1. What is our new and improved definition of marriage? If marriage is no longer a covenant between one man and one woman, then what is it?
2. What is the source of this new definition? It doesn’t come from the scriptures or tradition of any world religion. It doesn’t come from natural law (as most junior high boys could tell you, the possibility of gay penguins does not overturn the basic facts of biology). Are we grounding our new definition in social convention? If so, is that a suitable foundation, or have we just taken a giant leap down the slippery slope? If our definition of marriage is grounded in something as ephemeral as social norms, what happens when these social norms change?
3. While it is wrong to discriminate against homosexuals in most employment opportunities, the majority of our churches and religious organizations are constrained by the Word of God to not hire unrepentant, practicing homosexuals. Are we committed to provide an exception to these groups?
I continue to read and be saddened by the church's embrace of the homosexual agenda. To Wittmer's thrid point, we ought not discriminate but to embrace the legitimatizing of a sin is unconscionable. Listen to Tony Jone's infamous claim:
GLBTQ can live lives in accord with biblical Christianity (at least as much as any of us can!) and that their monogamy can and should be sanctioned and blessed by church and state.
What!?!?! Because we sin we should stop calling it sin for one group engaged in a specific sin. Even worse, we should bless it?!? It's interesting that many who embrace this kind of thinking also reject the atonement. Many well meaning brothers and sisters are sympathetic to the homosexual agenda but it is because they fail to grasp our fallenness and that redemption comes through the cross. They see any confrontation of sin as condemning as opposed to the Biblical reality that it is the beginning of freedom.
Paul tells us to flee specifically from sexual immorality because we were bought with a price (1 Cor 6.18-20). Does that make other forms of sin ok? Absolutely not. But there is particular attention paid to sexual sin. Those caught in and supporting these perversions do so because they suppress the truth (Rom 1.18-32). They do not honor God. They claim to be wise but instead they are foolish. And God gives them over to their impurity. Rather than seeing God for who He truly is and confronting our need for forgiveness of sin, they fail to acknowledge Him and become all the more debased.
What really angers me is that they become deceived such that, as Jones, they think confronting sin is hateful and condoning it is loving. This is the opposite of the God of the Bible who loves man, confronts his sin, and sets him free from it by His grace.
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