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...

As the Angels in Heaven: A Theological Reflection on the Plight of Bruce Jenner

Long after his sordid story broke, we are still talking about Bruce Jenner.  His sad state fascinates us and brings many of our societal failures and follies to the surface.  Chief among them is our destructive devotion to the ultimacy of personal choice.  Devotion that borders on idolatry.

In this man's fractured life, we see the folly of making the subjective will ultimate. 

When a full-grown man says something like, "as far back as i can remember, i have felt like and identified as a woman," and we are unable to respond with anything but, "well, then you must really be a woman," we are in deep trouble.

Certain fundamental things precede memory.  Certain truths are objectively true about us - whether we prefer and identify with them or not.  Several of these objective truths of reality come by way of the body we're given. We receive our bodies, and therefore our genders, long before we possess anything like memory or feeling or a sense of identity or even any self awareness at all.
You show up at conception and there it is - already right there in your DNA from the first second of your life.  And centuries after you die, if archaeologists happen to dig up your bones, one of the first things they will determine by the most basic testing is whether you were male or female.

When we hear ourselves asking questions like - "Can you imagine being trapped in a body you don't belong in?" ... as if you could be switched at birth into a foreign body by accident or trickery... as if - because of its gender - your body were something you could be "trapped inside of" like an elevator in a blackout.

Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment

Within the churches are those who defend the historic Christian teaching on sexuality.  It is assumed that there will always be some discernible dissonance between the Church and the world and that part of the mission of the Holy Spirit through the Church is, as Jesus says in John 16, to “tell the world that it is wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.” 

On the other side are those who reject the historic Christian teaching and who seem to believe that the world, as represented by its most self-consciously progressive institutions and thinkers, is ahead of the Church in ushering in the Kingdom of God. Indeed, that the world is right in telling the Church that it is wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement. They say that God is doing a new thing. But they seem unable to imagine that God might say ‘no’ to any new thing done in the world in the name of progress. There seems to be no room on the part of the revisionists for any truly prophetic word to be spoken to the world’s claims about love and justice.

-Ken Myers

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."

A Helpful Explanation

“We objectify everything and begin to think of our bodies as an achievement… We see the body as a problem, as a hindrance to spiritual life – in order to get to the true self, who we really are, we have to somehow control the body and make it do what we want it to do.  In that way we will finally be who we’re ‘supposed to be’,  ‘who we are’.  Previously secular women have a lot of interest in spirituality.  And what drives this is the idea that spirituality is a way to find your ‘true, inner self’ as seen in opposition to your ‘bodily self’.  In other words, we want to escape the body and the limitations of our bodies by becoming spiritual in a disembodied spirituality.  This comes from Descartes’s mind/body opposition.  What happens when you do that is everything done immediately through the body – your eating, your work, your sexuality - becomes meaningless.  So you can do anything you want to, sexually, or through surgery, or manipulation of any kind that you want.  These things are considered acceptable because you’re just trying to get down to ‘who you really are’ your ‘inner self’.  Now, we are more than our bodies, but we are our bodies.  And we need to think of ourselves and other people holistically – not think, ‘Well, there’s somebody in there who really is who you really are’.  In the Christian paradigm, this is how our faith is supposed to be lived out.”

Lillian Calles Barger, author of Eve’s Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body and President of the Damaris Project

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.

Narnia and the 7 Deadly Sins ...

This Lenten season, I've been preaching a series of homilies on the 7 deadly sins.  Last week at the close of the service in which I had just preached on lust, a young boy from our congregation came up to me with a comment.  I am certain that he is still a bit too young to have understood much about the subject, but then he surprised [and delighted] me with this observation: "Pastor, if you really wanted to talk about lust, you should have talked about The Silver Chair.  That story teaches all about the sin of lust!"

It reminded me instantly of the [abridged] article below [although King argues for a different dominant sin in The Silver Chair].  I found it after hearing Rich Lusk reference Dr King's work which traces the 7 deadly sins through Lewis's 7 Narnia novels.  The full article can be found here.  Enjoy!

Narnia and the Seven Deadly Sins

Dr. Don W. King
Department of English 
Montreat College
© 1984 Don W. King 


Several years ago I discovered an interesting relationship between the seven deadly sins and C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.

The development of a list of seven especially damning sins is shadowy.  However, the list that came to be most influential in the church was developed by Gregory the Great (540-605) characterized by its Latin acronym, saligia: superbia (pride), avaritia (greed), luxuria (luxury, later lust), invidia (envy), gula (gluttony), ira (anger), and acedia (sloth).

William Langland's Piers Plowman, Dante's Divine Comedia, Chaucer's "The Parson's Tale," and Spenser's Faerie Queen all devote serious attention to these. It is not surprising then that Lewis knew them so well. Throughout The Allegory of Love Lewis refers to the seven deadly sins. In several other works he refers to specific sins on the list and in Poems he focuses an entire poem, "Deadly Sins," on each one.  It is my contention that he may either consciously or subconsciously have emphasized one of the seven deadly sins in each one of the seven Narnian books.

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Edmund personifies gluttony.

Repentance All the Way Down: PRIDE

"There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.
“The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

- C S Lewis, Mere Christianity

[illustration: Kali Ciesemier]

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.

Marriage, Divorce, and Gay Rights

"Under the new arrangement, a mutual pledge made by two people ... has been transformed by law into a pledge which can be revoked at will by one party.  And the party who wishes to maintain the marriage and to stick by the original vows can - in the end - be dragged, under threat of prison, from the family home."
-Peter Hitchens ...
...on how divorce "reform" laws undermined the sanctity of marriage a long time before anyone thought to legalize homosexual marriage.  

Found Otherwise

One of the biggest dangers we face when coming to Scripture today is UNDERreading.  Like my children handle apples, three bites off the big side and they're done.  Of course, there's eventually a stem and core that is best avoided, but there is a lot more fruit yet to be consumed!  This is often the product of not reading the way the Apostles taught us to read - not reading Christologically.

The other danger is MISreading.  This is often seen when Scripture is read by the Academy rather than by the Church - not reading ecclesiologically.
A classic example is Samuel's telling of the immensely deep, rich, and passionate friendship between David and Jonathan.  When he told us this story, sodomy is nowhere in view.  But of course, secular scholars, with a knowing grin and a pat on the head, tell us otherwise.  The truth of the matter, however, is that the Sacred Writings were not given for them to read.  They were given to God's people to be read in and by the Church.  Not only were they given by God they were written by Him in the truest sense of the word.  And the Spirit, Who cannot lie, for Whom a day is as a thousand years, is capable of talking to us without contradicting Himself - just as I am in telling a story to my children over the course of thirty seconds.  This is how we know what the Holy Spirit meant when He spoke to us through holy Samuel about David and Jonathan.
But in a hyper-sexualized culture [so-called] where our basest instincts are incessantly fondled by lurid adds and prurient peddlers, ignorant and unstable men will twist the Scriptures to their own destruction.  To the pure, all things are pure. To those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. Their minds and consciences are defiled. They claim to know God, but plainly deny him by their deeds. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for good work of any kind.
May we be found otherwise.

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

As an interesting and historical note and mini-metaphor of twisting something from its true context for propagandized ends in this debate - and in the spirit of helping to cultivate a Christian imagination adequate to direct our thinking on the subject [as we've been wisely exhorted to do by Peter Leithart here] - it is very common to find the first illustration, a tableau from Friar Laurent's La Somme Le Roy [commonly called, The Book of Vices and Virtues] hijacked by online homosexual activists as an illustration of gay "love" between David and Jonathan.  
In it's original context, the embrace of David and Jonathan was an illustration of the virtue of friendship as opposed to the vice of hatred.  More to the point of our current temptations, below is another illumination from that same Medieval work, this one depicting the virtue of chastity over against vice of lust [luxure].  Chastity is crowned in gold, trampling upon a swine, and gazing at the intricate beauty of a dove [?] while Lust is limply wagging a cloth of fabric in one hand and jangling her slaves' chains in the other.  Upon close inspection, it can be seen that she is also coughing up blood.  
Below them are two scenes: First from the deuterocanonical Book of Judith in which she rebuffs impure advances with a beheading [!!] and then Joseph fleeing from the lecherous advances of Potiphar's wife.  Ours will be a different world when once again, we learn to be captivated by this kind of art.  In it we find triunity - truth, goodness, and beauty in one.

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 Fashionable Ethics of Tolerance and Diversity

"Even if people say things over and over again, if fashion dictates that we should think something else we will simply ignore them..."

-N.T. Wright, [commenting on Luke's Resurrection Passage]

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

Pray for Rome

Okay, if you're like me, you're a pretty Protestant Protestant, but I want to encourage the rest of you to add your prayers to mine and the countless others being offered up around the world for the Cardinals gathered today who will be electing the next Pope.
I am much more nervous about this election than I ever was for the race [so-called] between Obama and Romney.  The Roman Church, for all its problems, has been an unflinching pillar of prophetic strength in defense of the unborn as well as a stalwart testimony to the fact that God has made men and women different and that these differences have- according to HIM - ramifications for differences of ministry and restrictions of ordination.  It has also been uncompromising, in a way that no mainline Protestant denomination can claim to have been, by officially upholding a more or less Biblical standard of human sexual ethics.  In the face of so much fierce social and political pressure, the ramifications for this appointment, the potential to shift cultures in the direction of unrighteousness and sinful compromise as well as to further mar the name of Christ in the world is truly significant.

At the start of this meeting, the Cardinals prayed for the Holy Spirit's guidance in their deciding.  May He indeed be pleased to appoint a righteous, brave, and holy man.

All right, now because you're worried about how non-Protestant I sound, here is a great quote from Carl Trueman:

Rome has chronological priority over any Protestant denomination. Thus, Protestantism was and is a movement of protest. We are by definition protesting against something: the claims of the papacy, the burying of the gospel under garbage, the denial of assurance to ordinary Christian believers. We must never forget these things. We should respect our Roman Catholic friends; we should rejoice in the great doctrine we hold in common; but we must not minimize that which divides us from each other.

Such were some of You - Dr Rosaria Butterfield

Above are a few selected samples of a jaw-dropping presentation from former radical Lesbian feminist activist turned Reformed Pastor's wife homeschooling mom [yeah ... another one of those!].  I encourage you to listen to her full talk here and then the entirety of her Q&A here.  I have been studying this issue for several years and this is the best - the most faithful expression of the true Christian/Biblical answer to the questions of homosexuality I have found in both  what she says and how she says it [the latter often being where we fail miserably].

Enjoying the World As It Is

"They are darkened in their understanding - excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that's in them."

Why are they ignorant?  Because they just don't have a high I.Q.?  No!  It's because of the hardness of their hearts.  The Bible always teaches us that stupidity is the result of moral sin.  There is a moral stupidity which leads to stupid behavior in life.  The book of Proverbs deals with this repeatedly.  People do this that are dumb and basically that arises from the hardness of their heart.  

"These Gentiles have become callous and give themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness."

And so their lack of feeling, their hard-hearts, means that they have to pursue weirder and weirder forms of stimulation and they can't relax and enjoy the world as it is.

- J.B. Jordan, commenting on Ephesians 4.17-19

The Pressing Duty of our Time

"To establish the fact of decadence is the pressing duty of our time."

- Richard Weaver

Brave Chickens

Here is a great article from my friend, Dr Goetsch summarizing the dynamics of the Chick-fil-A controversy. Ironically, Boston Mayer Tom Menino apparently does not believe in giving Bostonians the freedom of choice ... regarding where to buy a breakfast sandwich and whose business to patronize and values to support.
If you're in need of a bit of clarity and definition here, perhaps you will be helped [as I was] by this reminder from my good friend Scott Cline:  Please read it carefully though - like Chesterton, he is making his point by surprise, so it might take more than one go-round to get his drift and mine [that marriage is not ours to redefine and human nature has not changed in history.]:
"I strongly support the right of homosexuals to marry each other. In fact, in many cases, their doing so may be a great act of faith. Were I a pastor, and were other factors notwithstanding, I'd gladly marry a faithful Christian man of homosexual orientation to a faithful Christian woman of homosexual orientation. I'm thankful that the US of A has never denied homosexuals the right to marry."