Guest Blog: Mike McDaniel, Ministry Assistant
I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus my
brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister
to my need… So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men, for he
nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking
in your service to me. (Phil 2:25, 29-30)
We had a great morning this morning... I spoke on what it means to really encounter the Gospel and hundreds of teenagers responded. To those of you that prayed, thanks. I am praying that these teenagers (and ours who are at Crossroads) will develop a "hunger and thirst" for righteousness... one that is so strong that it doesn't require careful wording, great entertainment, or flawlessly executed conclusions for the kids to respond. I am praying the Spirit give them a love of God and righteousness, hatred for sin, fear of eternity, and amazement at the grace of God.
If you're interested, they are live streaming the sessions here.
Today I biked up to the hillcrest overlooking the valley. Pretty spectacular. When I finally made it to the top, I felt like I was somwhere near death. My heart beat more in the hour it took me to get up there than it has in the last 12 years. I sprawled out on the grass in a Mormon church yard at the top of the mountain to try and return to some sense of muscular normalcy... and after about 20 minutes this kid walks up to me, identifies himself as part of the Challenge conference and wants to know if he can ask me some survey questions. It was then I realized that he didn't recognize me... and he began to ask me the series of evangelistic questions (i.e. "Do you think a person can know for sure he'll go to heaven," "Who was Jesus," etc.)
Of course I couldn't resist. I told him that I believed God and Mary and Joseph Smith made up the Trinity and that I couldn't wait to get to heaven to have thousands of spirit wives and babies... he seemed a little taken back but handled himself well... we argued for about 5 minutes and then I took off my sunglasses and told him who I was. He got a kick out of it... and will probably never witness to anyone ever again. Just kidding. He's a great kid and I was proud of him for taking the initiative of walking up to a stranger to share Jesus. We prayed together and he headed out to tell someone else. Awesome.
I’m in Salt Lake City speaking at the challenge '08 youth conference. There’s over 5000 kids at this thing, and it’s a pretty awesome event. I am preaching “in the round”, which means that I am on a square stage in the middle with about 1500 kids sitting on each side. Kind of cool. But weird. Always feel like somebody’s staring at my hiney.
This morning I spoke on what a disciple really looks like - contrasting those people who have a veneer of Christianity gilded on top of a heart that lives for itself. I tried to show them how radically different people were when they encountered the real Gospel - we become people of radical generosity and radical joy in the midst of hardship. It seemed to go well. The students seemed very connected and I sensed an unusual freedom and authority while I was preaching.
Tomorrow morning I’m going to talk about really
encountering Jesus. I’m going to try and show many
“Christian” students have an inoculated faith - just enough of
Christianity to make them immune to the real thing. I’ll be preaching
from John 4. I would really appreciate your prayers. Also, pray for our own
students who are down at Crossroads summer camp this week. You can keep tabs on
them here.
I spent afternoon seeing Salt Lake City. I spent most of
it in the Mormon Temple complex, so now I’m pretty depressed - so
many bright people, energetic, young, and passionate, in service to
“another” Gospel. The place is swarming with “guides”
which are really young missionaries who use the Temple complex to seek
converts. What was weird is that all the “guides” were good looking,
20-something single girls from all over the world. It was like being at a
babe-convention or a Miss America pageant. None of them compared to my wife, of
course.
I “behaved,” for the most part, at the temple. I
only got in 2 discussions which could be called “vigorous.” When asked
if I wanted a Mormon missionary to come and visit my house to answer my questions, I told them yes and that my name was Bruce Ashford. Bruce, you might
be on the lookout for a visit or call sometime in the near future.
It really did break my heart though. And, I did get the chance to
share the Gospel a few times. One of their talking points is to say, “I
prayed to God to know the truth and God showed to me through peace in my heart
that it was Mormonism.” I told them I had prayed the same type of prayer and
that God showed me it was not. I told them that since 2 people could pray and
come up with different answers, we needed to look somewhere else besides a
“feeling” for assurance. That somewhere else is, of course, the New
Testament, where Paul said, “If I, or an angel from heaven (like Moroni)
preach any other Gospel to you than that which I have already preached (like
the whole book of Galatians), let him be accursed. Interesting, both Mormonism
and Islam claim to be started in response to an “angelic”
revelation (Islam - Gabriel/Mormonism - Moroni). The reason Mormonism
and Islam are wrong is that they both preach a fundamentally different Gospel.
They teach, in different ways, that “if we obey properly, then we will be
accepted. The Christian Gospel - Paul’s and Jesus’
Gospel - is that “I am accepted because of what God did for me in
Christ, therefore I obey.”
One interesting story I learned was that when Brigham Young (the
2nd leader of Mormonism who founded Salt Lake City) came over the
Rockies and saw this plain, he thought the Salt Lake was a ‘heaven
on earth,’ a ‘land of bounty and blessing’ (his words). He
claimed God had spoken to him and told him this was the place. Later they found
out the lake was all salt. What promised so much turned out to be dead. I couldn’t
help but think of this as such a stunning parable of their faith.
I also learned that Mormons send out over 20,000 missionaries a year or 2 year stints. 20,000. Even with a defective message, it has to spread, just by the sheer numbers. As I've said before, I am committed to the ‘Mormonization’ of our college students: I want them all to spend 2 years working overseas.
I do wish you’d pray for me.
And, did you know Salt Lake City is, statistically, the
least reached city in the country?
Recently a good friend of mine, Pastor, Theologian, Author and Family-man Voddie Baucham (Bio) guest-preached in our Sunday morning services (Sermons here and here).
He was gracious enough to sit down with one of our pastors for the purpose of recording a 10 minute interview on some issues facing our church and the Christian church as a whole.
Take a few minutes to listen to the interview (Here).
I have spent the greater part of the week with a bunch of teenagers from the RDU area at a camp down here in SC. It's been great. One of the guys I met is from the Brier Creek area who came up to me and said, "You dont' know me but I want to thank you and your church for winning my boss to Christ. He started coming to your church and became a Christian there about a month ago. He was my 2nd shift manager, and he used to make us work until 10:00 at night. Now that he's a Christian he lets us all go home at 9 so he can get home in time to read his Bible." That's pretty awesome. People coming to Christ and making the work place a better environment... Thank God, Summit Church, for how He is using you. We don't deserve an ounce of it.
As to the week... we've had a lot of students believe the Gospel and surrender to Christ, which I never get tired of seeing. I spent the first 4 talks going through exactly what it means to be separated from God and what Christ has done for us and how it changes us. I used to take for granted that people in church just "knew" and "understood" that stuff. Not anymore. I spend most of time describing what the Gospel is and what it means. So many people in our churches have no real grasp on Christ's radical Gospel, the Gospel that says that we are accepted not by what we do but by what Christ has done... And even for those who already know the Gospel and are saved, there is nothing that increases their love of God, their hatred of sin, and confidence for the future like dwelling on the Gospel.
Anyway, for those of you at our church... pray for me this week, please. I agree to do these things because God has gifted me to speak with teenagers, and I am praying that when my daughters are teenagers God will anoint and send someone to speak to them to complement what I have taught them at home. And pray for all of our own teenagers these next few weeks, who will be at a similar camp, that they will really encounter Christ. The teenage years are the time that most significant decisions of this nature are made. I am grateful Jason Gaston, our student pastor, lives and breathes winning these guys to Christ. He needs a PRAYING church behind him.
Here's a great article about our church being recognized as one of the top giving to missions churches in the nation. Praise God, Summit!
Pastor JD is traveling, but here is rerun of a post about the book On the Mortification of Sin, a great read which JD quoted heavily from last Sunday.
The book I want to recommend to you is On the Mortification of Sin by Puritan John Owen. A relatively short book (80 pages), but I feel like it explains some of the major problems of my life.
Owen deals with how most Christians, even the fervent, full-time ones, let sins go "unchecked" (or, to use the Apostle Paul's word: "unmortified"). These sins of the heart darken us spiritually, choke out the seed of the word, and cause us to make bad judgment calls and miss opportunities God has for us. I sometimes ache with regret thinking about how much grace I've missed out on and opportunities to bless others because I have refused to go to war against sins of the heart like love of money, love of praise, the lusts of the flesh for things like sex or food, the attention of others, etc. "The vigour, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh." (p. 9)
Owen also shows that not only do we often not deal with the lusts of our heart, when we do we use the wrong weaponry. We try to overcome lust through spiritual busy-ness and discipline, rather than on total death to self, belief in the Gospel, and reliance on the Spirit. As Bible teachers, we often try to give people ways to improve their lives, relevant steps to take, etc, that are "merely legal duties, without the least mention of Christ or His Spirit." (v. 17)
Finally, sometimes God lets us struggle with lust because it's one of the only things that keep us coming back to Him--which is His ultimate purpose, to keep us dependent on Him: "Says God, 'Here is one, if he could be rid of this lust I should never hear of him more; let him wrestle with this, or he would be altogether lost'... Wasn't it a correction to Peter's self-confidence that God left him to deny his Master?" (p. 41-2).
Here are some other juicy extractions:
So here's a shout out to an old book... the Puritans were often depressed and I don't want to be exactly like them, and the English is a little old, but it's very readable and, as C. S. Lewis said, at least every other book we read should be from a different culture or time period.
The WEEK OF HOPE for RDU is coming! Want to know how others are serving through Hope For Durham? Visit www.hopefordurham.info to read the stories and post your own!
Here's also a great post from our friend, Clayton King... in which he reflects on the Boston Celtics' victory and some things they did right that we would be wise to heed.
Guest Blog: Charlie
Dunn, Associate to the Pastor
Yesterday Pastor J.D. spoke to us on the destructiveness of sin and how it hinders God from blessing us. He demonstrated how sin is ultimately any passion/desire/idol which serves to override our willingness to walk in obedience to God. In other words, we find something of supposed worth in our lives and pursue it more than or to the exclusion of the presence and blessing of the Lord in our life. As Tim Keller has stated, these passions or desires eventually become for us, “self-salvation projects.” In other words, we come to believe that there is something in our life, apart from Christ, that we absolutely cannot live without. We need it to be happy, fulfilled, satisfied, comfortable or any host of things, but regardless we need it, even if it means unintentionally throwing Jesus under the bus to get it.
The “frustrating” thing about a sermon like today’s is that it reveals so clearly the depravity of my own heart and how if left up to my own devices, I will take almost any passion or desire and turn it into an idol, thereby forfeiting much of the blessing God would otherwise like to give me. How true was the great reformer John Calvin when he said, “our hearts are like idol factories,” daily turning one passion after another into mini-Gods.
As a result, some days I just long to see, not how others fight this temptation, or what some self-help book prescribes, or even the opinion of some counselor, but how Jesus fought the temptation to find his worth, acceptance, purpose, or pleasure, in anything but His Father.
I think John 2:23-25, a seemingly obscure passage, gives us a little insight. In this passage, we catch a glimpse of Jesus’ perspective regarding the tenuousness of those little “self-salvation projects.
By the time chapter 2, verses 23-25 come along, Jesus has been introduced and praised by John the Baptist, called his first disciples, performed a miracle at the wedding in Cana, established his authority in the temple, and demonstrated his glory so that many believed in him. One might say Jesus was living a successful and influential life. He had mastered The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People…thought I am sure that being fully God and fully man probably helped.
Yet in the midst of all these seemingly wonderful circumstances, the gospel writer lets us in on Jesus’ mindset when he says, “But (ie: despite all these circumstances) Jesus, on his part did not entrust himself to them (ie: those that were ‘believing’ in him and consequently praising him…those that were making his circumstances so positive) because he knew what was in man and needed no one to bear witness to man.”
Jesus understood three things that I consistently fail to understand when it comes to those “self-salvation projects.”
First, Jesus understood the beautifully, stable nature of being justified by the Father, or in our case, the Gospel, as opposed to his circumstances. He recognized that his circumstances could change at any moment while His Father’s love for, favor toward and blessing on him would remain. Consequently, he didn’t need his circumstances to give him anything. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about all the stuff around him; it’s just that he didn’t need a career, which may or may not be successful to make him important, or a relationship, which may or may not disappoint him to make him accepted, or a pleasure, which may or may not fulfill to bring him joy. Rather he had the perfectly stable and unchanging love of His Father, who was clear when He stated, “this is my son in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Likewise, we who have believed on Christ are as 1 Corinthians 6:11 and Romans 5:8 say, “washed (ie: innocent and clean), sanctified (ie: set aside and given purpose in life) and justified (ie: fully known and yet fully accepted) in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God…and while we were still sinners (ie: least deserved it).” The beauty of the Gospel is that before God we are both fully known in all our imperfection and yet fully loved and therefore free from requiring that everyone and everything around us contribute to our identity.
Secondly, Jesus also understood the repulsiveness and destruction of all false, functional gods…of all sin. When verse 25 says that Jesus “would not entrust himself to (ie: give himself to or be justified by) man because he knew what was in man, we see that Jesus wasn’t naively captivated by the truth, as a boy might be over an infatuation with a pretty girl. Rather, Jesus refused to entrust himself to anyone or anything except His Father because he knew the appearance of beauty, in this case the praise of men, ministerial success, or favorable circumstances didn’t necessitate true beauty or blessing. Rather, Jesus recognized that what was “inside” man or anything of the world (ie: imperfection, selfishness, and sin) would eventually curse him. As Keller has again said, these passions/desires/idols make grand promises of purpose, fulfillment, satisfaction and prosperity if we would merely live up to them. Yet when we don’t we are left worse off than when we started. As one businessman once said, “I spent all my life climbing the corporate ladder of success, only to realize that when I got to the top the ladder was leaning against the wrong building.” The Gospel on the other hand doesn’t say “if you fail to reach me, you will die.” Rather it says, “If you fail, I (God) will die for you.”
Finally, Jesus understood that the ability to live in the freedom of the Gospel and apart from the captivity of false gospels requires a conscious decision. As the text says, “he would not entrust himself to man.” In other words, Jesus consciously resolved to be justified and directed by only the love and blessing of His father. Likewise, we are encouraged to “be transformed by the renewal of our minds” (Romans 12:2), whereby we consciously mediate on the beauty of the Gospel and the repulsiveness of all other false gospels so that we also can make wise and informed daily-decisions.
When we realize both the beauty of the Gospel and the repulsiveness of all other false gospels, the battle against sin becomes more a choice than a battle. After all, who wants to pursue acceptance and love through a passion which will ultimately only let you down? Who would dare want to enter into a marriage if you knew at the outset it would only end in divorce, or a career if it would end in bankruptcy or a pleasure if it would end in addiction? Jesus knew what was “in” these and consciously chose to walk in accordance with His Father’s will, which allowed him to live a perfect life, fully blessed by the Father.
The question then that I am forced to ask each day, if I am serious about wanting God’s hand of blessing on my life is, “do I believe that the Gospel, which is simply the good report that God became like me to save me from me ” is in fact true. If I can answer in the affirmative, then I need not pursue any other passion for the purpose of acceptance, dignity, value, or love. After all what else can actually promise to give me “everything I need for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3) except Jesus and still deliver?
For information on
groups that can help, click here and here
Some of you will see in the coming days an AP story on Real Clear Politics and some other places entitled "Young Baptist Preachers Chart Different Courses" in which I was featured. I thought the guy writing the article, Eric Gorski, did a pretty good job. I had to laugh at my depiction as the "non-traditional," "progressive," and "not quite sure he's southern" guy. Any of you that know my background and general persona will probably get a kick out of that.
A few things I wanted to make clear:
The phrase "humble orthodoxy" is not originally mine. I owe that one to Josh Harris. I'm not sure if he made it up or not. I also did not say "I am humbly orthodox," but that humble orthodoxy is what I strive for. To say "I am humbly orthodox" would seem to contradict the very thing I want to be, like saying "I'm pretty darn humble and proud of it!"
The phrase "we may not believe what the Summit Church believes but thank God they are here because otherwise we'd have to raise our taxes" is not mine either. I owe that to Robert Lewis. As I've often said, "I've never had an original thought in my life." Including that one. I heard C.J. Mahaney first make that statement.
Eric (the author) seemed to make a big deal out of the Southern Baptist Global Climate initiative I signed... perhaps a bigger deal than it is to me. The article says that me and a more traditional pastor, Eric Hankins, "part" on global warming--implying that Eric is skeptical of global warming claims while I buy into them. Not necessarily. I would say, if anything, I am more skeptical than believing.
Actually, I don't think that determining the science of global warming is the job of the local church or a convention of local churches. Other Christians can and should devote themselves to that question, JUST NOT THE LOCAL CHURCH. Our role is the preaching of the Gospel, and I don't want to let ANYTHING, including my stance on various, more minor political issues, come in the way of life's most important message.
I see my role as a pastor as teaching biblical principles you can apply to politics, but, with a few exceptions, I stay out of the political ramifications of those. In the words of Mark Dever, I might be wrong about global warming, but I'm not wrong about the Gospel. I don't want my opinion on the former to be a stumbling block on the latter.
That's why I would only sign the Southern Baptist Global Climate Initiative (SBECI) after it was denuded of any policy directives. Jonathan Merritt, author of the document goes to our church and asked me to be one of the original signers of it. In its first draft, I would not sign, because it called for (what I thought were) specific policy suggestions. I told Jonathan I thought that making specific policy suggestions was "out of bounds" for the church. I told him that as a pastor I did not want to speak in areas that were beyond my calling. I urged him to reword the directives of the document so that it stayed out of declaring what were the causes of or cures for global warming. I told him I could sign a document that simply declared our understanding that we need to be good stewards of the earth and that this was an issue we needed to pay attention to. He graciously reworded it and then I signed it.
Here's another example: In 2003, I was on a committee asked to issue a statement on behalf of the Southern Baptist Convention about the war in Iraq. I told the committee that I didn't think it was our place, as a convention of churches, to determine which wars were just and which were not. My suggestion was that we issue a general statement about the need for just wars in certain situations and that we urge our leaders to investigate whether Iraq was a just war and, if so, to pursue it with all their might. I have my opinion about Iraq, but I don't want to make that the official opinion of "the church." Again, I might be wrong in my opinions on the war in Iraq, but I'm not wrong about the Gospel. I don't want my opinions on the war in Iraq to cause someone to miss the message I've been called to preach: THE GOSPEL.
There are times, of course, where we MUST speak into specific policy issues. For example, if I were a pastor in Richmond, VA in 1860 I don't think it would please God for me not to preach against racism just because it was a "politically charged issue" (nor should I avoid talking about it today!). If I were a German pastor in 1939 I don't think I should keep my mouth shut about anti-semitism. Today, I can't call myself a follower of Jesus and keep my mouth shut about the mass-murdering of an entire generation of children, particularly the children of minorities, in the name of "freedom of choice." The issue of what should be recognized as a "marriage" is another. These are issues that I think are of such importance to the general welfare of society that, out of love, we have to speak clearly. (As the church we are called to be salt and light and to lovingly help preserve our society.) However, on many (even, most) other political issues, I choose, as a pastor, to stay out of them because it is not my calling. "No man that wars entangles himself in the affairs of this life."
I do not mean that all Christians should stay out of them. We need some Christians working full-time in politics, applying the Christian worldview to all areas. I simply mean that my role, as a Pastor, is building a community around the Gospel. I do not want our church or the Southern Baptist Convention of churches mired in politics, even (what I see to be) good and right politics. More on that here.
Anyway, hope that makes sense and helps provide a little clarity. Eric Gorski, good job on the article. Eric Hankins, you sound like a guy I'd really like and would love to meet. Obviously, we have all the right things in common.
The WEEK OF HOPE for RDU is
coming! Want to know how others are serving through Hope For Durham? Visit www.hopefordurham.info to read the
stories and post your own!
Here's another rerun of a recent post by JD about the SBC:
Recently my friend Ed Stetzer released a Lifeway study showing that the Southern Baptist Convention actually declined in membership in the past year. Ed (together with Southern Baptist president Frank Page) caution Southern Baptists that this probably reflects a drift of the "younger" generation of Southern Baptists away from the SBC. Ed's research is convincing... he shows that this is a 50 year trend, not just a one year blip. Ed ends the article with a very penetrating question, "Now is the moment for us to hone our vision and take on a bigger battle—we must battle to build upon our Conservative Resurgence and make it a Great Commission Resurgence... If we don’t, why did we bother with the Conservative Resurgence in the first place?"
Ed's call is a timely one and one that I believe we absolutely must heed. I do know some "younger" Southern Baptists who have left the Convention, or, having stayed, involve themselves in it only minimally. I'll try to make this short and to the point:
The SBC was born out of the "good parachurch" model: the agencies of the Convention facilitated the ministries of local churches. Local churches led in the ministry, the Convention served the initiatives of those churches-- but it was the local churches that took the lead and got things done. Over time, it appears that some parts of the SBC have shifted into 'bad parachurch' mode. They expect the local churches to turn over resources so the agencies can do the work. Burgeoning bureaucracies were created that basically duplicated what was to be happening in the local church. We, the local church, are to give our money and be happy with the results, and scolded for not giving properly.
Some missional churches are not actively participating in the Convention because they don't see the SBC helping them (that is, the local church) fulfill the call God has given to that local church to plant churches. Sure, sometimes "younger" pastors don't give because they are arrogant, shortsighted and don't see the value of cooperation. Often, however, it's because they are not convinced the SBC is best channel for fulfilling their calling to reproduce and multiply. And this is, in part, because they see the Convention taking ministry initiative away from the churches.(Of course, there are some things local churches can't do effectively... for example, most churches cannot house a an academically credentialed seminary... and for that we are happy to turn over the role to a Convention agency. We should not, however, relinquish the responsibility to raise up and train ministers).
Many of these new churches are simply not going to give to the SBC out of a sense of loyalty. They are going to give to the SBC when they see that this is the most effective way of accomplishing the call placed on them to plant churches and transform their cities. Many "younger" pastors are more committed to the call of God to plant churches than they are to the Convention, and this, in my opinion, is not a bad thing. When the Convention reveals that it is the best investment for assisting the local churches in training leaders, planting churches, and doing the work of God in the world, that is when many of the "younger" pastors will give their money and involvement to the work of the SBC.
We, the Summit Church, give somewhere around 21% of our budget outside of our church to evangelism, community ministry, and church planting work. We give a significant portion of that to the Convention because we do see the value in cooperation and shared resources. We know that whenever you cooperate not everything will be done exactly as we like it, and we are ok with that. We send out most of our teams under the direction of the IMB and try to give generously to the IMB for that purpose.
We also recognize, however, that the Summit Church will answer to God personally for His command on us to multiply and grow, and so we prudently evaluate how effectively the money we give to church planting efforts is helping us to fulfill OUR calling to plant churches. We are more committed to the call of God on us than to a "denominational giving program." As the Convention helps us fulfill our calling, we will participate in it.
I do believe that as the SBC refocuses itself on the priority of the Gospel, majoring on it and not on other minor (though important) things, and that as it continually realigns itself to catalyze the work of local churches, we will see more "younger" Southern Baptists happy to remain a part of this great mission organization.
The WEEK OF HOPE for RDU is coming! Want to know how others are serving through Hope For Durham? Visit www.hopefordurham.info to read the stories and post your own!
Today is a significant day in the life of our country and I want to ask you to pray with me for God to have mercy on us. Today was the day California's new "law" opening up marriage to people of the same sex went into effect--against the will of the people of that state, mind you. You say, "Haven't people been able to get married in certain states before?" Yes, but there were always residency requirements and throwbacks. Under this new law, people from anywhere can simply go to California and get married and carry that marriage anywhere they please.
Before I comment... a little context: Those of you that go to the Summit know that I have made a decision, as a pastor, to stay out of politics. That's not because I don't think political things matter or they are somehow "beyond" the scope of the Christian worldview. They do matter, and they are not beyond the scope of Biblical thinking. As a follower of Jesus, I must look at EVERYTHING through the lens of the Christian worldview. Nor is it because I am short on opinions. Anyone who knows me knows I have 9 opinions on any 1 subject.
My decision to stay out of politics, personally, has to do with my own personal calling as a pastor. My primary calling is to the Gospel, and I refuse to entangle myself in anything that keeps me from that one thing. The Gospel, and not a particular political persuasion, is the "main thing" at our church. We have both Republicans and Democrats on our staff and in our congregation. We have both McCainiacs and Obama-mamas in our congregation and on our stage each Sunday.
I will do my best to teach biblical principles about all areas of life, but applying them to various political situations I'll usually leave to you. You may disagree with me on how I apply a biblical worldview to situations--say, the war in Iraq, taxation, theories about climate change, etc. That is OK. I don't want to let that divide us. Plus, I know I might be wrong in my opinion on the war in Iraq or the proper role of the government in education. But I KNOW I'm not wrong about the Gospel, and I don't want to let my opinions on the former keep you from hearing and believing me about the latter.
There are exceptions, however--times we must be involved politically. For example, if I were a pastor in Richmond, VA in 1860 I don't think it would please God for me not to preach against racism just because it was a "politically charged issue" (nor should I avoid talking about it today!). If I were a German pastor in 1939 I don't think I should keep my mouth shut about anti-semitism. Today, I can't call myself a follower of Jesus and keep my mouth shut about the mass-murdering of an entire generation of children, particularly the children of minorities, in the name of "freedom of choice."
In the same way, I believe we must speak out about the redefinition of marriage. I know you may ask "Why is this an issue of such critical importance? Why can't people be free to do what they want and marry whom they want?"
When you redefine marriage, you unweave a crucial thread in any stable society. Marriage was established by the Creator to be a crucial building block for a healthy life. Part of our self-identity is found in our gender. We understand who we are and the roles we play by understanding the distinctions of gender. If you don't understand who are as a male or female, you don't understand yourself. God intended marriage to be a union of the two genders because in that union we have the loving union of the two contrasting genders. Marriage between people of the same sex skews that understanding and, consequently, our view of ourselves. Further, same sex marriage mars our image of God. God said that His image was revealed in the "male and female" union in marriage (Gen 1:28-29).
Thus, when you redefine marriage as something other than between one man and one woman, you distort your view of yourself and your view of God.Even though no marriages are perfect, and divorce and immorality skew the picture God intended to give us, the structure of marriage itself is a compass that adds definition to our lives.
Furthermore, there has to be SOME definition of marriage we are operating on. If we begin to say that same-sex marriage is ok, what stops us from polygamy? What about an older man and a consenting adolescent? How about a man and a horse? I'm not trying to be silly, I'm just saying that at some point somebody has to define marriage. The whole "lowest common denominator" thing won't work very long.
Government has not seen it to be their role to define marriage. What "marriage" is, is written into natural law as well as spelled out in God's word--both of which are the basis of our societal laws. Government doesn't, and never has, define marriage, it recognizes the definition written into natural law.
Of course, not all of our biblical convictions should be made into laws that apply to all people. We have a pluralistic society which is free to, in many ways, recognize and pursue their own morality, even when it is very offensive to us. People can choose to worship God or not. They can choose to be immoral or not. But when marriage itself is redefined, then the entire society is redefined. It will soon become mandatory to recognize and teach the normalcy of both types of marriages in our public schools. It may become illegal to criticize same sex marriage. This will be a major blow to the stability of our society and how future generations of boys and girls come to understand themselves and their gender identities. (If you don't believe all of this, check out "Act 2" of this news story from NPR. The trajectory is not hard to plot.)
For the sake of future generations--future boys and girls who will learn to understand life, God, and themselves by looking at the structure of family--this is an issue we have to be clear on. Out of love, and self-righteous judgmentalism, we must work to maintain the family structure in our society. Loss of the family structure will do nearly irreparable harm to millions of future boys and girls. I hope you will pray with me for God's mercy and blessing on our society. We are the church and this is why we are here--we are salt and light. Let's cry out to God for mercy on our community.
We love homosexual people and they are welcome in our church on Sunday. In no way am I calling for self-righteous judgmentalism. We are massively fallen people ourselves, and we are a community of people experiencing healing and forgiveness. I am not a judge, just a fellow sinner pointing toward a redeeming Savior, arguing that His ways are always best. I've been forgiven of more than I can tell you about. I am inviting you to trust God with me.
This has not been an attempt to provide a full apology on the institution of marriage--just a reminder to fellow believers that we need to pray (if you're looking for a more definitive treatment, check out stuff by one of my favorite authors, J. Budziszewski, such as this). I know not every Christian will agree with me that this is an issue worth speaking out on, but I hope you at least the reasoning I'm using in getting there...
