Saturday: The Marriage-Go-Round
Let’s Hit Pause For a Minute:
“And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?” Matt. 7:3
The news this week is once again filled with the “gay agenda”. Gay activists want the Supreme Court to redefine Marriage under constitutional law. Perhaps the court can do a better job with marriage than they did with life, but I doubt it.
To be honest, I don’t think they will hear the case. I think they will send it back to the lower courts and the people to be churned and debated until the issue is closer to a popular consensus. Bill O’ Riley asked a legitimate question when he asked, “You mean our constitutional law is defined by popular consensus?” He seemed surprised. Perhaps he’s forgotten that we live in an age that has no standards, no absolutes.
All that aside, and I hope that my fellow signers of the Manhattan Declaration and members of the church will not be too shocked, but we do not live in a theocracy, thank our merciful Father in Heaven. And to all those gay activists and secular humanists and liberal socialists out there, you may also be surprised to know that we do not live in a democracy. Sorry to shatter your fantasy. The fact of the matter is that we live in a Democratic-Republic and it is the most people friendly government ever established on the face of the whole earth, or it used to be. I hyphenated the word Democratic-Republic because I don’t want people with agendas pulling them apart and using one, or the other out of context. Our freedoms depend on our ability to maintain a balance between the two.
That said, I want it clear that I am speaking to the Church, whom one would hope still lives by a standard and understands the meaning of “absolute”. Within God’s standard lies a definition of marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman. The Bible, God’s standard, gives us a model of that union. It defines a purpose for that union and it lays out rules and a framework within which the model union will best function. The gay community in all its belligerence and militant need to create more division among us has refused to accept equality in the form of civil union and insisted that it be called marriage and be given special privilege under the constitution.
What they don’t realize and, apparently, the church has forgotten, is that marriage is an institution of God and unless it is sanctioned by Him it simply cannot exist. Call it what you will, but just as “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, so excrement by any other name will smell, well, like excrement. Marriage simply cannot exist outside the framework given to us by God in the Bible. And that brings me to the real, and more important point of all this. When the gay rights community went after marriage as something to covet, the church in all its infinite wisdom and fortress mentality took it upon itself, once again, to impetuously defend God, against what? Against a word misplaced? Against an errant perception? Against His own will?
When it comes to the church I am ever reminded of anti-penticostal Peter, (that means “before”, not “against”), who swears to Jesus at the last supper, in booming voice, that he will defend the Lord to his last breath. “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” Luke 22:33.
Peter makes this declaration only to deny the Lord three times within just a few hours. That in fact is the best description I can find of the impetuous church of the third millenium; that is, the model of the church at Laodicea of John’s Revelation, chapter three.
In the real world, that is, in The Kingdom of God, the issue is not about the gay community, or their constitutional right to equal protection under the law. The issue lies within the church and the mockery it has made of God’s institution of marriage. Do you realize that the rate of divorce within the church is as high as it is in the secular community? Do you realize that pre-marrital sex is as rampant within the church as without? Do you realize that fornication and adultery and sexual abuse and physical abuse and psychological abuse and abuse of drugs and abuse of pornography and abuse of one another is as rampant in the church as it is in the world outside our walls. (Don’t miss the part about “walls”. That’s part of the problem. We build visible walls in place of spiritual walls.)
How dare we stand in accusation, pointing our fingers at homosexuals, usurping Satan’s role as we declare the sanctity of God’s institution. Shame on us. It is we who have made a mockery of marriage. It is we who have broken down the wall, (spiritual), and allowed immorality to enter in. The problem of rampant homosexuality in our time is not the fault of homosexuals. It is the result of a broken and crumbling wall that has been ill maintained by the Church, which has always been responsible for its maintenance. God is speaking loudly to His Church in this age, “That is enough!”, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat.”; “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.”; “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray!” Luke 22:38, 31, 40, 46.
“And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?”
Castaways Point 