A Meditation with both Palm Sunday and Good Friday in Mind ...

 

"My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone (which is where a paper that underlies this ... was originally delivered). Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward violence. The thesis: we should not retaliate since God is perfect noncoercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind."

- Miroslav Volf 

Exclusion and Embrace pgs. 303-304

10 Guidelines for Churches Considering Reopening

1. Make a full plan and ACTUALLY GET all necessary supplies before going public with it.  First of all, if you make a good plan, go public with it, and then find that you can’t get any of the gloves or Purell your plan depends on for another four weeks, your good plan just evaporated.  Furthermore, if you can’t get masks, then there’s a chance your dentist can’t either.  If you can’t get Clorox wipes, then there’s a chance the Dermatology office is also waiting in line.  If you can’t find hand sanitizer, then think about the local restaurant owner that you appreciate so much.  Only these peoples’ very lives depend on the speed at which they can get back up and running.
2. Know the plan for businesses/activities in your area… you are not a modern-day Martin Luther [or MLK Jr] if you have not taken the time to hear the other side.  Ignorant antinomianism is not civil disobedience in the cause of justice.  Know the criteria that are being used by your Governor, Mayor, or County authorities.  Take the time necessary to hear their thoughts and understand their approach.  It may not be as crackpot or Draconian as that guy on Facebook made it out to be.  Have you done your due diligence?  Start with the Johns Hopkins Guidelines to Governors for Phased Reopenings.  It’s a great, reasonable resource.
3. Know the plan of other churches in your area … don’t be slavishly bound to it, but don’t be too proud to be aware of and informed by what others are doing.  Like me, you might learn a thing or two from others in Christ’s body nearby.  There is also a strong possibility of an increased testimony from Christian unity as well as potential legal protection if you are able to act in concert with other churches in your local community.
4. Continue livestreaming – it is either disingenuous or unkind or both to give your high-risk folks “permission” to stay home during the uncertain transition-back period, and not continue to livestream for them during that time.
5. Consider Polling – finally a good reason for a congregational poll! … I’m almost always against church member polls, but in this case, there is a lot of value that can come to Church leaders by knowing where folks are – how many are comfortable returning?  How many would prefer to stay home another month?  How many would wear PPE?  How many would insist upon it?  How many would object to it?  This is really good information for those whose planning depends on willing participation from their folks.
6. Take Attendance – if you have multiple services, be specific.  The doctors are telling us a ‘cure’ is likely a long way away.  If someone in your church tests positive four months from now, it would be helpful to know which service they attended that week and who was near them.  For some techie churches, it may be as simple as a mid-service, wide-angle snapshot.
7. Eliminate high-touch surfaces as much as possible.  Passing offertory plates or communion trays from row to row, each touched by a hundred hands before making its way into yours… that shouldn’t be happening right now.  Consider going to bulletins or a projector as opposed to hymnals and prayerbooks [the traditionalist in me cringes to say it, but as a temporary measure, it’s worth considering.]  Put bulletins on chairs, rather than on a common pick-up table/basket.  Most churches don’t have automatic doors.  Consider propping doors open at start/close of services.  Our deacons are forming cleaning teams to wipe down arm rests, door handles, light switches, thermostats, bathrooms, etc. between services.  And our facilities manager just purchased an HVAC air purifier.  Lots of churches are investing in hand sanitizer dispensers by entry/exit points.  Don’t forget trashcans.  There will be lots more wipes, tissues, masks, and gloves than normal.  Where are these going to end up?
8. Think in terms of households.  Hey, it’s a category all over the New Testament! :-)  Medical guidelines suggest at least 6 feet of separation [more if singing btw] between households, not individual members.  The assumption being, everyone in the same household already shares the same level of exposure.  They don’t need to be separated from one another.  This may or may not help with seating.  Many reopening guidelines are based off of seating capacity, rather than a total number anyway.  Lots of churches are temporarily resuming service attendance on a sign-up basis.  Once the sign up list is full, assigned seating is arranged according to households.  A strange but effective approach for this unusual season.  Whatever your plan, be sure to have something in mind for those who might show up without signing up first [the same for those who arrive visibly sick or symptomatic.]  Even the most callous Calvinists among us would have a hard time turning away visitors at the door. :-)
9. Children’s ministries are in a different category – kids have zero concept of personal space and social distancing.  You know this.  So do our authorities and policymakers.  Kids’ activities are the last to resume.  If your church operations are interdependent so that you can’t restart regular worship services without children’s church going simultaneously, reopening will take longer.  In other words, the bigger your church, the slower your restart will likely need to be.
10. Expect big changes – Lowes, Walmart, McDonalds have all had to make big changes.  So will you.  Going out in public feels different now.  Church will not be an exception. Remember to manage expectations [theirs and yours] by communicating this.


One extra – if I may humbly suggest:
11. Make vital mental distinctions – Brothers, remember that this is not the Church being persecuted or singled out unnecessarily.  Again, read the Hopkins Guidelines. Church activities are being reviewed alongside every other community activity and rated according to very rational criteria for risk vs modifiability.  Church services are potential superspreader events.  It’s just a fact.  Be patient as our authorities try to reopen the right way.  Good grief – they are talking about cancelling the NFL.  If that doesn’t show you how serious this thing is across the board, nothing will!  Be willing to wait in line and recognize that there are lots of folks in line ahead of us whose lives and livelihoods depend on them restarting before we do.  We are not being told to stop preaching in Jesus’ name [Acts 4.18].  We are being asked to continue doing so online for some number of weeks more.  Recognize that while we are doing this, everyone else around us is sacrificing.
Also, be willing to do the nearly impossible work of mentally distinguishing personal political philosophies you hold from truly Scriptural Convictions based on plain Scriptural Commands  [IOW, do not confuse the traditions of men, even good, Conservative, Christian men, with God’s Words and God’s Commands!]  As much as we may hold them dear, “don’t tread on me”; “no king but Jesus”; “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; or “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble” are not phrases we got from the Bible.  They are political concepts we might hold, I hope for good reason, but I also hope not with the same degree of zeal or affection that we do the tenets of our most holy faith and commands of Scripture.  Be self-aware enough to recognize this.  And for Pete’s sake – stop the spread of misinformation and specious arguments!  There are reasons Walmart and liquor stores are allowed to stay open in times of public crisis while church buildings are closed.  It’s textbook civic management.  Be patient with your authorities.  It is no easy thing to run a city [let alone a county, state, or nation!].

photo credit: Vatican News

Against Heterosexuality by Michael Hannon [abridged]

Over the course of several centuries, the West had progressively abandoned Christianity’s marital architecture for human sexuality. Then, about one hundred and fifty years ago, it began to replace that longstanding teleological tradition with a brand new creation: the absolutist but absurd taxonomy of sexual orientations... 

Michel Foucault, an unexpected ally, details the pedigree of sexual orientation in his History of Sexuality. Whereas “sodomy” had long identified a class of actions, suddenly for the first time, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the term “homosexual” appeared alongside it...designating not actions, but people—and so also with its counterpart and foil “heterosexual.”...cementing these categories of hetero- and homosexuality in the popular imagination...Sexual orientation, then, is nothing more than a fragile social construct, and one constructed terribly recently. designating not actions, but people—and so also with its counterpart and foil “heterosexual.”

My own prediction is that we will see this binary thoroughly deconstructed within our lifetimes. But in my view, we proponents of Christian chastity should see the impending doom of the gay–straight divide not as a tragedy, but as an opportunity. More than that, I want to suggest that we should do our best to encourage the dissolution of orientation within our own subcultural spheres wherever possible...

The Main Problem with the Media ... [might not be what you think]

"I think that the main problem with the press is not bias.  The complaint of those on the left and conservatives is that it is.  I think the main problem with the press, rather, is superficiality.  Their inability to go beyond the narrative structure of antagonist and protagonist; who's up and who's down; their inability to understand, frame, and report on issues that are not simply political.  The tendency is to force these kinds of cultural issues onto a political frame of reference; to see them only as struggles of power."

James Davison Hunter
in a Mars Hill Audio Journal interview with Ken Myers [ from 1994!]

... don't you want to keep reading???? [below]

The Givenness of Things

"There is no freedom except when what we are, and do, corresponds to what has been given to us to be and to do."

-Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of Nations

Why NOT to pray and fast on Election Day

Yesterday I preached what was probably the hardest sermon of my ministry career.  I told my congregation that - while I am all for things like prayer and fasting - I think there are important reasons NOT to do so tomorrow, in attachment with election day.  That was a shocking comment, and not one I made lightly.  I attempted to explain it and would like to elaborate here.

The entire sermon was an attack on the ways we make an idol of politics.  My community is a military community and we, of all people, in our closeness to the activities of the state, are tempted in the direction of political idolatry.  I fear that I made too little of the anguish that my parishioners feel as they watch our country arrive at this new low point.  Many of them have given their lives in service to our nation, and the heartache that is their current portion is significant and warranted.  It was not my intention to make light of it.
But where that heartache means total despair, it reveals the presence of an idol.  This is what I find so alarming about the way American Christians are calling for prayers and fastings in association with the voting process.   On the very day when the impotence of our idol is being exposed, we still cling to it with our eyes tightly shut refusing to acknowledge the judgment and truth.  We can pray and fast and hope it ain't so.  But there it is.  Our politics cannot save us.  We are not going to vote ourselves out of this mess.

Politics is very limited institution, mostly negative in it's power of enforcement and authority.  Law brings guilt, as the Apostle says, not life.  To look for solutions or lifegiving power from a political swordbearer is to put our trust and hope in a prince, which Scripture famously warns against.  It is like giving a farmer a hundred plowed acres, but only allowing him to use pesticide and a machete while expecting a bumper crop.  These are tools of excision, not growth.

A call to fast and pray is usually regarded as a call to repent.  Yet, at the top of the list of the sins we need to repent of nationally, are our political idolatry and our childish hunt for quick fixes to profound problems.  Yet, paradoxically, connecting a call to pray and fast with a political election will mostly likely simply reinforce and perpetuate both of those sins!

Our nation is like a morbidly obese man who is seeking relief from a peddler of pills.  The problem is that his own living throughout the decades of his life is what is killing him, and no pill will cure him of his own behavior.
Furthermore, I fear that calling for prayer and fasting on the day of elections is like that obese man calling his family to pray and fast on the day of his doctor's examination.  But the damage has already been done.  He ought to call them to pray and fast as he is driving to the grocery store, or as he is looking to join the membership of a gym, or pulling into the parkinglot of a buffet.  On the morning of the doctor's exam, it is too late.  Abraham told Dives, your time is up.  You had your fun.  The season of prayer has come to an end.

And this gets at the point.  Civil Government is not intended to solve our problems.  So stop praying that God would use it in that way.  We need to repent of thinking that our social problems have political solutions.

If you want to pray and fast for our country on a level that matters and on the day that counts - pray and fast on the first day of Christian school year - and then on the first day of summer break.  Pray and fast when your children are baptized or when a church building is under construction or when a neighbor moves in next to you, or a nursing home closes.  Pray and fast during Advent, Lent, and Holy Week - and repent of your own sins with the same zeal that you bring to bear when discussing taxation policies, illegal immigration, or gun rights.

Further thoughts ...

Our Hitler; Our Holocaust

There has been a lot said from both sides about the importance of the current election cycle.  There has been a lot said from both sides about the similarities of Trump to Hitler.  To be honest, I don't believe these are unfounded.  He strikes me as an obviously ego-centric, unstable, and generally untrustworthy person.  He certainly does remind one of the Furor and make one shudder to wonder what sort of holocaust might follow his election as a worst-case scenario.

But what if we're getting the analogy wrong?  What if the holocaust has already long-since begun?  What if we are already living with it and our Goerings, and Goebbels, and Eichmanns are nothing more than mainstream politicians reasonably proposing to maintain the status quo?  What if - for over a full generation now - the incinerators have been quietly humming in our midst and we - like so many nice German people - have turned a blind eye to them, refusing to believe that atrocities like these could ever actually be taking place in a land such as ours?

How then should we vote?

[photo: www.wsj.com] 

Book List

You are what your mind eats …

The Redemption of Bernard Nathanson

Few people, if any, did more than Bernard Nathanson to undermine the right to life of unborn children by turning abortion from an unspeakable crime into a constitutionally protected liberty. [And] someday, when our law is reformed to honor the dignity and protect the right to life of every member of the human family, including children in the womb, historians will observe that few people did more than Bernard Nathanson to achieve that reversal.

Dr. Nathanson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, had his first involvement with abortion arranging an illegal abortion for his girlfriend. Many years later, he [called it] his “introductory excursion into the satanic world of abortion.”

Nathanson became a nearly monomaniacal crusader for abortion. As Director of the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health, he presided over more than 60,000 abortions and performed 5,000 himself [one of which included his own son or daughter inconveniently conceived out of wedlock]. 

Psalm 23 a Modern Secularized Version

We will have no shepherd, and yet we shall not want …

By getting a competitive and marketable degree I have postured myself to lie down in the green pastures.

By attaining a certain socio-economic status I am able to reside beside the still waters,

I maintaining a generally law-abiding lifestyle I walk on the paths of practicing random acts of kindness from time to time for the sake of a tolerant coexistence,

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death with the help of my therapist I will fear no evil; my expansive healthcare benefits and the technical advances of medical researchers comfort me.

Thanks to modern biology, nutritional science, and economics – I have prepared a table for myself and my elected officials wield our military might to keep our enemies as far away as possible.

I’m able to take advantage of the convergence of Madison Avenue and Wallstreet so that my head is anointed with this season’s latest fashionable accessories, and inasmuch as I’m able to be savvy and tap into their lifegiving streams - my cup runneth over.

Surely material abundance and the right to make my own personal choices about truth and reality shall follow me all the days of my life and then afterward I will dwell in the house of bliss forever according to the details of my own preferred religion’s happy ending – unless of course there is no life after death in which case, I won’t.

Judges as Umpires

[Folks, here's an old piece I wrote for my students several years ago when we were studying government and history.  I'd probably nuance differently today, but the basic thesis holds true and is quite timely.]


Thurgood Marshall once admitted that his judicial philosophy boiled down to “do what you think is right and let the law catch up.”

This is exactly what we mean by the phrase ‘judicial activism’. A man [or woman] in a black robe takes it upon himself to change a state or country whether or not the Constitution gives him that authority.  It's a quiet coup.

This is the heart of the issue. We all want to change the country, but the ultimate question is this: which side is attempting to do so illegally? It’s that simple. The Constitution lays out what our judges are and are not authorized to do. Any actions they take beyond those found in that document are, properly-speaking, illegal.  As Justice Scalia helpfully points out, if you want to change the nation, pass a law.  Don't appeal to the Constitution or its interpreters [judges] because Constitutions are adopted to impede change, not facilitate it.  Stability is their whole purpose.

He uses the analogy of being a referee or umpire in the legal system.  A judge is umpire.  He doesn’t agonize about whether the rules are fair or right or good for the future of the game.  He makes the call to the best of his ability by applying the rules. That’s all. He doesn’t have the power to make or alter the rules based on a preferred outcome! He’s just an umpire. They’re just judges.

"In the system which says that the Constitution changes and it’s up to the judges to say what it means – they really have no answers. There is no criterion for when it changes and how it changes. Every day is a new day. Some of my collegues have said that they agonize a lot. I don’t agonize at all. Sometimes it’s hard to follow and find the record in history, but you know, I don’t agonize if there’s a right to this or that. But with these guys – every day’s a new day. Last year the death penalty was constitutional and I’ll have to worry about whether it’s still constitutional next year."

Legislation & Morality

"You can't legislate morality!"...

... said no millennial ever ...

... when discussing affirmative action, minimum wage law, environmental protection, welfare aid taxes, gay rights legislation, or education reform.

10 More from RC Jr - Non-Fiction for Teens

What are ten books your teenagers read as part of their homeschool education?

• April 15, 2014

• By: Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.
• Fiction & Literature, Homeschooling

One of the weaknesses of the school model of education is that it squeezes out great books that don’t fit neatly into one or another of those artificial divisions of learning we call “subjects.” We don’t start with, “What books have had a deep impact in shaping what I am?” But with “What subjects am I supposed to be teaching, and which books will help me teach them?” I don’t teach my children subjects—I seek to instill in them wisdom. Which means I have them read the books that gave me wisdom.

All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: The Christian and Pop Culture by Ken Myers. This book was a genuine wake up call to me, alerting me to the more subtle ways the broader culture has influenced not just what I think, but how I think. It was for me the beginning of seeking to live a more deliberate life.

The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis.  A thoughtful yet accessible prophetic exposition of the then coming post-modernism.

The Holiness of God. We often, as parents, struggle with fear that our children are more eager to please us than their heavenly Father, that they see their faith as a familial thing, but that they don’t quite own it personally. This classic exploration of the character of God is deeply helpful. It reminds my children that God is for real, and that they must deal with Him, one at a time.

Monsters from the Id by E. Michael Jones. Jones, editor of Culture Warsmagazine, traces the history of horror fiction from Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein to Aliens. Why would I want my teens to read that? Because Jones, as is his habit, masterfully weaves the private lives of the creators of these stories with their ideologies and the stories themselves. Reading Jones is like reading Romans 1 unfold before your very eyes as you watch minds given over to depravity bear bitter fruit.

Book List [what I've been reading lately] ... 4 biographies

Since It's been ages since I've posted one of these ... I did recently just finish this latest set of 4.
You are what your mind eats ...

Pro-Life Living

Here, Greg Koukl from Stand To Reason exemplifies speech seasoned with gracious salt and loving truth. He is an example by his words and actions.  Enjoy.

DOMA & Gay "Marriage" - a Christian Evaluation Part 2

In the aftermath of the SCOTUS DOMA ruling, here are 7 points to help us understand why we are where we are and 7 things Christians should do about it.

1. Heterosexual couples destroyed the sanctity of marriage long before the gay rights movement hit the mainstream. "I have two dads, you know." This is what a young boy I know recently told me. His words struck me. I knew they were true. But I'd never thought of it ... like THAT before. His birth parents divorced while he was an infant [for what I believe were sound, Biblical reasons]. His mother went on to remarry a fine Christian man and so, like so many other boys around, he has "two dads". Today this trend continues, though now with the ruthless efficiency of eliminating the mother altogether. A long time ago, our society began to deliberately streamline the process by which a man or woman can dissolve the oath they had previously made before God, church, family, community, and state, to stay united until death.  And for decades, the process of oath-breaking has been made more and more convenient.  At this point in our history, "the sanctity of marriage" is a hollow-sounding string of words that used to mean something.

2. It was heterosexual promiscuity that paved the yellow-brick road on which gay rights activists now march.  What young people really mean when they say "Don't tell THEM what THEY can't do in THEIR bedroom" is "Don't tell ME what I can't do in MY bedroom".  This is what 'the pill' is all about. What we see today is the fruiting of seeds that were planted fifty years ago and have been faithfully watered and fertilized ever since. Pulling levers and pushing buttons isn't going to change that or stop what has been in motion for so long. But being faithful will... eventually. This is a bitter fruit, but the story is far from over.  As a society, we seem to have lost the ability to to make even the most basic moral judgments and distinctions.  Just open up your iTunes store and watch the scrolling "what's hot now" banner at the top.  By and large, we are daily consumers of the obscene.

3. The black church is crucial in our culture wars. They have been the sleeping giant that has been roused in the recent cultural reversal of popular-level abortion views. They will be crucial in courageously speaking out to reject FALSE equivocations between civil rights struggles and the campaign to make sodomy a socially-acceptable sexual practice. One of my best friends in the world was born with very, very dark black skin.  His ethnic background is Nigerian.  He was black last year as a Ph.D. student in Seattle.  He is black today as an entrepreneur in Charleston.  He will die black.  None of this has the slightest thing to do with extraneous cultural influences or his own behavior and personal choice.  He is a black man, pure and simple.  To equate his blackness with another man's decision to engage in sodomy is false and wrong, and there is no amount of voice-raising or finger wagging that will change that fact.  But my voice here isn't the one that matters.  Those belong to my brothers of color, [many of whom are speaking out] such as Voddie Baucham, Thabiti Anyabwile, Ken Jones, Jemar Tisby, Philip Holmes, Reddit Andrews, Mike Campbell, Anthony Carter, LaCrae, Shai Linne, Curtis Allen, and others.

4.  Gay is cool.  Let's face it.  Well, perhaps it would be better to say it this way -  the gay cause is the cool side.  For the general public actually being gay is not the cool thing [see the horrifying long-term health statistics below], but it is most definitely cool to have gay friends.  It is cool to support them vocally and frequently.  It is cool to be passionate for their cause.  And the gay rights movement has found a way to morally tap into the fashion sense of the American public.  Many have wisely noted that in current public opinion, image trumps character.  The average Joe arrives at his ethical views in large part the same way he chooses his shoes, skinny jeans, and coffee brand.  Designer ethics is part of a designer lifestyle.  Pro-gay is chic and fashionable.  But as we've seen with fanny packs, disco, and eugenics, trends change and fashions - material and ideological - alter.

5.  This is an experiment - a cultural experiment.  I'll admit, I'mm an optimist, not a henny-penny kind of guy.  I probably wouldn't run around like my hair was on fire if my hair were actually on fire. And here is one of the reasons. This is an experiment. Will state-sanctioned gay marriage result in a happier, healthier society?  The answer is 'no'. This experiment is doomed to NOT work. Our great, great grandchildren will look back on this sort of thing and scratch their heads. You cannot rebel against a creational pattern as deep as gender and think things will just keep rolling forward. So stay faithful and keep on keepin' on. Roe was hardly the end of the abortion debate, and we are not even close to the end of this discussion either. There are plenty of people paying attention and taking notes. The numbers are being counted.

6. And this brings us to a separate societal trend which is set on a direct collision course with the Gay Rights Agenda: that of fully-socialized medicine. We've already heard it loudly suggested that lawmakers ban soft drinks because of this conflict.

The Sounding Brass of Lust and Tinkling Cymbal of Temptation

When two people love each other - truly and deeply - when they are committed to each other in life-long, selfless devotion and companionship; when they seek to serve and care for the other and join together to synergistically serve and improve the community around them ... the world should rejoice and pray for more like them and that couple should continue on while never allowing sexual impurity to intrude and corrupt the priceless gift their real love is.
I am afraid that when I do not understand this, it is because of my own relational shallowness and weakness in the face of our current temptations.

- Meditation on True Friendship, Real Marriage, David and Jonathan, Chastity, and our current temptations

[Paintings: David and Jonathan by Rembrandt above and Conegliano below.]

"Gay Marriage" . . . A Closer Look at the Rhetoric, Part 1

We need to reverse these outdated and unfair laws! My sister steals things because she is a clepto. She was born a clepto and she will die one. For her it's the same as being tall or fair-skinned. For her, NOT stealing would be unnatural ... even borderline immoral! Calling her theft "wrong" is naive, judgmental, and cleptophobic! Why can't people understand this? Our nation's laws, our societal stigmas, our cultural taboos have persecuted robbers for far too long! Stand on the side of love and equality with my sister and every burglar like her! Stop the ignorance and stop the hatred!

This Holy Week, our Supreme Court is considering whether sexual acts performed between two people of the same gender are something that the United States has an interest in endorsing so much so that it should officially overturn four centuries of legal precedent on this continent, not to mention millennia of cultural norms and moral consciousness, as well as to contradict the uniform historic testimony of each of the three major monotheistic faiths.

It is here we see the chink in Libertarianism's armor .  The system so many Christians thought would be our salvation, is coming up impotent.  Liberals as well as Conservatives-with-a-Libertarian influence both surprisingly find themselves in vocal agreement supporting "gay marriage".  Their basic argument is the simple one we've all heard:

What 2 adults do [sexually] in the privacy of their own bedroom is none of the government's business [as long as no one is "hurt"].

Besides being an ethically and epistemologically arbitrary pronouncement - a brief, honest consideration of that statement is enough to demonstrate that it is clearly NOT true, nor is it an accurate or fair argument to enlist in the current  "gay marriage" "debate".
Let's see how long it holds water [this is the part where the faint-of-heart may want to skip a paragraph].

First of all, what if the case in question involves a father and his 18 year old son?  Or two brothers?  Or an uncle and his eighteen year old niece?  What if it is a man and woman who are already married to other people?  What if it is a man who has just paid the woman for her part in it?
And those are just the easy ones that come readily to mind.
What if it is two men and a goat who are recording it on video and posting it to the internet so that anywhere else in the world other adults can watch, "use", and mimic "in the privacy of their own bedroom".  What if it is a single adult man who is using only computer software to generate pornographic images and videos of children and then post them to the world wide web for the same purposes?  

And that is where I'll stop, hoping that I haven't already ventured too far into the realm of indecency [please bear with me, I tried to be as euphemistic as possible.]

But this brings me to the second problem which the last two scenarios anticipate - the claim of PRIVACY.  For clarity's sake, let's try a thought experiment and instead substitute the word SECRECY.  

If this debate is about privacy [now SECRECY], then why can't I read the internet news for 60 seconds without having it thrust in my face?  Or the radio?  Or Facebook?  Or virtually any TV sitcom, TLC series, etc?  Or local school board curriculum meetings?  Or city council policy manuals? Or corporate onboarding sessions?  Or Major Denominational Assembly Meetings?  Or THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES?!?!?   

Gay "marriage" is about anything but privacy because it is the product social activism which is about the opposite of privacy.  That's why we call it "coming OUT"!  Weddings are public events.  Marriage is a public institution.  Activism, by its very nature, is loud and in your face.

If I engage in unseemly acts with animals when no one else is around - that's private.  That's a secret. But if I then begin to have T-shirts made that announce this fact and I wear them around town, it's not private anymore.  It's public.  If I then put the word out and form a community of people with similar "interests" and we march through the streets twice a year proclaiming our "common bond" on banners and chanting that everyone else in the town is obligated to accept and affirm our behavior, this is not a private thing we're talking about.  It's VERY PUBLIC!

If two men are in fact engaging in sexual activity behind closed doors in total secrecy year after year [as surely happened in past generations of American history], maybe the neighbors suspect something; maybe they don't.  Maybe their families wonder; maybe they don't.  Either way, it's a secret.  It's private.  

When those two men "come out" to the world and identify themselves - their whole lives, bodies and souls -  by the one distinguishing characteristic of that act that they engage in,  and then demand that society accept, support, and accommodate it; teach their children to accept, support, and consider it for themselves; and even press the nation legally to redefine the ancient institution of marriage to include their version of sexual behavior ... that is no longer a private act in a bedroom.

Third: it assumes before-hand that no one is "hurt".  Which, of course, is sort of the whole debate in the first place: whether a society can simply throw off the order of nature and her God in a matter as deep as this one, with no expectation that harm will follow.

This is why everyone should care.  Everyone should be concerned.
I'm fond of using the analogy of an airplane.  If there is a problem with the plane at the most superficial level ... say the ice dispenser is jammed and we have to drink lukewarm ginger ale at cruising altitude ... well, hey - feel free to mess with it and see if you can't fix the problem.  But when we're all way up in the air with a strong tailwind, I don't want a team of engineers to undertake a redesign of the wings. But that's something like what we're attempting culturally.  This plane is not on the ground.  And there is a lot at stake here.

Or to change metaphors, let's think in terms of the planet - ecosystems with interconnected microclimates in fragile balance.
One can hardly listen to five minutes of public discourse without being reminded to recycle, shrink our carbon footprint, and deny our various appetites and urges in order to be more responsibly "green". We are told that as result of our negligence and excess, the average temperature rises globally something like half a degree every decade. And if this trend continues, it will have a radically negative effect on the world of our great, great, great grandkids, not to mention the polar bear cubs.

Let me ask: Do we really think that nationally endorsing the act of sodomy will to affect our society over the next 5 generations?
Sure.  If there is no such thing as the human soul, then maybe not. But if we do have souls, and moral natures, and possess developing [or eroding] characters, ethical standards and societal taboos matter tremendously over the long run.

The sexual drive is one of the most powerful impulses present in a society. And keeping it in check is one of the central challenges any culture can face. To tinker with the fundamental elements of the formula undermines the only means by which this is done.  It drastically and significantly changes the whole moral climate of our culture. 

What are the smokestacks pumping into our our moral atmosphere? [And please note- most of the pollution is of the heterosexual variety-more on that in Part 2].  This is why the prophetic voices often refer to the dilemma itself as an act of judgment already.
Is it in any way truthful to claim that no one is "hurt" by these things?  Can anyone really assert that society as a whole is not "hurting" and further "hurt"?  What do all the numbers say?  What do the objective health statistics tell us?  What do the suicide fact sheets and mental health data compilations report?

Right or wrong, "gay marriage" is not just about a private act which the government has no interest in discouraging and which hurts no one.  

The Supreme Court and Mollycoddles in this Hour of Trial

"Weasel words from mollycoddles will never do when the day demands prophetic clarity from great hearts. Manly men must emerge for this hour of trial." 

- Theodore Roosevelt

Got Carson?

"The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation, and that quantity of statutory enactment and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship."

- Clarence B Carson