gay marriage revolution

Kim Riddlebarger posts these insights regarding the notion that gay mirage is much more than a social revolution. They are correct.

Rod Dreher's recent essay, "Sex After Christianity" is a must read(Sex After Christianity).

Dreher points out that

The magnitude of the defeat suffered by moral traditionalists will become ever clearer as older Americans pass from the scene. Poll after poll shows that for the young, homosexuality is normal and gay marriage is no big deal—except, of course, if one opposes it, in which case one has the approximate moral status of a segregationist in the late 1960s.

He concludes,

Gay marriage signifies the final triumph of the Sexual Revolution and the dethroning of Christianity because it denies the core concept of Christian anthropology. In classical Christian teaching, the divinely sanctioned union of male and female is an icon of the relationship of Christ to His church and ultimately of God to His creation. This is why gay marriage negates Christian cosmology, from which we derive our modern concept of human rights and other fundamental goods of modernity. Whether we can keep them in the post-Christian epoch remains to be seen.

Equally important is Peter Jones' response to Dreher's essay (A Response to Rod Dreher). Dr. Jones contends

The homosexual agenda is silencing every memory of behavior, speech, religious conviction, and public policy that reminds people that heterosexuality is the God-created norm for human sexuality. Anyone who adheres to such a heterosexual norm dares say so only at the risk of being arrested for discriminatory bullying.

He adds,

This old Western "Christian" world is indeed "coming apart" and in its place rises a "new world" of multi-sexual liberation, systematically promoted by both an ideological pagan Oneism and a determined elimination of the binary structure of theistic Twoism, which Scripture teaches is the way the world was made. Many in evangelicalism fail to see or refuse to see what is going on. Their superficial solutions only compound the problems.

pomosexual revolt

Doug Wilson's 7 Key Facts:

Facebook recently decided to let people configure their profile with an available list of any number of genders. For them to publish a master list of the available options would obviously be way too confining, but one estimate puts the available options at 58 or so. One example is cisgender, a word for someone who, for the most part, identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth. And they also have genderqueer, for example, but they don’t have demiguy, and one only wonders when the hatred will stop.

If your inclination is to think the world has gone crazy, you are right. But it is crazy with a logic to it. There are reasons for the pomosexual revolt. There are hidden drivers, and if you understand them, you will understand the central features of what is happening. Here are some of the key principles.

1. You become like what you worship. There are many places in Scripture where this principle is laid down, but I will cite only two. The first is negative, having to do with idolatry. “Their idols are silver and gold, The work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: Eyes have they, but they see not: They have ears, but they hear not: Noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands, but they handle not: Feet have they, but they walk not: Neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them; So is every one that trusteth in them” (Psalm 115:4–8). If you give yourself to the manufacture of idols that cannot see, cannot hear, cannot smell, cannot handle, cannot walk, and cannot speak, you are actually engaged in the process of becoming like a block of wood yourself. Adam’s rebellion wrecked our humanity, but there was still some of the image of God left. Idolatry is corrosive of that remaining humanity, perpetuating and accelerating the downward spiral. But the same principle applies to the restoration of the gospel, applying to those who have been brought by the Spirit into the worship of God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18, ESV).

2. The fundamental cultural choices are always a matter of “not whether, but which.” This connects to the first principle because all cultures will necessarily have an collective object of worship. Neutrality is an impossibility. As Dylan put it, in one of his lucid songs, “you gotta serve somebody.” It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you are going to go the way he says.

So the inescapable concept works this way. It is not whether we will impose a morality, but rather which morality we will impose. It is not whether our culture will have a God, but rather which God we will have. It is not whether we will have a shared, central organizing principle of ultimate value, but rather which shared, central organizing principle we will have.

We are seeing the effects of the transition from one principle to another on almost a daily basis. It is not a changing of the guards, it is a changing of the gods.

3. But nature just kind of is. I once saw a great t-shirt that said, “Gravity. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.” Reality, as it turns out, is not optional. Now by nature, I am not referring to anything that has autonomous or independent authority apart from its Creator — the Lord Jesus (John 1:3; Heb. 1:2; Col. 1:16). There is not a solitary atom in the created order of things that did not come off the lathe in the shop of the Lord Jesus.

When He made it, He made a particular universe, not another one, and He fixed the order of how things would go. He divided Heaven and earth, He divided the sea and dry land, and He divided night and day. At the pinnacle of His creation, He set up the ultimate distinction between male and female as a way of portraying the image of God in great glory (Gen. 1:27). After God painted the cosmos, He signed His name at the bottom — and a great deal of energy is being expended to get that signature off of there.

4. The unbelievers have an alternative story. They have a different account of nature. They believe that ultimate reality is infinitely malleable. Hydrogen is a gas that can take virtually any form. It all blew out of the Big Bang, and then over time turned into everything else. There is no fixity in the very nature of things, no givenness. It wasn’t given, it just happened. And if we can steer or direct these atoms in motion such that they wind up anywhere else, who should care? If everything changes, what’s the big deal with sex changes? They are conforming to their notion of ultimate reality, just as we are conforming to our understanding of ultimate reality. Their ultimate reality is matter in motion. Our ultimate reality is fatherhood (Eph. 3:15).

5. This means that the pomosexual account of the world and the believing account of the world are on a collision course. The two views of the nature of reality are mutually exclusive. They could be made consistent with one another if Christians dropped all claims about the cosmos, and the lordship of Christ over it, and retreated to the cozy spot of their faith community’s core values, or something equally treacley. But as long as Christians affirm creatio ex nihilo, and affirm that Jesus made the world, and that He has embedded His will in that natural world, and revealed His will in the Holy Bible, we will remain on that collision course. So long as we stand faithful, we are in the process of becoming enemies of the human race. We are talking about their version of the human race, of course, and we might as well admit it cheerfully. We are enemies of that vision.

6. Sometimes crime and punishment are identical. Some sins implode, collapsing in on themselves. “Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after” (1 Tim. 5:24). Some sins are revealed for what they were at the Day of Judgment, with the sin having been committed in time and in history, and the judgment falling later (Rev. 20:12-13; Rom. 2:6). Men will in fact be judged at the end of history. But some sins are also judged in the midst of history. If a man secretly embezzles money from his boss, he might not ever get caught in the course of his lifetime. But if he becomes a meth addict, judgments start to fall hot and heavy right now, and we don’t have to wait until the Last Day for those consequences to start happening. God is not mocked. A man reaps what he sows — but some crops ripen quickly. Some crops ripen now.

In Romans 1, we are taught that homosexuality is not a sin that brings about a penalty later. Those who go this direction receive “in themselves” the penalty of their error. Those who rush headlong into this sin are doing so because they are under the judgment of God already. The wrath of God is manifested in how He gives them up. America is not behaving in a way that will incur the future judgment of God. Rather, America behaved at some point in the past in such a way that we are under the judgment of God now.

And judgments are lifted when men repent. That’s how it works. That’s the only way it works.

7. A necessary hostility exists between the two visions of humanity. God established the antithesis between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent at the beginning of our history (Gen. 3:15), and this is the way it necessarily is. We believe that 58 genders is bizarre, the kind of thing that only an intellectual could believe. They find it strange when we refuse to plunge into the same flood of dissipation with them. “With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you;” (1 Peter 4:4, ESV). Idolaters don’t know what they are doing, but they still like what they are doing. They rejoice in the work of their hands (Acts 7:41). Not only so, but they are mortally offended when we do not join right in.

So, in sum, worship is central, and shapes what we are becoming. The political ramifications of this law of worship are given to us in an inescapable choice — not whether, but which. One of the reasons we must choose rightly is that nature – the way things actually are — is fixed in its place by the Word of God. “For he spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” (Ps. 33:9). But unbelievers don’t believe that the words of Almighty God created anything, much less with the result that they made everything “stand fast.” This means that two mutually exclusive views of reality are contending for the same public space. As we conduct this battle, we must remember that our adversaries are rotting away from the inside out. If we win, they lose. If they win, then they lose forever and ever. So we must contend with them, but in a way that offers them a standing amnesty at any time. Every last human being that God has recruited for His new humanity was drawn from the ranks of that disintegrating and wrecked humanity, and God intends to do a lot more of that before He is done. But this love that we have for our enemies does not erase the fact that they are our enemies. The hostility embedded in the antithesis is there necessarily. It was appointed by the words of the Lord.

missing the larger point

Jordan Ballor does some good thinking on the thinking of others regarding the Ham-Nye debate. He writes:

I’ve often been confused that Christians of a more liberal bent, whether theological, political, or otherwise, come across as far friendlier and more aligned with their secular counterparts than fellow believers of a more conservative, traditionalist, or (gasp!) fundamentalist disposition. Try to find a progressive or liberal Christian professing unity (mystical, spiritual, or otherwise) with someone like Jerry Falwell. I’d be glad to see an instance of it. The same is true, by the by, for many more conservative Christians. They are far more amenable to the likes of a professed atheist or agnostic secular conservative than many progressives.

Then quotes this brilliant point from Alvin Plantinga:

In this connection, consider the despised creationists, who believe that the world is only ten thousand years old: they are ignorant, pitifully ignorant about when God created the world. From the point of view of the model, this ignorance pales into utter insignificance compared with that of many of their cultured detractors, who foolishly believe that there is no God and thus (naturally enough) are ignorant of the vastly more important fact that the world was, indeed, created by God.

atheism

Thanks to Amy Hall for summarizing a New York Times interview with Alvin Plantinga:

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga made a few quotable points in an interview posted by the New York Times on Sunday.

On the claim that lack of evidence for theism is evidence for atheism:

Lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism. 

In the same way, the failure of the theistic arguments, if indeed they do fail, might conceivably be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism. Atheism, like even-star-ism, would presumably be the sort of belief you can hold rationally only if you have strong arguments or evidence.

On whether or not the existence of imperfections in the world is evidence against God:

I suppose your thinking is that it is suffering and sin that make this world less than perfect. But then your question makes sense only if the best possible worlds contain no sin or suffering. And is that true? Maybe the best worlds contain free creatures some of whom sometimes do what is wrong. Indeed, maybe the best worlds contain a scenario very like the Christian story. 

Think about it: The first being of the universe, perfect in goodness, power and knowledge, creates free creatures. These free creatures turn their backs on him, rebel against him and get involved in sin and evil. Rather than treat them as some ancient potentate might — e.g., having them boiled in oil — God responds by sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that human beings might once more be in a right relationship to God. God himself undergoes the enormous suffering involved in seeing his son mocked, ridiculed, beaten and crucified. And all this for the sake of these sinful creatures. 

I’d say a world in which this story is true would be a truly magnificent possible world. It would be so good that no world could be appreciably better. But then the best worlds contain sin and suffering.

On the atheist argument that “we no longer need God to explain the world”:

Some atheists seem to think that a sufficient reason for atheism is the fact (as they say) that we no longer need God to explain natural phenomena — lightning and thunder for example. We now have science. 

As a justification of atheism, this is pretty lame. We no longer need the moon to explain or account for lunacy; it hardly follows that belief in the nonexistence of the moon (a-moonism?) is justified. A-moonism on this ground would be sensible only if the sole ground for belief in the existence of the moon was its explanatory power with respect to lunacy. (And even so, the justified attitude would be agnosticism with respect to the moon, not a-moonism.) The same thing goes with belief in God: Atheism on this sort of basis would be justified only if the explanatory power of theism were the only reason for belief in God. And even then, agnosticism would be the justified attitude, not atheism.

On the problem with believing in both materialism and evolution:

[I]f there are only material entities, then atheism certainly follows. But there is a really serious problem for materialism: It can’t be sensibly believed, at least if, like most materialists, you also believe that humans are the product of evolution…. The belief that both materialism and evolution are true…can’t rationally be held.

Read the rest of the interview to find out why.

world-view clash

Summary - how do we know anything at all?

Here is Al Mohler's take on the Nye-Ham debate:

Last night’s debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham attracted a huge international audience and no shortage of controversy—even before it began. Bill Nye, whose main media presence is as “The Science Guy,” and Ken Ham, co-founder of Answers in Genesis and founder of the Creation Museum, squared off in a true debate over one of the most important questions that the human mind can contemplate. That is no small achievement.

I enjoyed a front row seat at the debate, which took place even as a major winter storm raged outside, dumping considerable amounts of snow and ice and causing what the local police announced as a “Class Two” weather emergency. Inside the Creation Museum there was quite enough heat, and the debate took place without a hitch. Thankfully, it also took place without acrimony.

The initial controversy about the debate centered in criticism of Bill Nye for even accepting the invitation. Many evolutionary scientists, such as Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, refuse to debate the issue, believing that any public debate offers legitimacy to those who deny evolution. Nye was criticized by many leading evolutionists, who argued publicly that nothing good could come of the debate.

Interestingly, this points back to the famous debates over evolution that took place in nineteenth century England, when Anglican churchmen faced early evolutionary scientists in (mostly) civil public exchanges. Back then, it was the churchmen who were criticized by their peers for participation in the debate. Now, the table has turned, indicating something of the distance between the intellectual conditions then and now.

Of course, Bill Nye might have felt some moral obligation to debate the question, since he had launched a unilateral attack on creationist parents in a video that went viral last year. In that video, Nye told creationist parents:

“[I]f you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine, but don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.”

But if Nye had launched the attack, he did not arrive at the debate in a defensive mode. A protege of the late Carl Sagan and the current CEO of the Planetary Society, Nye was in full form last night, wearing his customary bow-tie, and immaculately dressed in a very expensive suit. He took notes with a very fine writing instrument. I like his style.

Ken Ham is a veteran debater on the issue of origins, and he was clearly prepared for the debate. Ham’s arguments were tight and focused, and his demeanor was uniformly calm and professional. The format allowed for a full expression of both arguments, along with spirited exchanges and questions submitted from the audience. What the 150 minute event lacked was any requirement that the debaters answer each other’s questions. That would have changed the way the debate concluded.

The central question of the debate was this: “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?” Ham stuck to the question tenaciously. Nye, on the other hand, tried to personalize the debate and kept changing the question from creation to “Ken Ham’s creationism.” Ham was unfazed, and kept to his argument.

As the debate began, it was clear that Ham and Nye do not even agree on definitions. The most friction on definition came when Nye rejected Ham’s distinction between “historical science” and “observational science” out of hand. Nye maintained his argument that science is a unitary method, without any distinction between historical and observational modes. Ham pressed his case that science cannot begin without making certain assumptions about the past, which cannot be observed. Furthermore, Ham rightly insisted that observational science generally does not require any specific commitment to a model of historical science. In other words, both evolutionists and creationists do similar experimental science, and sometimes even side-by-side.

Nye’s main presentation contained a clear rejection of biblical Christianity. At several points in the debate, he dismissed the Bible’s account of Noah and the ark as unbelievable. Oddly, he even made this a major point in his most lengthy argument. As any informed observer would have anticipated, Nye based his argument on the modern consensus and went to the customary lines of evidence, from fossils to ice rods. Ham argued back with fossil and geological arguments of his own. Those portions of the debate did not advance the arguments much past where they were left in the late nineteenth century, with both sides attempting to keep score by rocks and fossils.

In this light, the debate proved both sides right on one central point: If you agreed with Bill Nye you would agree with his reading of the evidence. The same was equally true for those who entered the room agreeing with Ken Ham; they would agree with his interpretation of the evidence.

That’s because the argument was never really about ice rods and sediment layers. It was about the most basic of all intellectual presuppositions: How do we know anything at all? On what basis do we grant intellectual authority? Is the universe self-contained and self-explanatory? Is there a Creator, and can we know him?

On those questions, Ham and Nye were separated by infinite intellectual space. They shared the stage, but they do not live in the same intellectual world. Nye is truly committed to a materialistic and naturalistic worldview. Ham is an evangelical Christian committed to the authority of the Bible. The clash of ultimate worldview questions was vividly displayed for all to see.

When asked how matter came to exist and how consciousness arose, Nye responded simply and honestly: “I don’t know.” Responding to the same questions, Ham went straight to the Bible, pointing to the Genesis narrative as a full and singular answer to these questions. Nye went on the attack whenever Ham cited the Bible, referring to the implausibility of believing what he kept describing as “Ken Ham’s interpretation of a 3,000 year old book translated into American English.”

To Bill Nye, the idea of divine revelation is apparently nonsensical. He ridiculed the very idea.

This is where the debate was most important. Both men were asked if any evidence could ever force them to change their basic understanding. Both men said no. Neither was willing to allow for any dispositive evidence to change their minds. Both operate in basically closed intellectual systems. The main problem is that Ken Ham knows this to be the case, but Bill Nye apparently does not. Ham was consistently bold in citing his confidence in God, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and in the full authority and divine inspiration of the Bible. He never pulled a punch or hid behind an argument. Nye seems to believe that he is genuinely open to any and all new information, but it is clear that his ultimate intellectual authority is the prevailing scientific consensus. More than once he asserted a virtually unblemished confidence in the ability of modern science to correct itself. He steadfastly refused to admit that any intellectual presuppositions color his own judgment.

But the single most defining moments in the debate came as Bill Nye repeatedly cited the “reasonable man” argument in his presentation and responses. He cited Adolphe Quetelet’s famed l’homme moyen—“a reasonable man”—as the measure of his intellectual authority. Writing in 1835, Quetelet, a French intellectual, made his “reasonable man” famous. The “reasonable man” is a man of intellect and education and knowledge who can judge evidence and arguments and function as an intellectual authority on his own two feet. The “reasonable man” is a truly modern man. Very quickly, jurists seized on the “reasonable man” to define the law and lawyers used him to make arguments before juries. A “reasonable man” would interpret the evidence and make a reasoned judgment, free from intellectual pressure.

Bill Nye repeatedly cited the reasonable man in making his arguments. He is a firm believer in autonomous human reason and the ability of the human intellect to solve the great problems of existence without any need of divine revelation. He spoke of modern science revealing “what we all can know” as it operates on the basis of natural laws. As Nye sees it, Ken Ham has a worldview, but Nye does not. He referred to “Ken Ham’s worldview,” but claimed that science merely provides knowledge. He sees himself as the quintessential “reasonable man,” and he repeatedly dismissed Christian arguments as “not reasonable.”

In an unexpected turn, near the end of the event, Nye even turned to make an argument against Christianity on grounds of theodicy. He asked Ham if it was “reasonable” to believe that God had privileged a personal revelation that was not equally accessible to all. Nye’s weakest argument had to do with his claim—made twice—that billions of religious people accept modern science. He provided a chart that included vast millions of adherents of other world religions and announced that they are religious but accept modern science. That is nonsense, of course. At least it is nonsense if he meant to suggest that these billions believe in evolution. That is hardly the case. Later, he lowered his argument to assert that these billions of people use modern technology. So, of course, do creationists. There are few facilities in the world more high-tech than the Creation Museum.

Nye is clearly not a fan of theistic evolution, since he argued that a purely natural argument should be quite enough for the “reasonable man.” He seemed to affirm a methodological agnosticism, since he sees the question of a “higher power” or “spiritual being” to be one of little intellectual consequence. He did argue that nature is a closed system and that natural selection can allow for absolutely no supernatural interference or influence. In this respect, he sounded much like Stephen Hawking, who has argued that God may exist, but that there is nothing for him to do.

Ken Ham is a Young Earth Creationist (as am I), but the larger argument was over worldviews, and the debate revealed the direct collision between evolution and the recognition of any historical authority within Genesis 1-11. As if to make that clear, in making one of his closing arguments, Bill Nye actually went back to cite “this problem of the ark.”

The ark is not the real problem; autonomous human reason is. Bill Nye is a true believer in human reason and the ability of modern science to deliver us. Humanity is just “one germ away” from extinction, he said. But science provides him with the joy of discovery and understanding.

The problem with autonomous human reason is made clear by the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 1:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Rom 1:18-23 ESV).

The problem with human reason is that it, along with every other aspect of our humanity, was corrupted by the fall. This is what theologians refer to as the “noetic effects of the fall.” We have not lost the ability to know all things, but we have lost the ability to know them on our own authority and power. We are completely dependent upon divine revelation for the answers to the most important questions of life. Our sin keeps us from seeing what is right before our eyes in nature. We are dependent upon the God who loves us enough to reveal himself to us—and to give us his Word.

As it turns out, the reality and authority of divine revelation, more than any other issue, was what the debate last night was all about. As the closing statements made very clear, Ken Ham understood that fact, but Bill Nye did not.

The central issue last night was really not the age of the earth or the claims of modern science. The question was not really about the ark or sediment layers or fossils. It was about the central worldview clash of our times, and of any time: the clash between the worldview of the self-declared “reasonable man” and the worldview of the sinner saved by grace.

ham and guy

Thoughtful insight by Mike Wittmer (I also did not watch the debate):

I did not see the debate last night between Ken Ham and The Science Guy, but I did see many posts on Twitter and Facebook and read the USA Today story in this morning’s paper. Many Christians rightly point out that Ham wrongly thinks the only orthodox way to read Genesis 1 is the way he reads it, but in their (often scornful) posts they may be missing a more fundamental point.

USA Today quotes Bill Nye saying to Ham, “Your assertion that there is some difference between the natural laws that I observe today and the natural laws of 4,000 years ago is extraordinary and unsettling.”

This is roughly the same point that Abraham Kuyper made 100 years ago. Kuyper said there are two kinds of scientists in the world, normalists and abnormalists. Normalists such as Bill Nye believe the world they see behaves in the same way it always has. Abnormalists believe there has been a cataclysmic, catastrophic Fall that has dramatically damaged our world. We don’t know all the ways the Fall has changed our world, but we must believe it did.

Poor Bill Nye. He is observing an accident scene and doesn’t even know there has been an accident. And poor us, if we think that our more enlightened reading of Genesis 1 will earn any more respect from him. If you are a Christian who believes what the Bible says about a historical Adam and a historical Fall, then though you may not agree with Ham’s overly narrow reading, you must still agree that he is on your team. He may be naïve on some of his details, but his theological instincts are Kuyperian (which is a sophisticated way of saying he’s right).

made in his image

Trevin Wax posts some quotes on God's image.

“The most distinctive feature of the biblical understanding of man is the teaching that man has been created in the image of God.” - Anthony Hoekema

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.” - C. S. Lewis

“To live was to enjoy – when every faculty was in its perfection, amidst abundance of objects which infinite wisdom had purposely suited to it… when he was at full liberty to enjoy either the Creator or the creation – to indulge in rivers of pleasure, ever new, ever pure, from any mixture of pain.” - John Wesley

“Leave the works in one class. Consider one as good as another. Fear God, and be just, as has been said. And then do whatever comes before you. This way all will be well done even though it is no more than loading manure or driving a mule.” - Martin Luther

“The great God of the universe who heaped up the mountains, scooped out the oceans, and flung out the stars wants to have a relationship with you.” - Adrian Rogers

“This sense of being made in God’s image calls us all constantly to look for it in others and to do what we can to help them acknowledge it and to realize it by joining in worship. We thereby carry to others the answer to their inmost longing, a yearning for union with the Trinity, a thirst to respond with adoration to the God who made them.” - Marva Dawn

same-sex parenting

A lengthy and challenging piece by Robert Oscar Lopez:

Single-parenting and divorce have always been understood as a breakdown of the married mom and dad ideal, but the demand to view same-sex parenting as “normal” imposes a silence on children about the wound caused by the loss of one parent or the other.

Emotional abuse can be as bad as physical abuse. Any young person who’s heard the words, “I wish you were never born,” understands that adults can inflict tremendous damage on their dependents without leaving the slightest bruise. One of the worst parts of abuse is society’s refusal to see the injustice. Emotional abuse is particularly difficult because it is invisible and therefore ripe for denial.

It is worse still to feel “abandoned” by a community that views the cruelty inside a child’s home and does nothing. When told by everyone in the vicinity that what’s happening is normal and no cause to be aggrieved (even worse, a reason to be grateful), the natural instinct of the child is to blame herself for revealing the effects of mistreatment, in addition to the primal trauma of the mistreatment itself. The situation is much worse if outsiders who intervene, such as doctors, school officials, cousins, or legal authorities, side with the guardians.

After having spent the last year involved in the debate about same-sex parenting, I can say the following with great confidence: both sides of the same-sex marriage debate are afraid of naming child abuse by same-sex couples. The issue is so raw and painful that even critics of same-sex parenting are scared to go there.

Pro-SSM people say gays have been unfairly stereotyped as child abusers, so any discussion of gay child abusers is adding to their oppression. Anti-SSM commentators generally don’t want the added fuss of showing up on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of homophobes. So a general pattern emerges: even when you critique same-sex parenting, you must never do so in terms that sound accusatory or equate homosexuality with child abuse.

Let’s be clear: I am not saying that same-sex parents are automatically guilty of any kind of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse to the children they raise. Nor am I saying that LGBT people are less likely to take good care of children.

What I mean is this: Even the most heroic mother in the world can’t father. So to intentionally deprive any child of her mother or father, except in cases like divorce for grave reasons or the death of a parent, is itself a form of abuse. (Though my mother raised me with the help of a lesbian partner, I do not feel I was abused, because I always knew that my mother didn’t intend for my father to divorce her.)

This holds true not only for same-sex parenting, but for any choice to parent a child in a less-than-ideal setting for a less-than-grave reason. It’s abuse, for example, for a single parent to adopt a child when many other equally good two-parent homes are available. It’s abuse for parents to divorce simply for reasons related to their own emotional happiness. It’s abuse for LGBT couples to create children through IVF and then deprive them of a mother or father.

Media Tip-Toeing Around Abuse

Two recent pieces in the Washington Post and the New York Times last month are noteworthy, because both broke the silence on the downsides of same-sex parenting but still carefully avoided the word “abuse.”

After months of presenting a whitewashed portrait of same-sex parenting, thePost finally ran a letter from Tommy Valentine of Alexandra, Virginia, warning the proponents of homosexual adoption that “A child is not a commodity to be coveted, like the car or house,” and “Even with an ‘open adoption’ arrangement with his birth mother, Kyler [the adoptee] is being deprived of the unique, irreplaceable impact of a life with a mother and father.”

Three days later the New York Times ran a self-reflective piece by Frank Litgvoet, a gay man who is raising two adopted children with his male partner, titled “The Misnomer of Motherless Parenting.” Litgvoet deserves tremendous praise for being willing to name the integral flaw in same-sex parenting, despite how promising it looks to gay adults:

Being a “motherless” child in an open adoption is not as simple as it looks, because there is a birth mother, who walks in and walks out of the lives of our children. And when she is not physically there, she is—as we know from many accounts of adult adoptees—still present in dreams, fantasies, longings and worries. . . . 

When the mother walks into the lives of our kids it is mostly a wonderful experience. It is harder for them when she walks out, not only because of the sad goodbye of a beloved adult, but also because it triggers the difficult and painful question of why she walked out in the first place.

I was impressed with Litvgoet’s honesty. I do not want to criticize him too much when I am sure that some in the LGBT lobby are going to decry him for handing too much “ammunition” to the critics of same-sex parenting. It takes great courage to admit that there is a lack in his daughter’s world, which cannot be filled with political dogma or crusades against homophobia. Every child has a mother and father, and when that figure is missing, there is a narrative that is experienced as pain, loss, and at times shame.

To appreciate the heroism in Litvgoet’s breaking of silence, we must first step back and take stock of how much silence there is and how much harm it does.

Whereas single parenting and divorce have always been understood as a breakdown of the married mom and dad ideal, same-sex parenting is now being elevated as normal. Were changing views of same-sex parenting based on a natural, organic process of cultural adaptation, that would be fine, but instead views are being coercively changed through a same-sex marriage movement—most recently by Supreme Court judicial fiat.

“Normalization” demands a kind of silence from multiple parties in a child’s life. The child’s lost biological parent(s) must keep a distance or disappear to allow two gay adults to play the role of parent. Extended family must avoid asking intrusive questions and shouldn’t show any disapproval through facial expressions or gestures. Schools and community associations have to downplay their celebrations of fatherhood or motherhood (even canceling Father’s Day and Mother’s Day in favor of “Parenting Day”). The media have to engage in a massive propaganda campaign, complete with Disney productions featuring lesbian moms, to stifle any objections or worries. Nobody must challenge the gay parents’ claim that all is being done for love.

Does the silence of so many surrounding parties reverse the sense of loss? No. The child still feels the loss, but learns to remain silent about it because her loss has become a taboo, a site of repression, rather than a site for healing and reconstruction. The abuse comes full circle.

The fact that a gay father in the New York Times is willing to drop the façade and admit that there is something amiss is cause for hope. But Litvgoet’s piece in the Times backtracks by the end and encases his realization within the standard euphemisms that have made same-sex parenting advocates so frustrating over the years:

Gay parents, trained to deal with those forces, should be aware of the effect on their children. What these questions do touches on a vulnerability in the children’s identity, the identity of the motherless child. The outside world says time and again—not in a negative way, but matter-of-factly—you are not like us. We have to give our kids the chance to give voice to that vulnerability, and to acknowledge the sad and complicated feelings of being different. (And show the pride in that as well.)

On the one hand it is good to allow children the chance to “give voice” to such feelings of pain and loss, and I am proud of Litvgoet for not immediately blaming everything on prejudice. But he still cannot process his own responsibility for what is, in essence, child abuse. Like all the saccharine, smiling liberals who have driven me crazy since I was a two-year-old raised by a lesbian mom, he acknowledges the child’s pain just enough to occasion a later disappointment when he and his allies will likely refuse to rectify it. He concedes a few points about “feelings” while still asserting an unquestionable ownership: “our kids,” with a parenthetical about “pride in that.” Kids can read between the lines. They’ll know that what’s in the parenthesis is the part that the guardian is insisting on—in other words, you must be proud of what’s been done to you, even when it hurts.

Problems with Same-Sex Parenting Testimonials

In a recent heart-to-heart talk with Dawn Stefanowicz, a Canadian woman who was raised by her gay father, she and I lamented that many children of same-sex couples will never speak openly about how unfair it was to be denied a mother or father.

Dawn’s experience resembles mine: most kids of gay parents we know are struggling with sexual identity issues, recovering from emotional abuse, fighting drug addictions, or are so wounded by their childhood that they lack the stability to go public and face the onslaught from an increasingly totalitarian gay lobby, which refuses to admit that there’s anything wrong.

Mark Regnerus’s study, published a year ago, brought brief attention to adults who were coping with the aftereffects of vexed childhoods under gay parents. In the months following Regnerus’s study, Dawn and I barely had time to have a public conversation about our struggles, because the LGBT lobby immediately wanted to redirect attention to the debates that mattered to them: their “right” to marry, the fact that they were capable of “loving” children, and their sense that they were being “bullied” by Regnerus. For many kids of same-sex couples, this was a familiar experience: we only count when we make gay people look good.

Otherwise, we must shut up.

Same-sex parenting advocates have the advantage of handpicking their success stories, who are sure to receive fulsome accolades for expressing their joy at having gay parents. Those who interrogate same-sex parenting have a corresponding disadvantage. Same-sex parenting has been efficient at traumatizing the inhabitants of its dark side, rendering them frightened and mute, so nobody will ever know about it.

The existence of a venomous LGBT lobby capable of all-out emotional warfare against anybody who doubts same-sex parenting is of course a great help to the cause.

When I was in France, a pediatric psychiatrist with decades of experience told me that he has been working with a severely traumatized woman who was raised by two homosexuals. He wanted her to go public alongside me at the March 24 rally in Paris, but he dared not test her fortitude: “She is still too weak,” he told me. He could not, as her physician, permit her the risks of being a public figure.

Dawn and I are left with a dilemma: it seems we are the only two children of LGBT parents who are old enough to articulate what is wrong with same-sex parenting, independent enough to view our upbringing critically, and strong enough to deal with the LGBT lobby’s vitriol.

Cut the Charades

Like divorce and single parenting, same-sex parenting isn’t merely controversial or untested; we know that children have poorer life outcomes when they are raised outside a married biological-parent household. The data we have, thanks to the work of scholars like Regnerus, make it all the more clear that it’s abusive to force children to live without a mother or father simply to satisfy adult desires.

Moreover, anyone who supports same-sex parenting in spite of these data is complicit in child abuse. This is true, for example, of pediatricians, sociologists, and psychologists who justify same-sex parenting by pointing tovague metrics like “emotional well-being” or “willingness to communicate.”

That they hide their complicity behind their PhDs makes complicity even less excusable.

Doug Mainwaring and I have been working on ways to distinguish between gay parents and same-sex parenting. A gay parent in a male-female marriage or a single gay parent is better, in our view, than a same-sex couple raising a child, because the elements of abuse are missing in the first two scenarios.

In the first scenario, the child has a mom and a dad even if one of them is gay. In the second scenario, there is no charade of replacement, no pretenses that one or two unrelated homosexual parents are to receive the equivalent love and respect that a child would show to his mom and dad. The coercion involved in “same-sex parenting,” and the silencing of any recognition that a loss has occurred, is elemental in making same-sex parenting homes abusive.

Worst of all is a same-sex parenting home that arose because two homosexuals contrived the situation knowingly, in order to experience parenting. These are cases in which divorce was initiated by a gay spouse, with the explicit goal of setting up a new gay parenting household, and then custody was transferred (often in an ugly family court process). Or where lesbians went to a sperm bank. Or where two homosexuals began a lifelong relationship with the intent of adopting and then sought adoption on-demand. Or worst of all, two gay men engaged in a surrogacy contract with a woman who sold them her baby.

Many gay parenting advocates say these are more noble scenarios since they “wanted” the child, but they are wrong. They imposed their vision ruthlessly on a helpless being and then extorted gratitude. The false equivalency used in order to make the child “love” a second parent of the same sex is coerced and injurious.

In the household irreversibly alienated from constitutive rituals like Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, it is abusive to tell the child it was all for her own good and she shouldn’t listen to her own feelings, nor her peers, neighbors, or any moral authorities on TV who praise motherhood or fatherhood.

It is abusive to tell a child, “We are your moms” or “we are your dads,” and then expect the child never to feel the loss of such important icons, in addition to the injury of having been severed from at least one, and possibly both, biological parents—not because it was necessary, but because the two adults insisted on the arrangement. The lessons children learn from this undermine selfhood: might makes right, little people are subject to the whims of self-serving parents, and powerful people can impose “love” on weaker beings with money or political influence over adoption agencies, family courts, sperm banks, and surrogate mothers.

None of these problems would arise if we lived in a world where gay people saw children not as a commodity for purchase but rather as an obligation requiring sacrifices (i.e., you give up your gay partner instead of making your kid give up a parent of the opposite sex, because you’re the adult.)

When the child begins to ask, “why don’t I have a mom?” or “why don’t I have a dad?” the abuse grows, for the gay “parents” will likely respond with an answer that protects them from criticism but disallows the child’s recognition of hurt feelings.

Consider what Rob Watson wrote in the Huffington Post in an open letter to Justice Anthony Kennedy:

If you come, you will meet my 10-year-old sons, who will likely impress you, given how personable, articulate, polite and bright they are. You might ask, as many people we meet do, if they are twins. The answer will be, “They are ‘almost-twins’: Their birthdays are four months apart.” That will bring a “huh, come again?” look, and I will explain how I adopted them as babies from different drug-addicted birth mothers through foster care.

If Watson’s standard routine in explaining his situation to strangers is to highlight the fact that his two ten-year-olds came from “drug-addicted birth mothers,” it is possible that he has been explaining it this way to his own sons for years. He wouldn’t be the first gay dad I’ve heard say to an adoptee, “you don’t have a mom because your moms were drug addicts and I was the only one who wanted you.” That’s emotional abuse at its worst.

Watson’s glib narrative is reflective of the larger genre of same-sex parenting manifestoes. For a movement like the LGBT lobby, which grew out of a desire for openness, the silences imposed on children of same-sex couples are criminally hypocritical. Kids have a clear, specific script to follow when outsiders ask where they come from—don’t mention the sperm bank, don’t mention the woman who sold you, don’t talk about the ugly divorce from five years ago, don’t …. Just don’t talk. Just shut up and smile. Say you like this.Otherwise, bad things will happen. You’ll go back to being an unloved being with nobody willing to put up with you any more.

After a year of being in this game, I have grown wary of strategy. I don’t have a silver bullet tactic for suddenly making low-information Americans aware that all the same-sex parenting propaganda—and more broadly our growing acceptance of non-traditional parenting—is really a cover for systematic abuse. My hunch, however, is that it might be time simply to drop all the masks, put away our strategies, and just state the uncensored truth.

If you think child abuse is wrong, then say so.

the beginning

A thought on the primordial ooze ...


Science Fiction - Animated Version | By Douglas Wilson.

creation story

In response to the creation challenge, Alan Shlemon provides a good explanation of the problems with the question as posed. It would have been good had he taken more time to explore the merits of the Judeo-Christian account. But this is good nonetheless.

creation challenge

Amy Hall posts this interesting challenge: Your Creation Story Is Just Another Myth. I find it amazing how some easily accept the science theory and reject the Judeo-Christian thought as mythical. I think those buying science demonstrate tremendous faith. Yet I'm not good at articulating my rationale. What do you think?

historical adam

I believe that believing in a historical Adam has salvific relevance. Kevin DeYoung outlines 10 reasons to believe in a historical Adam:

In recent years, several self-proclaimed evangelicals, or those associated with evangelical institutions, have called into question the historicity of Adam and Eve. It is said that because of genomic research we can no longer believe in a first man called Adam from whom the entire human race has descended.

I’ll point to some books at the end which deal with the science end of the question, but the most important question is what does the Bible teach. Without detailing a complete answer to that question, let me suggest ten reasons why we should believe that Adam was a true historical person and the first human being.

1. The Bible does not put an artificial wedge between history and theology. Of course, Genesis is not a history textbook or a science textbook, but that is far from saying we ought to separate the theological wheat from the historical chaff. Such a division owes to the Enlightenment more than the Bible.
2. The biblical story of creation is meant to supplant other ancient creation stories more than imitate them. Moses wants to show God’s people “this is how things really happened.” The Pentateuch is full of warnings against compromise with the pagan culture. It would be surprising, then, for Genesis to start with one more mythical account of creation like the rest of the ANE.
3. The opening chapters of Genesis are stylized, but they show no signs of being poetry. Compare Genesis 1 with Psalm 104, for example, and you’ll see how different these texts are. It’s simply not accurate to call Genesis poetry. And even if it were, who says poetry has to be less historically accurate?
4. There is a seamless strand of history from Adam in Genesis 2 to Abraham in Genesis 12. You can’t set Genesis 1-11 aside as prehistory, not in the sense of being less than historically true as we normally understand those terms. Moses deliberately connects Abram with all the history that comes before him, all the way back to Adam and Eve in the garden.
5. The genealogies in 1 Chronicles 1 and Luke 3 treat Adam as historical.
6. Paul believed in a historical Adam (Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:21-22, 45-49). Even some revisionists are honest enough to admit this; they simply maintain that Paul (and Luke) were wrong.
7. The weight of the history of interpretation points to the historicity of Adam. The literature of second temple Judaism affirmed an historical Adam. The history of the church’s interpretation also assumes it.
8. Without a common descent we lose any firm basis for believing that all people regardless of race or ethnicity have the same nature, the same inherent dignity, the same image of God, the same sin problem, and that despite our divisions we are all part of the same family coming from the same parents.
9. Without a historical Adam, Paul’s doctrine of original sin and guilt does not hold together.
10. Without a historical Adam, Paul’s doctrine of the second Adam does not hold together.

Christians may disagree on the age of the earth, but whether Adam ever existed is a gospel issue. Tim Keller is right:

[Paul] most definitely wanted to teach us that Adam and Eve were real historical figures. When you refuse to take a biblical author literally when he clearly wants you to do so, you have moved away from the traditional understanding of the biblical authority. . . .If Adam doesn’t exist, Paul’s whole argument—that both sin and grace work ‘covenantally’—falls apart. You can’t say that ‘Paul was a man of his time’ but we can accept his basic teaching about Adam. If you don’t believe what he believes about Adam, you are denying the core of Paul’s teaching. (Christianity Today June 2011)

If you want to read more about the historical Adam debate, check out Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? by C. John Collins. ...

proper view

"All inadequate doctrines of the atonement are due to inadequate doctrines of God and man. If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to his, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical salvation to secure it. When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God, and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely ‘hell-deserving sinners’, then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before." ~ John Stott, The Cross of Christ

HT:OFI

body fat

oh my ... this hits home ...

freedom

A repost on Freedom ...

Robert Banks, in Paul's Idea of Community, proffers that for the Apostle Paul freedom consists of three main components:

Independence

• from certain things, e.g., sin, the Law, death, and alien powers
• for certain things, e.g., righteousness, conformity to Jesus, and suffering
• resulting in a personal and life-giving experience of liberty

Dependence

• upon Christ, who terminated humanity's enslavement through his death and resurrection
• upon the Spirit, who communicates Christ's life and purpose as a received divine gift rather than innate possibility

Interdependence

• with others, since liberty leads to service and can only be practically defined in relation to their needs
• with the world, since the universe itself will experience the liberty of transformation along with those who are Christ's
• giving liberty a social and cosmic, as well as personal and theocentric, dimension

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. - 2 Cor 3.17

america

RT @JohnPiper: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men were created." America's foundation: truth exists; humans are created.

I love that!

love is recovering people

Aside from the advertisement, this is a great 30 minute teaching by Dr. Robert Gagnon answering the question, "What Does the Bible Teach About Homosexuality?" It's worth your time - in particular because the principle taught applies to all sin and his focus on the Kingdom of God.

simplicity

"The highest form of sophistication is simplicity." ~ Bruce Lee

homophobic

"We have demonstrated our own form of homophobia—not in the way that activists have used that word, but in the sense that we have been afraid to face this issue where it is most difficult . . . face to face." Al Mohler, Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution (worth reading).

Brilliant as usual ... and he expands ...

In this most awkward cultural predicament, evangelicals must be excruciatingly clear that we do not speak about the sinfulness of homosexuality as if we have no sin. As a matter of fact, it is precisely because we have come to know ourselves as sinners and of our need for a savior that we have come to faith in Jesus Christ. Our greatest fear is not that homosexuality will be normalized and accepted, but that homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for Christ and the forgiveness of their sins. ...

We have often spoken about homosexuality in ways that are crude and simplistic. We have failed to take account of how tenaciously sexuality comes to define us as human beings. We have failed to see the challenge of homosexuality as a Gospel issue. We are the ones, after all, who are supposed to know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only remedy for sin, starting with our own.

moving from celebration to institutionalization

John Piper writes Thought on the New Calamity in response to recent changes in the US in regard to sin.

First his opener - what a powerful statement!!!

Jesus died so that heterosexual and homosexual sinners might be saved. Jesus created sexuality, and has a clear will for how it is to be experienced in holiness and joy.

He then speaks to those who have walked into sin.

For those who have forsaken God’s path of sexual fulfillment, and walked into homosexual intercourse or heterosexual extramarital fornication or adultery, Jesus offers astonishing mercy.

"Such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." (1 Corinthians 6:11)

And then he focusses us on the issue at hand:

My sense is that we do not realize what a calamity is happening around us. The new thing—new for America, and new for history—is not homosexuality. That brokenness has been here since we were all broken in the fall of man. (And there is a great distinction between the orientation and the act—just like there is a great difference between my orientation to pride and the act of boasting.)

What’s new is not even the celebration of homosexual sin. Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia. What’s new is normalization and institutionalization. This is the new calamity.

To which our response should be:

This is what I am writing for. Not political action, but love for the name of God and compassion for the city of destruction.

“My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law.” (Psalm 119:136)