Friday, June 21, 2013

Neither Adam and Steve nor Eve and Morn

Concerning homosexuality, author Tom Krattenmaker writes, "a matter that receives nowhere near top billing in the Bible." EXACTLY!  If Jesus had been down with homosexuality, don't you think He would have authoritatively said so, and it would also be clearly stated in God's Holy written Word???  Where, oh where does Jesus endorse, advocate for, make it clear to one and all that He and His Father made homosexuality "good?"  It certainly is missing in Genesis where He distinctly proclaims all that He created as "good."

Au contraire, Jesus made it crystal clear what marriage is, as well as what it isn't when he said, “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two, but one flesh.  Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6; Jesus is referring here to Genesis 1:27 and 2:24). 

Those who purport otherwise are touting "another gospel."  Even young children know the difference between a male and a female.  Neither two men nor two women have the capability of becoming "one flesh," or to procreate.  In many ways, young children are wiser than most adults.  Of course Jesus did say in Matthew 18:3, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."  How sobering is that?  The ability to believe which is born in all children, which is as Coleridge referred to it, "the willing suspension of disbelief," which too often diminishes as we are taught, by the all-wise secular state, that Jesus and the Bible are not truth, thereof not to be trusted.  As maturing children, through the seduction and manipulation of satan and the world, we begin to separate ourselves from our God-given conscience, our knowing the difference between right and wrong, with which we are all born.  The secular "wise" men that have gone before us, such as Epicurus, Machiavelli, Hobbs, Spinoza, Rousseau, Locke and Darwin have wrought quite an effective brainwashing on society with their deviously designed schemes to cause us all to believe there is no ultimate Lover of our soul.  How, oh how can we trust other humans when, from the beginning, they have devised and carried out such diabolical brutality against their own kind?  How, oh how can we dare to worship at the altar of mankind, of whom Montaigne wrote, "O senseless man who cannot make a worm, and yet makes gods by dozens."  How do we not trust in the very Maker of our soul, the One who left His rightful place in heaven to come to earth to become one of us, the One willing to die in our place so we can be co-heirs with Him into eternity?  "Because we cannot 'see' a God we can touch, a God we can comprehend with our rational intellects, we invent new gods to take His rightful place, all the little gods who have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, hands and touch not, and who have nothing to say to us in the times of our deepest need." ~Madeleine L'Engle 

How manipulative and disingenuous it is for folks to use the word "rights" whenever they are out to get their way, and making it their mission to cause those with dissenting views to shut up.  Women's "rights," homosexual "rights," children's "rights," animal "rights," and so on.  Nobody wants to be accused of removing the "rights" of anyone.  God forbid!  It's proven to be a tactic quite adept at silencing people, especially Christians, who do not want to be labeled as intolerant, hateful, judgmental, unloving or bigoted.
In light of what homosexuals are clamoring for, why not afford special governmental "rights," protections and privileges to two sisters, or two brothers, or a sister and a brother, or two friends, or a parent and child who have lived together and devoted their lives to each other?  

Christian philosopher J. Budziszewski in his book, “The Revenge of Conscience”:
“Our bodies have a language of their own . . . we say things to each other by what we do with them. What does it mean then . . . when a man puts the part of himself which represents the generation of life into the cavity of decay and expulsion? . . . It means ‘Life, be swallowed up by death.’”

Listen to this beautiful language from Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias.  "The reason we are against racism is because a person's race is sacred.  A person's ethnicity is sacred.  You cannot violate it.  My race is sacred; your race is sacred; I dare not violate it.  The reason we react against the issue of homosexuality the way we do is because sexuality is sacred.  You cannot violate it.  How do you treat one as sacred and desacrelize the other?  Sex is a sacred gift of God.  I can no longer justify an aberration of it in somebody else's life than I can justify my own proclivities to go beyond my marital boundaries.  Every man here who is an able-bodied man will tell you temptation stalks you every day.  Does it have anything to do with your love for your spouse?  Probably not, because you can love your spouse with 100% desire to love the person, but the human body reacts to the sight entertained by the imagination and gives you all kinds of false hints that stolen waters are going to be sweeter.  They are not.  They leave you emptier.  So a disposition or a proclivity does not justify expressing that disposition and that proclivity.  That goes across the board for all sexuality.  When God created mankind and womankind, it was His plan, not our plan.  It is extraordinary what He said.  He said, 'It is not good for man to live alone.'  Well, man wasn't living alone; God was with him.  Why did He say that?  He created the mystique and the majesty and the charm and the complimentary nature of womankind in a way that made it possible for her to meet his emotional needs that God, Himself, put only within her outside himself from himself in her in that complimentariness.  It is a design by God."

Paul tells us in I Corinthians 7:1-7  Now for the matters you wrote about:  “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”  But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.  No mention of a man having sexual relations with a man or a woman with a woman, huh?

Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.  Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes.  Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.  For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves.  They submitted themselves to their own husbands,  like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord.  You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.  Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.  ~I Peter 3:1-7  Again, absolutely no mention of men having husbands or women having wives.

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.  In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body.  “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”  This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.  However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.  ~Ephesians 5:22-33  Obviously, a couple of homosexual men or a couple of lesbians cannot be a symbol of the mystery between Christ and His church.

“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’  But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.  ~Matthew 5:31-32  Once again, Jesus' teaching is conclusively about husband and wife.