More than two millennia ago, the prophet Jeremiah warned the
Israelites that the prophets and priests were falsely proclaiming that “all is
well” saying, “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). We, very much like the Israelites have also been
lulled into believing that all is well within the church.
I
received many responses to last week’s article, Marriage
Survives! Can it Endure?Some
revealed the very problem I was addressing: the next generation, including many
Christians, are either confused or
compromised on the issue of homosexuality and, by implication, biblical
authority.
The following dialogue with a young Christian reveals a great deal about what this generation knows about Scripture and the diminishing authority of Scripture in their lives. This dialogue, I hope, models an effective way of engaging younger Evangelicals on this and other "hot-button" issues.
In a momentous turn of events, Proposition 8 (California's Marriage Amendment) passed! Similar measures passed overwhelmingly in Florida and Arizona, bringing to 30 the total number of states that have amended their constitutions in order to protect marriage from special interest revisions. However, these political victories will be temporary if we do not strengthen the cultural understanding of and commitment to marriage. There is a distinct difference between politics and culture, .... Politics always follows and reflects culture—it does not create culture. So how do we create a culture that exalts marriage?
John Adams warned more than two hundred years ago, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with
human passions unbridled by morality and religion. … Our constitution was made
only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (Emphasis mine.) In
other words, it is moral knowledge informed by religion that best serves to
restrain destructive human passions and enlighten the electorate, thus
rendering them better equipped for governing themselves. Given the recent
decline of this moral knowledge, the
question must be asked: Have we grown
unfit for democracy?
As I discussed last week, the first step toward freedom from consumer debt and financial profligacy is a transfer of trust in financial security (a fallacy) to trust in the Sovereign God. Once freed from dependence upon temporal things, we together—the Body of Christ—can seek first the kingdom (Matt. 6:33) rather than remain isolated in the illusory construction of our own individual enterprises that can crumble in an instant. Might the looming financial downturn (to be optimistic) or economic meltdown (to be extreme), offer the church a unique opportunity to bear witness to a watching world?
It is an ironic fact
that this phrase appears on our currency when so often it is money (or
financial security) and not God that
we trust in first. In these uncertain economic times, the tendency of our frail
flesh is to be fearful. However, if the church is to be a faithful witness in
such times this, fear must be replaced by confident faith in the sovereign God
who causes all things to work together for good. It was only by God’s merciful grace and
providence that I was delivered from this very same fear and dependence upon
the things of this world and it is this story that I wish to share.
In the wake of an unprecedented $700 billion bailout plan
passed by Congress, many are asking, “How did this happen?” While there is
plenty of blame to go around—much of which rests with reckless politicians and
avaricious profiteers—many of us still don’t fully comprehend exactly what has happened. All most of us know
is that the stock markets are all over the place and there is real potential
for a widening financial crisis. I
don’t claim to be a financial expert or economist; however, economics are not
so much the source of this debacle as
is a fundamental shift in values, namely, away from the historic Christian
virtue of thrift.
Last week I demonstrated how secular humanism as a worldview
fails because it doesn’t deal with reality. This manifested failure has ushered
in the postmodern era, in which Westerners, having lost confidence in the
secular story of the world, are floundering. Cynicism and relativism have
followed (and often hopelessness), resulting in a careless approach to life’s
great questions. Unfortunately,
in the wake of this void comes Islam, which secularism can neither persuade nor
resist. The predominant representation of the (reductionist) gospel we now see
in the West is, I would argue, similarly ineffective. Through neglect, cultural
accommodation, and historical indifference, the Christian faith in the West has
been largely reduced to a few doctrines of self-interest.
In last week’s article, I
pointed out how Great Britain, through incremental concessions to Muslim
demands, is sowing the seeds of its own subjugation. As to the cause of this
civilizational suicide, Europe rendered itself impotent long ago when it traded
its Christian philosophical foundations for that of secularism.
While Britons may think of
America as its juvenile and impetuous offspring, Great Britain has surely
become our senile grandmother. Through repeated acts of self-condemnation and
political correctness, the British are systematically capitulating to all
things Islamic. In essence, our British forbearers are committing cultural
suicide. In
what may appear to be deferential considerations to their growing Muslim
population, British authorities are slowly conforming to the demands of an
increasingly outspoken and violent minority.
Another school year has begun and an estimated 15
million young men and women will be pursuing studies at the college and
university levels. However, this may not be as beneficial as we have
historically believed higher education to be.
Rarely do I feature a guest commentary, however John Jalsevac’s review of the extraordinary documentary film, Miss HIV is so important that I thought I would be doing my readers a great service in sharing his insights. I have tried to edit Mr. Jalsevac’s piece for brevity’s sake without reducing its substance.
Michael Kimmel, a sociologist at the State University of New York at
Stony Brook, recently released the results of his groundbreaking study in a
book entitled Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. Kimmel interviewed nearly
400 young men between 16 and 26 years of age, and over the course of 352 pages, he reveals a
disturbing trend among the future of American manhood. Guyland seeks to answer the contemporary questions, “Why do so many guys
seem stuck between adolescence and adulthood? Why do so many of them fail to
launch? Just what is going on with America’s young men?”
Responding to the conclusion of my series In Defense of Marriage, there were some
who expressed concern that I was advocating capitulation or withdrawal from the
culture, which, of course, I am not. I appreciated the thoughtfulness with
which many of you responded and the gracious manner in which you expressed your
disagreements. This is healthy and—let’s be honest—we’re not dealing with
essential doctrines of the Christian faith, so there should be room for
disagreement, debate, and discussion. That is precisely what I hope to
encourage. Otherwise, we can remain blindly entrenched in old patterns of
thinking and conduct that render the church and its message irrelevant as the
culture around us changes. The faithful Christian will always wrestle with the
execution of his calling in a changing cultural context (see 1 Cor. 9:22).
When I began this series, I said the battle to define marriage is not over—and I’m still
convinced that is true. However, the issue in America has clearly passed the
eleventh hour and I fear the clock has already begun to toll. The outcome of California’s
Proposition 8 this November, which seeks to amend the state constitution
in order to establish that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or
recognized in California”—thus reversing the state Supreme Court’s recognition of same-sex
marriage in May—will figure prominently in the future of marriage in America.
If the measure is defeated (and barring any intervention by God), I predict it
will be nearly impossible to halt the homosexual movement and with it the
radical redefinition of sexual morality.
This
raises the important question of “What then?”
Unable to rely on the democratic process to advance their agenda, gay-rights advocates have instead employed activist judges, propaganda campaigns, indoctrination of youth, and intimidation tactics to impose their moral vision. It is Christianity (and religion, in general) that stands in the way of this social transformation. Therefore, it is only natural that as SSM gains traction, there will follow a suppression of religion and persecution of the religious.
All right, you say, so cohabitation is a poor
substitute for marriage and may even undermine those marriages preceded by
cohabitation. But how does allowing persons of the same sex to marry harm the
institution of marriage? As advocates of same-sex marriage (SSM) are quick to
point out, “the sky hasn’t fallen” since SSM became legal in Massachusetts in
2004, apparently convinced that four short years is adequate to produce the
predictable and deleterious public consequence of redefining marriage. Remember,
however, that Unwin’s research demonstrated that the effects of such
modification would occur over generations and not be immediate. Nonetheless, there
is some empirical evidence already emerging that indicates the acceptance SSM
will, in fact, harm the institution of marriage and, subsequently, society.
Any deviation from this proper relationship for sex (i.e., marriage), as well as its proper biological design (i.e., homosexual), is a perversion of human sexuality; history demonstrates that such deviations will inevitably undo those societal goods associated with marriage and the natural family. So what are these “goods” that derive from marriage?
In this part of our series we will examine
the historical findings relative to those cultures that once held to a strong
sexual ethic—in which monogamy is strictly reinforced through marriage—but
later compromised that ethic, as we are now doing. According to Unwin’s
thorough survey of history, any and every culture that embraces a philosophy of
sexual freedom for a period of at least three generations will inevitably
experience cultural decline. There is not one single example in all of human
history where this cultural pattern appears and there does not follow cultural
demise consistent with Unwin’s conclusions.
As discussed in Part I, where marriage is strictly defined and reinforced, monogamy rules. This assertion led many proponents of same-sex
marriage to argue that since monogamy is—according to the research—central to
the health and prosperity of a given society, we should offer “marriage” to
same-sex couples for the purpose of promoting monogamy among gays. So it seems
I must address this charge before continuing in our defense of marriage.
