Our Pristine Culture
There are approximately 175,000 homeless persons in America.
There are approximately 150,000 orphans in America.
There are approximately 2,400,000 people in prisons in America.
There are approximately 4,000,000 drug addicts in America.
There are approximately 250,000 deaths each year in America.
There is over three billion dollars spent each year in American strip clubs.
There is over fourteen billion dollars spent on porn each year in America.
There are approximately 18,000 murders each year in America.
There are approximately 30,000 suicides each year in America.
There are almost 20 million American children who live in homes where food is scarce.
There are approximately 75,000 alcohol related deaths each year in America.
There are close to one million divorces each year in America.
One in four American women will experience domestic violence.
More than 60% of all American marriages will experience infidelity.
But if gay marriage is made legal, our pristine culture will become tainted.
May I offer a different conclusion to the information you presented? You have listed the bullets, followed by the statement: "But if gay marriage is made legal, our pristine culture will become tainted."
ReplyDeleteWhat about keeping the list the same, yet changing the concluding statement to the following: "Our culture is already overwhelmed with sin, so why would we knowingly, and purposefully, legalize and enable even more sin?"
That being said, I think that the issue of gay marriage, and why so many proclaimed christians are worried more about it than any other sin, is because of a fear that they will, one day in the future, be truly persecuted for their christian beliefs as a result of the legalization of gay mariage.
All of the items on your list should be inexcusable and shameful to christians and never ignored. But, none of those items listed, in my opinion only, would seem to cause a christian to fear future persecution from their government for not abandoning their christian beliefs because of it. Given the continued push by activists and government officials for more and more support and "tolerance" of the gay "lifestyle" by christians in all areas of society, there is a very real threat of christians being persecuted, some day in the future, for standing against a governmentally mandated acceptance of the gay lifestyle.
What are your thoughts? Can you see a legitimate fear, on the part of christians, that comes into play regarding the gay marriage issue that doesn't exist with other issues, involving sinful behavior, facing this nation today?
In other words, can you see that the fear of the legalization of gay marriage by many christians might not be of gay marriage itself, but of the future religious persecution that they (and their families) may likely face, if and when they refuse to abandon their christian beliefs for a governmentally mandated acceptance of the gay "lifestyle"?
Yes, I do believe sin is sin and do not consider the sin of homosexuality to be worse than those that I shamefully commit on a daily basis, but this particular sin is being pushed by a movement that is openly hostile towards Jesus Christ and his followers and is demanding of christians to abandon their faith in the name of "tolerance". For this reason, I understand why christians react to the issue of gay marriage in a manner unlike any other.
So, to circle back to the beginning and the statement: "But if gay marriage is made legal, our pristine culture will become tainted." It's not so much a worry that the "culture will become tainted" as it is the worry that the culture will become that much more emboldened to hurt christians specifically because their faith won't allow for them to support gay marriage or the gay "lifestyle" overall.
Do you have thoughts that differ?
Unfortunately this is all true. Somewhere along the line this belief (and I was a believer in it too) that the US had been chosen by God to become the righteous nation by example to the world, because it was founded on biblical principles and the first European colonists who arrived dedicated the land to Christ.
ReplyDeleteIt seemed clear from listening to American preachers that they thought they had a unique mandate to go out and spread the gospel to the world, because they had been blessed with opportunity, money and tools to do so. It sounded reasonable at the time.
But, when I heard evangelists and christian TV superstars start to claim that natural disasters were a sign of judgment and that places like Haiti were targets because leaders dedicated their nation to Satan, it didn't seem fair that only the unbelieving and poor and unreached, struggling, had to endure this so-called wrath. Then Hurricane Katrina hit, and the word out there in some christian circles was that it again was a sign, warning or punishment from God because of the homosexual agenda and all anti-christian agendas in New Orleans.
I did a 180 degree turn in my thinking, searching the Word, trying to understand how we in the West can reach people and this new self-righteous condemnation of others after disasters made me ask myself: what if these natural disasters had hit my own back yard? All the sin in fallen man reaches out everwhere; it's in my own back yard and in my heart as well. We should all be victims of these wraths, if the gospel is true and we all need the Savior.
When the apostles asked Jesus if the tower that fell and killed some people was because of the sins of their fathers (I hope I'm correct with this parable), he corrected their thinking and said that disasters strike and it has nothing to do with sin. Just like the scripture of the rain falling on the just and the unjust.
I cringe when I hear a mega-evangelist say the things they say about God's punishments on others. It wrongly encouraged christians to feel justified and self-righteous when others are having their lives ruined by disaster. There are wheat in those disasters as well as tares. And our christian attitude should be to reach out to the wheat AND tares in those disasters.