(The following article recently appeared in the opinion section of one of the largest newspapers in the United States.)

“The Court Got it Right”

Last week, the Supreme Court made the right call: Excluding loving, committed adults from polygamous marriages harms them and their families and in the end doesn’t help anyone. Exclusion also violates the constitution’s command of equality for all. Americans, after all, value fairness and inclusion. Even if we don’t agree with the practice of polygamists, we can’t deny them the rights to legal marriage and recognition as equals in our society.

Many of these men genuinely love their wives and children, and these wives love their husbands. Alternative lifestyles are something our culture has been embracing for years now. And, polygamous families are only an extension of that inclusive principle. Besides, think of the harm it does these children to be taken from their mothers and father. One can only imagine how disorienting it must be for a child to live in a family with multiple mothers, only to have the ‘anti-polygamy’ industry, supported by the State, split up the family and attempt to ‘retrain’ them to believe in another definition of marriage.

When these polygamy-haters attack these judges for doing their job, they need to realize they are attacking the judicial branch of government meant to protect us from legislative and moral oppression. We should be thankful to have such brave and constitution-minded judges on the bench throughout our land.

What do you think?

So, what do you make of these arguments? Do they change your mind about polygamy? “Ludicrous,” you say. Indeed. Why? Because polygamy is wrong, and it doesn’t matter how you spin it. You can’t use a fairness and equality argument to justify something morally wrong. No matter how loving or devoted these parents are to their children or each other, their actions are still wrong and should be rejected by the culture. No matter how much we value treating people fairly and equally, we can’t sanction immoral, destructive behavior so we can be ‘fair.’

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Although the New Testament does not record an instance of Jesus meeting a person engaged in the sin of homosexuality, it does record examples of Jesus interacting with people immersed in other sexual sins. You may recall the adulterous woman of Samaria whom Jesus met at Jacob’s well (John 4), and the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair, likely a prostitute (Luke 7). And who can forget the woman caught in the act of adultery in Jerusalem (John 8)?

From these examples, we can start to form a picture of how Jesus would respond if He walked into a homosexual bar or visited a homosexual marriage ceremony in our day. Here are a few of the things we can gather about Jesus’ behavior in such a situation:

1. He would not shy away from confronting their sin directly. The woman at the well is a good example. Although she did not want to talk about her life, Jesus dove in head first (John 4:17-18). We could learn a thing or two from this approach.
2. He accepted them, forgave them, taught them, and used them in His work. Read these stories and you will see that Jesus loved and received people regardless of the type of sin that plagued them. Sexual sins for Him were no more a barrier to relationship than extortion, drunkenness, pride, or idolatry.
3. He invited them to become true worshippers of God. The adulteress at the well was schooled in what it means to worship God genuinely and, it appears, she took Him up on His offer-as did many of her friends.
4. He didn’t make this sin any worse than any other for which He came to die. He didn’t ‘freak-out’ when He met a woman who slept with different men all night, or another who treated marriage like a disposable party plate.

A Startling Reaction

There is one other reaction Jesus had when faced with perverted sexual sin that is worth noting, and this one might make you squirm a bit. When the adulterous woman was brought to Him by the Pharisees, Jesus had a startling reaction. Instead of stoning her to death-which, by the way, is what many of us seem to want to do to homosexuals-He turned the tables on the religious ‘gotcha’ squad. Continue Reading »

(If you’re just checking in, we posted both part 2 and 3 at the same time!)

Here is part 3 of a 3 part article. Click for Part 1 or Part 2.

What if God spoke?

But what if God spoke? What if God, who is outside of time and culture and has been an eyewitness to all of world history (unlike scientists, though sometimes you would think they actually were there with the elaborate stories they tell), communicated into time and culture about what was right and wrong and the true history of life on earth? Wouldn’t the Creator’s opinion and testimony about morality and history be final? It seems only reasonable that it would.

Now for one last question: What does the Bible claim to be? Not what the History Channel, Oprah, or Dan Brown purports that it is-but what does it say about itself? There is one significant passage in the Bible that answers this question. The bible says this: All Scripture is God-breathed.[1] In other words, the ancient Christian writings themselves challenge us with the notion that God has communicated and recorded His words in a set of writings, the Christian Bible.

What if this is true?

Have you ever really considered this as a possibility? I believe that most who do not accept the Bible for what it claims have never really considered the answers to their objections. Yes, they may have heard counter arguments, but they have never really listened, allowing for the possibility that they are wrong, because their minds were made up from the start.

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Here’s part 2 of a 3 part article. Click for Part 1.

Right and Wrong

For the past few generations, rules about what is right and wrong have become like an elastic waistband-stretching to fit each person individually. We have abandoned the concept that there are moral absolutes. In other words, gone is the belief that there are things that are always right regardless of the person, time, or situation, and things that are always wrong.

You and I were taught this growing up and our children are being raised this way today. The point is well illustrated in the often repeated phrase, “That’s alright for you but not for me.” Consequently, we have an ‘anything-goes’ default for right and wrong in America. You don’t tell me what to do and I won’t tell you what to do, and, by all means, don’t tell someone they are wrong, no matter what form of immorality they ask you to swallow.

Think about it: how can we be consistent with what we accept and teach about morality and then tell Dr. Braxton’s wife that this act was wrong? If each of us determines what is right and wrong only for ourselves, how can we even argue that Jimmy’s act was immoral? What if he thinks he’s right?

Life’s History

Then there is what we are taught about our history, our past. Common (and how dare you imply otherwise!) is the notion that human beings-the kind murdering and murdered in classrooms-are only evolved forms of animals. Our past, after all, is governed by the sacred law of ‘survival of the fittest’; killing and death-even murder-are only natural events in the development of life. In fact, as the teaching goes, we owe our very existence to this primordial rule.

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Here’s an article I wrote not long after the Indiana shootings. I’ve separated it into three parts. Take a look and forward to a friend. 

The professor had just started his lecture. Notebooks were rustling, pens clicking, dreary eyes beginning to focus. Today’s lesson was one in a series from Dr. Braxton, associate professor of history at All American University. He loved history, always had. From his youth he was fascinated with the past and wanted to share that passion with his students. His class today was like many others across the nation, full of young faces, energetic women and men, most just taking the class because it was required (much to Dr. Braxton’s disappointment), all of them looking forward to the future when they would graduate and chase their dreams. The pride of their parent’s hearts they were; the future of a nation.

But that was all about to change.

Jimmy was a graduate student, full of turmoil, sadness, rage. At times he was bright, happy, and focused. But mostly he felt only darkness and despair. Today was one of those dark days-perhaps the darkest ever. It was a Tuesday. Jimmy had had enough. As he made his way through the crowded hallways, again invisible to his busy classmates and teachers, They’ll notice me soon enough, he thought. Soon enough.

As he walked, scanning for a target, room 105 caught his eye. He wasn’t sure why, maybe it was the lull in traffic or maybe it was just destiny. As he pushed open the door, Dr. Braxton saw only the blurry impressions of a dark figure before the shooting began. It was over quickly. Dr. Braxton, 12 innocent kids, and Jimmy were gone.

It was a Tuesday; it would not soon be forgotten.

Why?

Jimmy, Dr. Braxton, and the students in classroom 105 are all fictitious, but we know them all. We’ve read about them in the newspaper, watched their families cry on television, and mourned their experiences as great and sad tragedies.

With the course of recent events, it is no surprise that these events don’t shock us as much as they once did. At each new instance, we immediately recall a list of others. “That reminds me of so-and-so,” we say. Unfortunately, it isn’t just school shootings; evil of frightening proportions is manifesting itself in many forms in our society today. From brutal rapes, child molestation, mothers killing their children, and husbands butchering their wives, can anyone argue that our culture is not getting more and more evil by the minute?

But why? Why is it getting worse? To what can we point to levy blame, to demand change, or to give us some hope of a turnaround? Could it be that the root cause of this spiral is not some outward circumstance or enemy on foreign soil, but you and me? Have we done this to ourselves?

Sadly, what we are seeing is only the natural consequence of what we are taught-and accept to be true-about right and wrong and the history of humanity on earth. Over the past 50 or so years, thinking in America has fundamentally changed on two very important fronts. Our ideas about what is moral and what is true about our past have shifted dramatically and set the stage for the evil we now see and will see in greater proportions in the future if a remedy is not found.

(Click for Part 2.)