|
Two-hundred
and twenty-seven years ago our nation declared its independence from Great Britain. To be
sure, our then-new nation was not perfect, but it occupied the moral high
ground in the conflict. We still
have a moral residual from our founding fathers, and so much to be thankful
for. And yet in light of what has
recently occurred, Christians have good cause to
be less than sanguine.
“When
the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The question of the Psalmist is an
appropriate one to ask in light of the decision of the Supreme Court on
June 26, to rule as illegitimate laws that prohibit homosexuality. It is difficult
to imagine now that laws prohibiting incest and polygamy, among other perversions,
will long stand. Since June 26 it
can be said without hyperbole that the foundations of our nation are being
destroyed.
President John Adams once remarked “Our
Constitution is made for a moral and religious people; it is inadequate for
the governance of any other.” Liberty requires moral self control. Where there is no moral self control,
liberty cannot long endure. As George Neumayr
wrote the day after this decision, “We are losing real liberties
while the Supreme Court invents bogus ones.”
The foundations did not shatter without warning,
however. Since the 1970’s the homosexual subculture has been
increasingly militant. In 1973, the Board of Trustees of the American
Psychiatric Association gave into to pressure by lobbyists to remove
homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In the Mid 1980’s,
when I was in college, the American Psychological Association declassified
homosexuality as an aberrant behavior.
The assault on the foundations of decency,
however, did not take place only in the arena of the scholastic elite. No, it was also democratized to popular
culture through Hollywood. In the 1970’s the TV sitcom Three’s Company was
aired. In this show, a young man
(played by John Ritter) pretended to be gay in order not to offend the
ostensibly “moral” sensibilities of his landlord by moving in
with two single women. The message,
perhaps for many people a joke, was that while heterosexual cohabitation
may be wrong, homosexuality is OK.
The push for the acceptance of homosexuality
reached new heights, however, with the airing of the sitcom Will & Grace, which portrays a
gay man living platonically with a single woman. Will is portrayed as a moral, upright, “nice
guy,” and his life-style is constantly portrayed as normal, even
while the show seeks to desensitize it’s viewers to seeing two men
showing affection toward each which hitherto was reserved for soap opera
fornication between those of the opposite sex.
The third assault on the foundations has come
through the educational establishment.
Increasingly, public school systems are adopting curricula that has
as its agenda to indoctrinate children into not only acceptance of
homosexuality, but in some cases, experimenting with it.
We are told today that homosexuality is like
broccoli – some people like it, many do not, but it’s just an
individual choice, and no one in his right mind would say that broccoli was
bad or immoral simply because he didn’t like it. In an age in which
even the august justices of the Supreme Court are confused about issues of
law, and right and wrong, we dare not be.
And if you will apply yourself to understanding God’s Word,
you will not be, even as the
foundations crumble around you.
I. The Word’s Standard
Human coital intimacy is rooted in the
creation. With scant exception,
gender distinction is necessary to the propagation of the species, be that
species human or animal. Dr. Warren Gadpaille, a psychiatrist with the University of
Colorado Medical Center, who makes no claim to being a Christian, wrote an
article that appeared in the Archives
of General Psychiatry, in which he states, “from an evolutionary
perspective, homosexuality as a preferential or obligatory mode must be
definition be biologically deviant..”
Dr. Gadpaille makes the
same point as does the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter one: homosexuality is contrary to nature and
to common sense, even common sense unenlightened by the Scriptures.
Homosexuality, according to God, however, is not
merely biologically deviant. It is
morally deviant:
“Do not lie with a man as one lies with a
woman; that is detestable” (Leviticus 18:22).
“Because [they refused to retain God in
their thinking], God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women
exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men
also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for
one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in
themselves the due penalty for their perversion” (Romans 1:26-27).
“Do you not know that the wicked will not
inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually
immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual
offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor
swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9-10)
“We know that the law is good if one uses
it properly. We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for
lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious;
for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts [homosexuals
– same word as in 1 Cor 6:9, for slave
traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to
the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God,
which he entrusted to me (1 Tim. 1:8-11).”
That is the established and stayed judgment of
God upon the practice of homosexuality.
The testimony of God’s Word will never be different. Regardless of the popularity of Will & Grace, regardless of the
shifting standards of the APA, or the push within the Episcopal Church and
the PCUSA to sanction “gay marriages” and ordain homosexuals,
regardless of the scholastic trickery that some have engaged in to try to
indicate that the Scriptures don’t really mean what they so plainly say - The truth will not be altered.
Young people, and especially you teenagers
– you are being systematically brainwashed by the culture into
believing that there is nothing wrong with this behavior – that
it’s just an individual choice, that it doesn’t hurt anyone. I
pray the Lord will establish in your hearts the truth of his Word, when it
says, “Let God be true and every man a liar.”
If you read the Supreme Court’s decision, and the commentary by those near the court,
you will be told that this ruling did not legitimize homosexuality, it just
affirmed a right to privacy to do what one wants in one’s own home.
The Court may not have intended to have a legitimizing effect on
homosexuality, but it did. The New York Times reported on July 2
that WalMart has expanded its antidiscrimination
policy to include homosexuality as an identified, protected class.
The Court opined that people can do what they
want in the privacy of their own homes, as long as they don’t hurt
anyone else. Will the Court be
consistent with that? What if
someone made anthrax in the privacy of his own home, but never distributed
it? Do you think the Supreme Court
would step in and rule unconstitutional an arrest and conviction in such a
case?
We are told that it is not the place of the
government to make laws regarding moral issues. But that is patently ridiculous. Theft is a moral issue. Murder is a moral issue. Perjury is a moral issue. Does anyone seriously believe that a
society has acted wrongly if it enacts laws to prohibit such things.
Yet the question can and should be legitimately
asked, “What are the boundaries of the civil government’s
legislative authority?”
II. Caesar’s Place
Ten Commandments comprise what is commonly
referred to as “the moral law” (see Westminster Confession of Faith 19:1, 2, 3a, 5). The Confession
correctly sets forth that the moral law is binding on all people in all
ages. The question is, Who has the authority to enforce that law?
Most Christians would be uneasy about the civil government
dictating what god they are to worship, or what constitutes acceptable
worship, or determining what is blasphemy and what is not, or telling
people how they are to keep the Sabbath – and rightly so.
When in the plan and providence of God, the
theocracy of Israel came to an end, a
distinction was made in spheres of authority. Jesus told us that we were to render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things
that are God’s (Mt 22:21). God
has not given it to Bill Clinton, George Bush, or any other president to
determine which God we are to worship, or what is acceptable for
worship. Those issues have become in
the Messianic economy the province of the government of the Church.
All legitimate authority comes from God, and it
is delegated by him primarily through the three great institutions of
family, church, and civil government.
It was rightly understood at the time of the founding of our nation
that God has not given the civil government authority over matters of
religion and conscience.
The Constitution
of Virginia (Section 16, June 12, 1776) states, “That religion,
or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the means of discharging it,
can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and
therefore all men are equally entrusted to the free exercise of religion
according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of
all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each
other.”
Romans 13:1-5 makes plain that the civil
government has authority in spheres of behavior,
and not in areas of conviction and conscience. It took some time for our
new nation to work out the implications of what it understood in principle,
but if finally arrived in a sound place, which could be summed up in this
way: The first four commandments
(and the last) are under the jurisdiction of the individual, the family,
and in a more institutional sense, the Church to promulgate and enforce. According to Romans 13, civil government
has no business in these areas. But
commandments five through nine fall under the authority of the civil
government to enforce, and it is derelict in its duty if it fails to do so. We must be clear on this point. It is not only allowable for the civil
government to exercise authority here, civil
government is accountable to God for doing so.
Dr. Meredith Kline has pointed out that all of
the ancient law codes of Israel’s neighbors were nearly identical to
their laws in those things regulated by commandments five through nine. This is not mere coincidence. A society that permits murder, permits
theft, permits perjury, and that permits sexual perversion, is a society
that will not last long on the earth.
The penalties for such foolishness are built right into the created
order.
I want to be very careful in what I am about to
say in light of Romans 13 and Jude 8.
These passages indicate that to resist the civil government is to
resist God; and that it is the godless individual to rejects the
authorities that God has established. So I say, not thoughtlessly or
carelessly, that the court has erred grievously in the decision it rendered
on June 26.
It has established a situation, unintentionally
perhaps, that will tend to the placing of faithful pastors, churches, and
individual Christians in a grave situation. The decision in abstraction
would be bad enough. But it does not
exist in abstraction. This decision, coupled with the prevailing winds of a
decaying cultural ethos, should cause us grave concern regarding what the
wave of the future may be.
III. The Wave of the Future
Not quite a decade ago now, our legislative
system invented a new category of crime called “hate crime.” What
this genre of classification does is to take e.g. the crime of murder, which carries with it a certain
penalty, and increases that penalty if it can be shown that, in the
court’s estimation, the crime was committed out of hatred for the
group the victim belonged to. The
notion is absurd. Have you ever hear
of someone committing murder out of love for the victim? All crime is by definition hateful.
What is very frightening about this new category
of law, however, is that it takes the notion of crime and the jurisdiction
of the civil government out of the realm of behavior (which is the proper sphere of civil authority), and
places it in the realm of thought.
In other words, in contradistinction to the sound principle enunciated in
the Virginia Constitution, this category of law maintains that government can regulate one’s thoughts,
convictions, or conscience.
The Supreme Court in fact, if not in intention,
prohibited states from making illegal homosexual acts. Consistency would dictate that it is only
a matter of time before polygamy laws, incest laws, and laws of consanguinity
must give way to this new, “enlightened” view of law. And when coupled with the idea of civil
authority over “hate crimes,” the Supreme Court’s
decision sets up a condition which is a extremely dangerous
to every decent individual. How long
will it be before we live under a principle which says, “No act of
perversion is illegal. But what you think about it, or say in
public about it certainly may be.”
Right now the concept of a “hate crime”
means that certain thoughts are criminal only if coupled with criminal
behaviors (and certainly no Christian who respects the teaching of
God’s Word would call for or engage in a vigilante open season on
homosexuals, any more than he would on drug dealers). But how long will it
be before the legal webbing between thought and behavior is severed? How
long before it will be illegal for someone to preach concerning what the
Bible has to say about homosexuality?
Conclusion
When the
foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? I would like to suggest to you four things
that Christians can do in the light of dangerous decision and the serious
situation it creates:
1) You can hold out the Word of Life, the
gospel of grace, to our culture, and even to those trapped in sinful and
perverted lifestyles. As the
Scriptures indicate over and over again, good laws will not save us. Christ alone can.
2) Prepare for persecution. I fear the day
is coming when those who will dare continue to preach and teach and believe
what God’s Word says on this issue will be singled out for criminal
prosecution. And I predict that if that
happens, many of the Churches which you now consider to be evangelical,
faithful churches, will succumb and compromise. Those
who count themselves to be Christ’s own, must never give in, but must
exhibit the conviction of the Apostle Peter, who in Acts 4, though beaten
and imprisoned because he ignored the government’s demand that he
stop preaching, said boldly, “We must obey God rather than
men.” Stars never shine so
bright as when the night becomes pitch black. You are the world’s only hope, for
it is through you that God makes know the gospel of his salvation –
you are the light of the world, the salt of the earth. But if the salt
looses it’s savor, what good it is – it is useless, and good
only to be tossed out and trampled under foot.
3) Pray!
The Court has spoken. Although the situation seems dire and
overwhelming, remember Proverbs 21:1, “The king’s heart is in
the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he
pleases.” There is an
authority higher than the Supreme Court – appeal to HIM!
4) Recognize where you’re true
citizenship is. Recognize that as
God’s elect, you are “strangers in the world” (1 Peter
1:1). Paul speaks to the Philippians
about those whose “destiny is destruction, their god is their
stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in
heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ”
(3:19-20). Peter says, “But
you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare
the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light”
(1 Peter 2:9).
The “holy nation” to which Peter
refers is not the USA, or Great Britain, or modern day Israel – it is the Church.
From time to time it has been the Church’s
vain dream to transmutate one of the kingdoms of
the world into the kingdom of God. It was,
in fact, the dream of some of the early colonists. Christians, you are
strangers and aliens here. The
Church will always stand opposed
to the kingdoms of the world in which she finds herself, sometimes to a
greater degree, sometimes to a lesser, but she always will.
The Church must learn afresh in every generation
that her hope is not here – we must not set our mind on earthly
things, but must know that our citizenship is in heaven. Our hope is, as
the Scriptures tell us, for a new heaven and a new earth where at last
righteousness will dwell.
Stand ready, Christian. If you didn’t know
it before now, you are about to find out that this vile world is no friend
of grace to lead you on to God. Despite
what we may say in our national pledges, and sing in our national psalms,
there is truly only one nation under God – it is the Church of Jesus
Christ.
The kingdom of Jesus will clash with every other.
By God’s grace we will win some of those battles (and I hope the
Church wins this one). In his wise
providence, there are battles that the Church has lost, and will
loose. But Jesus has promised to
return. And when he does, the
knowledge of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas. Kings and kingdoms which oppose him will
be obliterated. And there will be only one nation under God.
GCH
|
