On 28 June 2011, I posted "The New York
Same-Sex Marriage Vote" and promised, "More on tax-exempt status,
homosexuality, persecution, and marriage later." Today, marriage.
"Because the Bible says so" doesn't hold much water with the rest of the world. The world doesn't, for the most part, accept our values. Most people in Western countries think that marriage is between a man and a woman because that is how it "just is," "that's the way it has always been." That is, of course, not actually true.
Marriage worldwide has taken many forms: multiple husbands for a single wife; multiple wives for a single husband; one man, one woman for life; group marriage of multiple husbands and multiple wives all of whom "belong" to everyone; serial marriages to individual spouses; "open" marriages into which other persons may be temporarily inserted for sex; marriages for legal purposes in which the "spouses" might never even meet one another; marriages between children and adults; wives who may be "shared"with visitors as a form of polite hospitality; a form of prostitution called "comfort marriages" in which men marry and then divorce the wife in a single afternoon so their sexual relations will not be considered to be illegitimate; and many other variations.
For the Christian, the words of Jesus in the Bible are authoritative.
"And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." Matthew 19:4-6
I predict that we will eventually lose the battle over same-sex marriage. Remember that the world does not share our values, except incidentally. The modern argument is that there are no absolute values; nothing is always true; there may not even be such a thing as "truth.". Your "truth" may not be my "truth."
Public opinion can be easily swayed by seemingly reasonable arguments about "fairness."
We are called to obey the truth as given to us by God, not as determined by the changing opinions of men. We must understand that this will in no way convince the rest of the world and they may react very negatively to us. We must decide which we value more, the opinion of other people or the opinion of God. This makes our choice very simple and, possibly, very difficult.
A possible option if we eventually lose the legal battle over same-sex marriage: drop our tax exemption status and continue to do what we know is right. Hold religious wedding ceremonies which we consider to be binding and submit whatever civil paperwork is required to make our marriages "legal."
R. Albert Mohler, Jr., the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, speaks on this subject in "Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution," an article appearing on page A13 in the Friday 1 July 2011 issue of The Wall Street Journal. The chilling final sentence of the article is "We are about to find out just how much we believe the Gospel we so eagerly preach."
"And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." Matthew 19:4-6
I predict that we will eventually lose the battle over same-sex marriage. Remember that the world does not share our values, except incidentally. The modern argument is that there are no absolute values; nothing is always true; there may not even be such a thing as "truth.". Your "truth" may not be my "truth."
Public opinion can be easily swayed by seemingly reasonable arguments about "fairness."
We are called to obey the truth as given to us by God, not as determined by the changing opinions of men. We must understand that this will in no way convince the rest of the world and they may react very negatively to us. We must decide which we value more, the opinion of other people or the opinion of God. This makes our choice very simple and, possibly, very difficult.
A possible option if we eventually lose the legal battle over same-sex marriage: drop our tax exemption status and continue to do what we know is right. Hold religious wedding ceremonies which we consider to be binding and submit whatever civil paperwork is required to make our marriages "legal."
R. Albert Mohler, Jr., the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, speaks on this subject in "Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution," an article appearing on page A13 in the Friday 1 July 2011 issue of The Wall Street Journal. The chilling final sentence of the article is "We are about to find out just how much we believe the Gospel we so eagerly preach."
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