Courting Disaster

To be a Christian means that one has access to a source of Divine authority. We can know God unlike no other fallen human creatures. We can know what God is like, what God desires, what pleases and displeases God. Sometimes this knowledge is beyond our minds to fully understand. It is not that this knowledge is unclear but that the full reasoning behind is unavailable.  We can speculate as to why God restricts sexual relationships to married men and women but we cannot defend this restriction without turning to the Bible. To be led by the Spirit is to learn to trust the Word of God, the theological moral and spiritual precepts of the Bible. We cannot break its authority without breaking our bodies, minds, and souls upon it. Truth, that is true truth, is non-negotiable.

The scriptures teach (Leviticus 20:13) that homosexuality (“a man lying with a man as though he was a woman”) is an activity God hates and is “worthy of death.” This passage is deconstructed by many church leaders with a convolute argument about the culture behind, the fact that the passage is talking about rape, that it is connected with certain idolatrous rituals, that it is set aside by Christ just with all the other customs listed in Leviticus. Those favoring homosexuality as a normal and healthy expression of sexuality would further argue that none of the laws of God are binding on the Christian because God saves us on the basis of grace and not law. Some would reduce the specific laws of God to two principles of love – love God and love others. How that love is to be expressed, in any given situation, is a matter of personal taste and individual preferences. This would mean, as others have said, that it is just as moral for cannibals to love their neighbors by eating them as it is for others to love their neighbors by feeding them.

We read in Colossians 3:5-6 ^“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. ⁶ On account of these the wrath of God is coming” – to the sons and daughters of disobedience.  Our confessions tell us to confess our particular sins particularly. This would indicate that we can know what a particular sin is.

This week, the highest court in the Presbyterian Church (USA) declared that sin is merely a matter of opinion. For every person a sinful act is a matter of self-definition. Here is how they say it,

a vast diversity of interpretation of scripture and the confessions regarding human sexuality evident in the record is also manifest across the churches and members of the denomination. Such thoughtful disagreement among reasonable and faithful Presbyterians is itself an important and faithful part of the Reformed tradition.

Let me try to translate this twisted logic. It means, as best I can understand it, that there may be moral truth but we cannot know it with certainty. This is the reasoning behind the agnostic saying there may or may not be a God but either way, we cannot know His ways or desires. The subject of this judicial case was a woman who has declared herself a “lesbian” and who is not currently in a committed sexual relationship but has been and may be so again. There are two other cases where homosexuals who, I assume, do engage in homosexuality activity with their publicly declared “partners.” This man and woman have been approved for ordination by their presbyteries.

The confessional standards of the Presbyterian Church (USA) contains a documents declaring the  scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as having authority over our lives. It applies this authority when it declares that homosexuality is an expression of sinful rebellion against God. If someone declares that homosexual behavior is a sin and another declares that homosexuality is gift from God that ought to be freely expressed, one is right and other is wrong. The Scriptures and our confessional interpretation of those Scriptures would say the first person is right and the second person is wrong. The highest Court in the Presbyterian Church (USA) has just declared both statements are matters of personal taste about something that is not very important.

We members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) have, this week, declared homosexual behavior as a moral question equal to smoking or not smoking or drinking alcohol or refraining from it entirely. The scriptures are silent on smoking and seem to endorse the moderate consumption of alcohol, but they are not silent on homosexual behavior. The stand to condemn incest but praise homosexuality is hypocrisy. They are each condemned in the Bible, as is sexual relations with animals and sexual relations with someone you are not married to. http://oga.pcusa.org/media/uploads/oga/pdf/pjc22010.pdf

In our society, we see shacking up, hooking up and getting laid as common language describing what often happens between unmarried persons. Sex is depicted in our media and by some of us as a mere form of recreation that is neither right nor wrong.  When such a person comes to the church, or worse, comes to Christ, what is our guidance for them”? They may say, “If you condone ministers who are homosexual, on what basis do you condemn me for sleeping around?” There is no moral basis except personal taste and value judgments. When fornicators, incest practitioners, and those who like to have sex with boys and girls become as politically organized as Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexual, and Transgender folks then our personal tastes (read, morality) will be changed by them as well.

Lord, Come Quickly