Tuesday, May 15, 2012
The Official End of Christendom?
Fox News journalist, Shep Smith, welcomed President Obama into the 21st century and declared those who still oppose same-sex marriage to be on the wrong side of history.
May 9, 2012 was indeed an historic moment. Though President Obama bathed his decision in Christian principles: "…our faith…is not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf but it's also the golden rule…treat others the way you'd want to be treated…" For the first time ever, a sitting US president, considered the most powerful political leader in the world, has endorsed a marital arrangement that formally constitutes the pagan "worship of the creation rather than worship of the Creator" (Romans 1:25).
"How do you get there?" you may ask. My statement is neither panic nor exaggeration, since it comes from the theological reasoning of the inspired Apostle Paul: "For this reason," he says, "God gave them up to dishonorable passions [of lesbianism and homosexuality] contrary to nature" (Romans 1:26–28). The "reason" to which Paul refers is what he stated in the previous verse (25), namely the exchange of the truth for the lie, and the worship of creation rather than the Creator. That process includes an exchange of sexuality for a practice "contrary to [created] nature."
Historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, once a radical Marxist feminist, observed (as a chastened older observer of the Cultural Revolution in which she had enthusiastically participated): "within a remarkably brief period …has occurred a cataclysmic transformation of the very nature of our society."
The speed of this "cataclysmic" change takes our breath away. At the same-sex Stonewall riots of 1969 few people had even heard of homosexuality. Just forty-three years later, a president publicly announces support of same-sex marriage. In the 1960s, thanks to the Beatles and the hippies 1960s "Christian America" discovered for the first time the spirituality of the East. In August 2009, Newsweek announced: "We are all Hindus Now," as yoga studios outnumber Starbucks cafes in New York City, and we massage our karma with mantras and meditation.
The "cataclysm" is due to the invasion into the "Christian" West of pagan spirituality, with its strident intention to "eliminate the binary." The foremost "binary" is the distinction between the Creator and the creature. Other binaries then fall like dominos-the binary of right and wrong, for example. "We must beware of thinking of good and evil as absolute opposites," says a leading theorist. Modern psychologists tell us that a binary view of reality (as made up of opposites) produces guilt, the hallmark of neurosis. The Hindu notion of Advaita, "not two," dominates spirituality and "non-dual spirituality" is taught even in some "evangelical" schools. Lesbian activists ask: "Can We Put an End to the Gender Binary?" (The Advocate.com) because "there is no one way a person should be."
On all these levels we see Two-ism (theism) undermined for the promotion of a One-ist worldview. Of course, it is said that same-sex "marriage" will not harm anyone. However, its legalization will introduce a God-denying civilization that will erase 2000 years of Christendom based on Two-ism. The past will be labeled "homophobic." Nursery rhymes, literature and art that consider heterosexuality normal (including the Gospel) will be declared illegal and obsolete. Christians will be outside the law. Already the fifteen Christian groups (Catholic and Protestant) at Vanderbilt have been kicked off campus for refusing, by principle, to allow gays on their leadership teams. This is a classic preview of what the future holds.
May 9th 2012 is in many ways the final "sacralization" of the Sixties, where behind the pretext of the Golden Rule, the "revolution" fraudulently covers its unrestrained libido in the white robes of bridal purity.
We must not panic or exaggerate, nor cease to love homosexual individuals. But we must not re-interpret "Christian" love, so that our contemporary culture can reject God the Creator in favor of self-serving desires. The Gospel love story of creation and redemption must be heard via a clear witness to the biblical worldview, as Paul articulates it in Colossians 1:19–20:
For in Christ…by whom all things were created…[God] through him reconcile[d] to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
The President's "Christ sacrificing himself" is not a decorative element of the Faith but the very essence of all things, expressed distinctively in male/female marriage as the love of the other for the different. In this way, Christ the Creator loves his people. Paul in Ephesians 5:32 calls this a "mystery," the deep meaning of all things on earth and in heaven. The radicals rightly call their same-sex marriage "the sacrament of monism," and see in it a pagan celebration of One-ist sameness and of the divinity of self-creating Nature. Alas, Paul would call this a part of "the mystery of lawlessness" (2 Thessalonians 2:7).
Dr. Peter Jones is Director of truthXchange, and Adjunct Professor of New Testament, as well as Scholar in Residence, at Westminster Seminary California.
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