Along with many conservative Christians, and other adherents of traditional marriage, and let me also add a description of myself as a vehement opponent of the practice of homosexuality and someone who sees it as immoral, and destructive to individuals and our society as a whole (did you figure out where I am coming from?), I am appalled at our President expressing his support for same sex marriage. I am also not at all surprised at his stand, just dismayed and appalled. Since he is our President I expect moral leadership from him, and not that which takes us as a nation to greater immorality.
Unlike many of his opponents I really like Barack Obama, and I love the model of his family life. I think he is smart, a pretty good leader, and someone who usually means what he says and sticks with it. When he says he will end a war in Iraq, he does it. When he says "I will go into Pakistan and get Osama Bin Laden", he does it. When he decides he will take on Wall Street, the Republicans over health care, and corporate America in taking apart General Motors and putting it back together, he does it. The man has guts, he is a player, and has the ego to back his play. My point is not that I like his decisions, at least not all of them, but that he does make them in spite of opposition and that takes courage.
I say all this because I find those who are cynical about his decisions tend to suggest that he makes them only for political purposes. I grant that he is a politician, and an exceptionally cunning and adept one, but just like Bill Clinton, he has convictions and follows through on them. He may choose his moments to lower the hammer, but he does have convictions. In the case of homosexual marriage he holds reprehensible and disgusting convictions. Oh my, how the world has changed, that such a scandal can now be haled as a historic moment.
I pray for the President faithfully. I think he has a sense of the Gospel, compared with the lack of such from many former presidents. What he lacks though is a Biblical World and Life view, and what he has in its place is a sense of justice without any absolute foundations that control its boundaries. In short, he can claim to be a Christian and totally be opposed to the holiness of God, the dignity of human beings, and the moral order that creates a moral society all while thinking he is doing something noble and has the comfort of personal faith.
I don't make fun of our President, I respect the office highly. I don't send mocking stories about him on Facebook, or videos of his verbal stumbles, and certainly not racist and demeaning comments about him to anyone. I don't attempt to subvert our system of government by attempting to delegitmize his government by calling it a "regime." Trying to make a clown of our President doesn't help us to understand the terrible dilemma we are in as a country.
It is not that this man is evil, or a socialist, or simply an opportunist. What is distressing is that he understands the culture and society from the perspective of the American Academy, the intellectual secularists, the adrift inheritors of a Christian culture no longer in touch with its moorings. He gets America, and where he thinks it is going, and that is bad news for America because it ain't going any place healthy. I don't want to be a troglodyte, I am not whimsical for a racist past, or a past of general poverty. I am thankful for all the progress we have made in freedom, in technology, and in our material wealth, but brokenhearted that we have forgotten what got us here and fairly certain that the peak will be reached soon where we begin to slide down the other side.
It was one thing when Bill Clinton used the Oval Office for personal sexual immorality, what a terrible example to our children. Then he lied about it. Wow, but I think this is worse, because it is an endorsement of a chosen behavior that though present for much of history has always been condemned as immoral, especially in the contribution to the delinquency of minors (who are now encouraged to use their sexual confusion as a breakout of identity [what trash}) and allows individuals to pursue sexual fulfillment without sexual responsibility by the fulfillment of (normal but fraught with difficulty) relationships with the opposite sex and the production and raising of children.
This President is helping society to stand on its head. Bullying is now a sought after behavior so as to identify those who mock the homosexual, and to protect those who would pursue it. Am I in favor of bullying, of course not, but it is all part of an agenda of protection for a self-destroying, self-confusing, and self-agonizing way of life. I prophesy bullying, where the homosexuals stand at the door of Lot's house, and demand that the young men be sent out. This is no persecuted minority, but a self indulgent materialistic and politically savy group of folks who will destroy our nation, if not by its eventual corruption, then by a God who knows how to send the smoke.
With every love and kindness to anyone caught up in homosexual behavior, and my respect to you as someone created in the image of God, and my hope for God's deliverance for you, I stand opposed to any agenda that would normalize such behavior or seek to expand it. I ask all who agree with me to speak out, stand up, stand out, and shake off all the name calling that will come your way. For the sake of our nation, for the sake of our children, for the sake of Truth, this must be opposed.
Unlike many of his opponents I really like Barack Obama, and I love the model of his family life. I think he is smart, a pretty good leader, and someone who usually means what he says and sticks with it. When he says he will end a war in Iraq, he does it. When he says "I will go into Pakistan and get Osama Bin Laden", he does it. When he decides he will take on Wall Street, the Republicans over health care, and corporate America in taking apart General Motors and putting it back together, he does it. The man has guts, he is a player, and has the ego to back his play. My point is not that I like his decisions, at least not all of them, but that he does make them in spite of opposition and that takes courage.
I say all this because I find those who are cynical about his decisions tend to suggest that he makes them only for political purposes. I grant that he is a politician, and an exceptionally cunning and adept one, but just like Bill Clinton, he has convictions and follows through on them. He may choose his moments to lower the hammer, but he does have convictions. In the case of homosexual marriage he holds reprehensible and disgusting convictions. Oh my, how the world has changed, that such a scandal can now be haled as a historic moment.
I pray for the President faithfully. I think he has a sense of the Gospel, compared with the lack of such from many former presidents. What he lacks though is a Biblical World and Life view, and what he has in its place is a sense of justice without any absolute foundations that control its boundaries. In short, he can claim to be a Christian and totally be opposed to the holiness of God, the dignity of human beings, and the moral order that creates a moral society all while thinking he is doing something noble and has the comfort of personal faith.
I don't make fun of our President, I respect the office highly. I don't send mocking stories about him on Facebook, or videos of his verbal stumbles, and certainly not racist and demeaning comments about him to anyone. I don't attempt to subvert our system of government by attempting to delegitmize his government by calling it a "regime." Trying to make a clown of our President doesn't help us to understand the terrible dilemma we are in as a country.
It is not that this man is evil, or a socialist, or simply an opportunist. What is distressing is that he understands the culture and society from the perspective of the American Academy, the intellectual secularists, the adrift inheritors of a Christian culture no longer in touch with its moorings. He gets America, and where he thinks it is going, and that is bad news for America because it ain't going any place healthy. I don't want to be a troglodyte, I am not whimsical for a racist past, or a past of general poverty. I am thankful for all the progress we have made in freedom, in technology, and in our material wealth, but brokenhearted that we have forgotten what got us here and fairly certain that the peak will be reached soon where we begin to slide down the other side.
It was one thing when Bill Clinton used the Oval Office for personal sexual immorality, what a terrible example to our children. Then he lied about it. Wow, but I think this is worse, because it is an endorsement of a chosen behavior that though present for much of history has always been condemned as immoral, especially in the contribution to the delinquency of minors (who are now encouraged to use their sexual confusion as a breakout of identity [what trash}) and allows individuals to pursue sexual fulfillment without sexual responsibility by the fulfillment of (normal but fraught with difficulty) relationships with the opposite sex and the production and raising of children.
This President is helping society to stand on its head. Bullying is now a sought after behavior so as to identify those who mock the homosexual, and to protect those who would pursue it. Am I in favor of bullying, of course not, but it is all part of an agenda of protection for a self-destroying, self-confusing, and self-agonizing way of life. I prophesy bullying, where the homosexuals stand at the door of Lot's house, and demand that the young men be sent out. This is no persecuted minority, but a self indulgent materialistic and politically savy group of folks who will destroy our nation, if not by its eventual corruption, then by a God who knows how to send the smoke.
With every love and kindness to anyone caught up in homosexual behavior, and my respect to you as someone created in the image of God, and my hope for God's deliverance for you, I stand opposed to any agenda that would normalize such behavior or seek to expand it. I ask all who agree with me to speak out, stand up, stand out, and shake off all the name calling that will come your way. For the sake of our nation, for the sake of our children, for the sake of Truth, this must be opposed.
So, it is the bullies who are the real victims? Never saw that coming. I'd really like to better understand the origins of your assumptions about the nature and consequences of homosexuality, beyond the contention that it has historically been condemned, so it must be bad.
ReplyDeleteAnti-miscegenation existed well into the 1960’s, finally overturned by the Supreme Court in 67. Shouldn’t we have honored their long historical precedent? Ministers made similar arguments to yours against intermarriage and integration a generation ago. The judge in the original 1965 Loving case echoed what was coming from the pulpit in defending the anti-miscegenation law on biblical principles: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
And the same arguments were made against integration in general: Rev. James F. Burks expressed a common theme preached in churches after the Brown decision: “Spurning and rejecting the plain Truth of the Word of God has always resulted in the Judgment of God. Man, in overstepping the boundary lines God has drawn, has taken another step in the direction of inviting the Judgment of Almighty God. This step of racial integration is but another stepping stone toward the gross immorality and lawlessness that will be characteristic of the last days.”
In my mind, your post has a similar feel to Burks assertions. I would point you to an excellent analysis on the use of biblical arguments in defending discriminatory laws here: http://www.umass.edu/legal/Hilbink/250/Jane%20Dailey%20-%20Sex,%20Segregation,%20and%20the%20Sacred%20after%20Brown.pdf
Peace.
Well said Randy, and poignant prophecy.
ReplyDeleteDear Billy: You may have read some things I said right, and you certainly have read some things wrong. Maybe because you are making assumptions of where I am coming from. There are things that are historical which need to be repudiated because they are wrong, and others that need to be continued because they are right, and only that which is accordance with Scripture, with the correct interpretation of Scripture, should be continued. It will be easy to mock anyone for claiming the "correct" interpretation of Scripture, but that is a cheap shot since it assumes no one could know it. I don't buy that. If you are not a believer in the Word, then I get where you are coming from, but if you claim a humility before it then you have to claim some understanding of what it is saying and that is where discussion can begin. I am certainly willing to discuss that. I hate racism, and i think the Bible does. I believe God wanted men to be free, and I think that is clear in Scripture. I don't see any prohibition in Scripture against marrying someone of another race, as long as they are a believer. I do see a condemnation of the practice of homosexuality, and many other sins, and the offer of grace and forgiveness to all those broken by sin. Your attempt to compare my remarks with that of the racism of the past doesn't legitimately deal with the Biblical case against homosexuality, and is unfortunately too typical of the argument used by the homosexual lobby these days. Besides I am inter-racially married and understand fairly well the erroneous arguments of the past used against it. Randy
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