morality on monotheism. "The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism,” Vidal asserted, “From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These are sky-god religions.”

And later he says:

Christians should pay close attention to Gore Vidal’s argument, but the mainstream media have almost uniformly ignored it. The obituaries have celebrated his literary gifts and noted his radical political ideas and rejection of Christianity, but not his call for “all-out war on the monotheists.” We should realize that Vidal’s rejection of monotheism, though blasphemous, was truly perceptive. He was certainly correct that a binding and objective morality requires a monotheistic God who both exists and reveals himself. He was also correct in pointing to the fact that a secularized Europe has largely abandoned a biblical morality when it comes, most specifically, to sexual behavior.

It is a truth we must realize to fully understand why the enemy attacks our faith so much—a faith that unashamedly declares itself to be the only way to truth. Because, if we are right, then everyone in the world is accountable to it, whether or not they like it or believe it. With that said, may you spend this week deeply aware of God's great love for you, and how mighty and powerful He is and how completely worthy He is of our standing for Him against all that comes our way. Thanks for reading!   —Erick

"Hate" Speech?

Recently the Christian Post had an online article about a Maryland senator who changed his stance on gay marriage because of the “hate and venom” of gay marriage opponents (as he put it). One of the comments to the article asked, “Is it hate speech for a doctor to tell a patient he has cancer? Is it hate speech to be told to evacuate because a hurricane is coming? Is it hate speech for a parent too tell a child not to touch a hot stove?” A reply to that comment said, “Sure, if it was written in ancient times or involves an imaginary source as it's basis. Try using the medicinal remedies from Biblical times and you'll see what I mean.”

It raises an interesting question that we, as Christians, will have to deal more and more with in the days and years ahead if we choose to stand and declare from God's Word what He says is right and what He says is wrong. The question is, just what is “hate” speech? (Recently some nations have tried to hold pastors accountable if they had talked about homosexuality being a sin, and someone in their congregation has later committed a “hate crime” against a homosexual.) So, just what is “hate” speech?

Clearly, in the comments above, the distinction between the two commenters lies in their outlook on God’s Word. For one, it seems, telling a truth and warning people about a sin before God is as clear, and as necessary, and loving to the person, as warning them about a danger or sickness. To the other, because they don’t believe in God’s Word as truth, it is hateful. It seems that this is really what it comes down to. If someone doesn’t believe in God’s Word, then voicing an opinion (and even trying to bring about legislation) that speaks unfavorably about another lifestyle is intolerant, unloving, and hateful. But, to a person who believe’s in God’s Word, it would, in fact, be unloving to not warn someone of their choices that are sinful before God, or to embrace laws that encourage continuing in that lifestyle. Of course, we must be consistent in our speech . . . if we speak against gay marriage, but say nothing to a friend or coworker who is having an affair, or looking at pornography, or gossiping, etc., then we are in danger of being hypocritical because they, too, are practicing choices that are sin before God.

I think that the manner in which we speak says volumes. Recently a young man in Iowa, Joel Northrup, stepped down from a state championship wrestling match because he felt it went against his beliefs to wrestle against a girl and have that kind of contact with her. His statement was gracious and kind to the two girls in the match, and he is the one who paid the price and stepped out of any chance at the championship—in true, Christ-like fashion, he took the hit, he didn’t rant at the girls or try and get them thrown out.

Isn’t that Christ’s way—to speak truth, but to die for the very ones attacking Him? Yes, He fashioned a whip and drove money changers out of the temple . . . and yes, He called Pharisees hypocrites and other unkind things. But, we need to be very careful before we take that level of combative speech, and remember that He did so as One without sin . . .  we address sin as ones saved from sin, but deserving of death for sin. There is a big difference.

Some of the most hateful web sites I have ever visited are self-appointed Christian watchdog web sites that slam other Christians and their belief differences (not all are like that, and discernment is important). What does that say about us when our hate and our attacks are no different from the worlds? Yes, we must speak truth. But we must also remember that Christ is truth, and He is love, and He modeled laying down a life for the very ones who hate you. I was not there to hear the testimonies that the senator in Maryland heard—but if they were not said in love then, no matter what was said and how true it was in word, it was not true in Spirit and God was not authoring it.

I believe that we can’t compromise our speech or stand on that which God declares as right or wrong, but:

1) We need to make sure we are even more aggressive in noticing, and correcting, our own places where our choices, lifestyle, and thoughts are sin as we are pointing out other’s sin, and . . .

2) We need to make sure that our life bears as much witness as our words. We can point out the sin of another’s choice, and share what God has to say about it, and encourage our nation not to adopt laws flaunting or enabling it, but if we don’t have love we have nothing. If we aren’t laying down our lives, loving those we share with, and doing it from a place of love, we ought to shut our mouth, get in our prayer closet, cry out to God, and get back into the proper place, or our words will never glorify God, nor model His love to another.

We, as Christians, have the greatest privilege in the world. We are the very dwelling place of the Creator of the universe, and we have recognized the very source of truth in the form of Christ, and His Word. We have tasted of the greatest love ever known, and we are privileged to serve God and bear His love, and words, and truth, and power in a world that is lost, dying, blinded, and in slavery to Satan. What a calling, and what a privilege! But, we can never, ever, forget that the greatest truth of God is love, and if we do, or say, anything that does not come from love and faith, then it is not from God, no matter how “true” it is at face value. And, if we aren't willing to lay down our life for the very ones who hate us, then we are not modeling Him as well.

Who Says? — Part II

I read an article in the online New York Times yesterday by Op-Ed Columnist Frank Rich titled "Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet." It is hard to capture the whole article in a few sentences, but it uses the Pentagon's move to possibly repeal the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy of the military towards gay soldiers as a platform to happily advance that the majority of Americans now see gay as an immutable identity and not a "lifestyle." He talks about the "progress" we are making on the issue (its greater acceptance) and uses words to describe those who oppose the homosexual agenda like "homophobic" and "prejudice" and makes the homosexual issue a civil rights issue.

I found the article catching my attention because of the post I had just made (2/7/10: "Says Who?," or "Who Says?") in which I asserted the need for an absolute standard for defining right and wrong. Whether it is the homosexual issue, the abortion issue, racism, prostitution, etc., unless there is a standard defining point for right and wrong there will always be arguments on both sides. In his column, using words like "bigotry," Mr. Rich talks about the court arguments about California's Proposition 8 and he attacks the arguments of those who testified of the danger to marriage of its being repealed and gays being allowed to marry.

Really, we can make all the arguments we want for how gays in the military will affect morale, or what it would do to other soldiers, or for how gay marriage will threaten the institution of marriage, and how it will advance the homosexual agenda in schools, etc., but the reality is that the supreme reason we stand against any of it (or against abortion or prostitution or . . . ) is because God's Word says it is wrong. Just like we would tell an adulterer that they are wrong, and still love them as we do it, we declare homosexuality wrong and abortion wrong—because God says it is.

Every argument we can advance will have a counter argument. Every fact will have a counter fact. Whoever has the best lawyers and the heart strings of the majority of the voters will stand the best chance of having their position ratified . . . unless, and until, Jesus is embraced by our nation as God's Son and the Bible as God's Word. In the absence of an absolute standard there is, simply, argument against argument. Who has the most believable expert witnesses? Who has the best commercials? We have lost the point, which is who has truth? If the people of America who profess to be Christians simply stood—lovingly and humbly, but firmly—on the standard of God's reality and His Word as supreme truth, this wouldn't even be an issue. Until we do we will probably lose more battles than we win.

Note: You can read Mr. Rich's complete article by clicking here.