Is Gay Marriage a Moral Issue or a Civil Liberties Issue? Pt. 4
This is part 4 of a 4 part series. You can read parts one, two and three here.
The battle for the family is heating up with one of the most important issues that could cause a huge tipping point in culture-the redefining of marriage by the Supreme Court. This is the final segment of a 4 part series on the topic of gay marriage. In this segment we look at the history of America. Were we a Christian nation? Are we a Christian nation today? Is a nation required to have a moral compass?
In God We Trust? The moral issue. Does it even matter?
We must as a nation acknowledge that our national motto that is on every currency, In God We Trust, no longer represents the belief of the population or its leadership. Our beliefs are reflected in our elections, not our words. Our nation is living a lie. A nation cannot violate the values our Creator expressed in His instruction manual for living, the Bible, and expect God simply to turn His eye from evil. God said in His word to beware of calling things that are evil good.
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Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter (Isa 5:20).
God doesn't change with the times, nor should the church or Christianity. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). His cultural bar does not move up or down with the moral condition of that culture.
The sad truth is our nation has already become a secular nation. The values represented today among leadership, the media, and the majority reveal that we are a nation headed towards the way of Europe where God is no longer allowed in the public discourse of government. The idea that moral considerations should be part of the discussion is now taboo. As such, we can expect to see God remove His hand of protection if this trend continues. There is a remnant in the nation that still hold true to the absolutes of God's Word, but they are getting smaller in number.
How does God deal with the sins of a nation?
Israel's sin was the worship of idols. God judged them by allowing their enemies to defeat them, or He allowed liberal and unholy leadership to rise in power. In other words, the spiritual condition of the greater majority was given a leader that reflected their spiritual condition. So the more ungodly the people became the more they embraced leaders that reflected their values. We can see this taking place today in America. We are the frog in the kettle in which the water is gradually getting hotter and hotter until it is too late.
The cultural idol of today is tolerance. Young people are reflecting more and more a belief system that is not based on any absolutes. Their God is the god of tolerance. "You do what you want as long as it doesn't affect me." We have made personal rights a national idol regardless of the moral consequences. Israel made the same mistake regarding foreign idols.
Some liberals have gone so far as to state that being a Christian today is synonymous with being a bigot. Any opinion that reflects an absolute view that may not be a view of the public majority is often construed as being narrow minded for a "progressive society". This is especially true among the liberal media today.
Does a nation answer to God?
David Barton has written extensively on the Christian foundations of America and its accountability for its sins. "This was a question the American founders dealt with on the floor of the Constitutional Convention. They concluded that a nation doesn't have a spirit or a soul. Therefore when a nation dies, it is dead and won't be resurrected later to answer for its failures, as a person will be who does have a spirit and soul. GEORGE MASON said: 'As nations cannot be punished or rewarded in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects Providence punished national sins by national calamities.' Providence was commonly used by the founders to refer to God.
God's judgment on a nation because of its ungodly leaders is evidenced many places in the Bible. A couple of them are:
- Because of the corruption of King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, the nation went without rain for three years. The righteous had to suffer too even though they had no part in it.
- King David was normally a good King, but because of his disobedience to God when he numbered his army, a plague came upon the nation and wiped out 70,000 people. The Nation suffered because of the leader."
This is now the dilemma our government faces. Will it remove every moral component to the argument? It is clear this is the direction our government has taken. Just the mention of tying morality to the argument causes uproar in the liberal media.
It all becomes a slippery slope when you remove the moral dimension. We will end up like Canada, making it unlawful to preach against homosexuality which could lead to the removal of a church's non-profit status if a pastor teaches what the Bible says, making it a hate crime for discrimination against a group of people. Government and businesses would now have to offer the same benefits as heterosexual couples.
Day of Reckoning
When God spoke to Abraham in Genesis 15 He described his plan for Abraham and the nation of Israel. He told him that he would bring him into the Promised Land after 400 years of slavery. He used an interesting terminology in describing one of the catalysts for this to begin. He said the iniquity of the Amorites rights has not yet complete, which would be the catalyst for the people of Israel to go into the Promised Land. The Amorites were a very ungodly people. God saw their sin as so great that He was going to use the Israelites to wipe out the Amorites. There is a place in nations where God begins to judge unrighteousness.
Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. Then He said to Abram: "Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."
America is not immune to the judgment of God. We can expect God to judge the sins of our nation as our sins get greater and greater. Pray that God has mercy on our nation and that He will raise up a generation of righteous leaders and change agents that believe leadership must include morally based governance. God can shift the culture back to Himself in one day if His people get in alignment with Him and His ways. However, it always starts with us.
Pray also that the church repents of its failure to uphold the sanctity of marriage covenant and to understand how to love the gay community in such a way that it is redemptive as Jesus modeled for us.
As Christ followers we are called to stand in the gap for the culture. So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one (Ezekiel 22:30). Will we in the body of Christ be up for the task?
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land (2 Chronicles 7: I4 ).
