Somebody posted this video on one of my "favorite" worldly politically correct websites, a Republican Representative giving her view of the gay marriage issue in very emotional politically correct terms. How she wouldn't want to deprive anyone of the kind of close relationship marriage can bring. Her daughter is a lesbian which must contribute much to her feelings on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CbmbdWK6338
I remember a Christian woman from some years ago who likewise embraced the idea of gay rights when her daughter turned out to be a lesbian.
This kind of thinking is very influential these days. We no longer have a Christian worldview shaping our once-Christian culture, even within the churches. Such questions are often decided based on feelings instead, and feelings such as this woman's are often misconstrued as compassion, even "Christian" compassion.
How are we to answer this? Christian opposition to gay marriage is treated by the world as a simple lack of compassion, even as anti-Christian according to the popular notion of what a Christian is supposed to be, as "mean-spirited," as "hatred against love" as I saw it expressed today. When ill-taught Christians join the chorus it becomes very difficult to get the topic onto a genuinely Christian footing and make sense.
I realize that it does not help to get angry as I did in my previous post because this is a problem of worldviews and understanding and the majority of people have no way to understand WHY a Bible Christian would get angry, all they can do is think we're being mean.
Is there any way to explain this that would help? Probably not, but that's no reason not to make the effort.
First, there is a HUGE confusion these days on many issues between how God deals with individuals and how He deals with nations and government. This is a big problem in talking about how America is under judgment, which I keep trying to deal with on these blogs. If we say that 9/11 was God's judgment on America people get indignant about how we are "blaming the victims" when that is not the point at all. It's not about the victims, it's not about individuals, it's about the NATION.
The same problem comes up in discussing an issue such as the head covering for women as spelled out in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. It's very hard to try to make a case for the head covering that doesn't get people upset thinking you're criticizing individual women for not covering their heads, failing at the most basic task of giving grace to others and generally being a legalistic Pharisee. Over and over you may find yourself having to say "But I DON'T think women who don't cover their heads are spiritually inferior," and "No, I am NOT speaking from my own feelings about this, much of what I'm saying actually contradicts my own personal feelings, I am simply speaking from what I understand the apostle Paul to be teaching." I keep being surprised to keep having to deal with this sort of misunderstanding but I guess I shouldn't be. Maybe there is no way to answer it effectively, but obviously it needs to be expected that people will mishear in this way because of worldly influences on our thinking, and this has to be regarded as a major impediment to getting across a Biblical position on it that needs some focused attention.
I may get more into the head covering issue soon because I've been discussing it on a forum recently, I bring it up here only because it has some features in common with our ongoing battle with the culture at large on issues such as gay marriage. The world thinks it's compassion and fairness toward women to allow them to have abortions. They can't seem to absorb the idea that the pregnancy represents an actual human being whose life must be taken in the service of such "compassion."
Likewise, the world thinks it's compassion toward homosexuals to treat them as exactly the same as heterosexuals and extend the rites of marriage to them. They can't seem to grasp the PURPOSE of marriage, which is to sanctify a union that is naturally or at least on principle able to produce offspring. They constantly misconstrue the objection that gay marriage "would destroy marriage" as a PERSONAL objection, like it's going to destroy MY personal marriage, unable to grasp that it's about marriage as a cultural institution that transcends all personal expressions of it, and that what would be destroyed is its cultural MEANING, a meaning that goes back to Creation through all time and all cultures. Apparently such an idea strikes them as too abstract and trivial to take seriously, compared with the much higher value they place on personal feelings and desires.
I watch all this with my teeth on edge, knowing that the nation is digging itself deeper and deeper into the grave by defying God's laws. So I talk about God's judgment coming against America, hoping that will get something across, only to find that the same kind of misunderstanding immediately clouds the issue. "Our compassionate good God would not do that," they say, "God doesn't cause suffering." This is of course why I think the revelations God gave Jonathan Cahn about 9/11 are so important -- which I've been writing about on Faith's Corner -- because they show in irrefutable literal physical facts that it IS God who brought about 9/11 and they teach WHY He did it -- the attitude of defiant independence from God and arrogant self-sufficiency -- and only if this is understood is there any hope of America seeing the light and repenting and thus avoiding the further horrors of further judgment from God. Now that IS God's compassion, showing us how to escape such sufferings. But so far few are listening that I'm aware of.
But America needs also to recognize the particular sins that have been digging us into the grave over the last few decades, the abortions in the tens of millions -- their blood crying out to God as the blood of Abel did -- the sexual sins of every type imaginable including the horrific notion of "freedom of pornography" and "freedom" for every kind of sin and deviation from God's law imaginable.
Truly the culture is in lemmings-to-the-sea mode, blithely tripping to its doom without a clue, thinking we're all making such "progress" in "freedom" when we're really stumbling around in the dark about to fall into the abyss, about to be consumed by terrible destruction, economic disaster, poverty, even starvation, violence from within and without, encroachment by enemies and aliens, because we're aggressively defying God's laws and putting in their place laws that actually reverse them, putting evil for good and good for evil.
And of course the trump card of the unbeliever is always that they don't believe in God and God's law anyway, that's just "religious" foolishness, any disasters have natural causes. Which may make some Christians feel like sinking back into a corner and covering our eyes while they invite their own destruction. Our wonderful powerhouse church seems to bave been deprived of all its power these days, as if there's a blockage in our fuel line from God.
Repentance does have to start with the church and the church isn't doing much in the direction of repenting either for our own deviations from God's rule. Christians who got saved out of this culture also subscribed to all its insanity before being saved, I certainly did, but once born again all that changes completely and now we ought to be able to say something relevant about it. Unfortunately the churches themselves have been falling for the craziness and need themselves to repent.
Yes, God CAN turn suffering and judgment to good purposes for Christians, opportunities to bring people to salvation, for instance, personal spiritual growth for instance, but let's not be naive -- this is not the easy way to bring that about. Judgment means the destruction of the way of life we've all become accustomed to and it's going to be hard to deal with physically, emotionally and spiritually -- for us for sure but more so for the poor unbelievers who have no way to understand any of it and no trust in God to support them, whom we must help when our own resources are lowest. Yes, we have His strength made stronger by our weakness -- if we have the spiritual sense to draw on it, and at the moment the churches aren't exactly spiritually alert.
So, the compassionate lady in the video is defending a position that can only bring doom to this country, just as those American leaders who pronounced the defiance of Isaiah 9:10 that God revealed to Jonathan Cahn were pronouncing God's sentence against America.
Is there any appeal from God's sentence? Is repentance possible at all? Will the churches finally wake up and repent for the sake of the nation? Is there any cure for this blindness or do we just have to sit back and helplessly watch it happen, watch Americans destroy themselves and the nation that once enjoyed great blessings from God?
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Later; Must add that sometimes I write on such subjects as if the most important thing were what is going to happen to the nation and not to individuals. This is due no doubt to what I said I keep encountering, the misreading of what does apply to the nation as applying to individuals instead. But it does also have to be recognized that saving individuals is more imporant than saving the nation. Saving them from an eternity of suffering for their sins, that is. This is all about sin, sins that are bringing the nation to destruction, but they first of all bring individuals to destruction. The misplaced compassion of the woman in the video is actually condemning her own daughter to death. She may have a wonderfully happy "marriage" with her lesbian partner but a miserable eternity because she was kept from the knowledge of salvation by Christ. Same for all the unfortunate women who have had abortions not regarding it as murder. They need to repent and be saved by Christ who died for them. God will judge the nation only on this earth; but He judges individuals for eternity.
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