[Vision2020] Responsible for Moscow's Homosexual Sin: Evangelical Free, Bridge Bible Church, Trinity Baptist, Church of the Nazarene, Christian Life Center

Sun Jul 10 13:01:05 PDT 2005

Dearest New Man,

I have some burning theological questions.  

Since you are obviously among the great authorities on the meaning of the Bible (And who knows?  You may even be God's attorney here on earth and in her/his/its confidence), perhaps you will dutifully comment on the following:

Assume a Christ Church Cult member who is an attorney writes material like that which Brandon Steele posted recently (copy below), and which clearly states and urges/demands strict adherence to God's rules about marriage.  (I call your attention to the last paragraph:)

"Marriage is ordained by God, not man, and we are not free to tinker with its 
creation or dissolution in an effort to modify it to fit our arbitrary 
standards of what a marriage should be. It is not primarily a loving, caring 
and nurturing relationship which can be had by pairings other than husband 
and wife, nor is it a haven for family values. It is fundamentally a picture 
of Christ's relationship to and interaction with His Church (Eph. 5:22-32). 
While that marriage can never be dissolved because its head is perfect, 
divorce is allowed among men because of our hardness of heart (Mark 10:2-9).
Of course no-fault divorce laws should be repealed and repented of. When the 
marriage covenant is broken, it is a recognition that one of the spouses has 
committed grievous sin. Someone really incurs moral blame. The civil 
magistrate, as God's minister, has a duty to require that people honor the 
marriage covenant as God ordained it."

Where does a person who might write material such as this stand with God when his actions are diametrically opposed to what he has loudly represented/proclaimed as God's Law and has demanded of others strict allegiance thereto?

Suppose, after writing as above (and below), he then divorces his ill and pregnant wife.  Suppose he even schedules a remarriage before the issue of the pregnancy arrives and then reschedules so as to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

Will not God see such a man as the worst of the lying hypocrites?  When this man asks for forgiveness, will God forgive him knowing of his horrific insincerity -- especially with his hypocritical crowing about and insistence upon God's word but deliberately acting to the contrary?  What sin could be worse?  How could God believe that his plea for forgiveness is really sincere?

Suppose this man has charted this grossly, shamefully impious course with the connivance and consent of his pastor?  Will the pastor fare any better with God at end times?  Are they both now condemned to hell for their knowingly and willfully leading others astray from God's path while using God's words for their own personal, vainglorious gain?

On the secular side:

[1]  What person in their right mind would hire as an attorney one who has done such a dishonest, dishonorable, hypocritical thing?  Who could trust them with their confidences?  Who could believe in their integrity?

[2]  Does not the writings below and the subsequent actions of the author suggest that he may be in very dire need of a competent mental health practitioner?

[3]  And how will the new wife feel and fare, knowing that despite his alleged passionate religiosity, he cruelly ripped his previous marriage asunder because his former wife incurred his displeasure?

My dearest New Man, please bless us by giving us God's answer to the above questions!  (Also, please use a larger font so that those of us who are old and of dimmed vision can have the benefit of your wisdom.)

Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
deco at moscow.com

________________________________________________________________
"Guilty Marriages," a work by Gregory Dickison

As this is a bridal issue, it seemed good to write about the civil 
government's role in marriage. That's why this article is on divorce. No 
bridal issue would be complete without an article on divorce. Even in our 
day, there is no more solemn covenant entered among men than marriage. Yet 
the civil government has made it the easiest covenant to break.

Prior to 1969, the law took a fairly biblical view of marriage. It was a 
covenant between a man and a woman to take each other as husband and wife 
(the biblical definition of marriage was assumed by the statutes), which 
could be solemnized by a judge, a magistrate, the governor, a mayor, or a 
"priest or minister of the gospel of any denomination."[1] In other words, a 
minister of God. Annulments (making the marriage void ab initio) could only 
generally be granted if one of the spouses was already married, was 
incapable of giving consent, or if consent was obtained by fraud.[2] Married 
couples could only be divorced for reasons that were considered to be 
violations of the covenant: adultery, extreme physical or mental cruelty, 
wilful desertion, the husband's negligent failure to provide for his wife, 
or habitual intemperance which prevents the spouse from attending to 
business or causes great mental anguish.[3] These causes could not simply be 
asserted by a spouse. In order to obtain a divorce, the conduct had to be 
proven. The biblical roots of these statutes are evident. There is an 
amazing affinity between pre-1969 divorce laws and Chapter 24 of the 
Westminster Confession of Faith.

The modern concept of "no-fault" divorce has been with us less than 30 
years.[4] In 1969, then-governor of California Ronald Reagan (the great 
savior of the family) signed the first law taking the concept of covenant 
breaking out of divorce. Forty-five states followed suit within the next 
five years, and all 50 states currently have some type of no-fault divorce 
statute.[5] While most state codes still contain the "old" causes of action, 
they have been rendered dead letters by the no-fault provisions.

Typically, these laws use the phrase "irreconcilable differences." 
Irreconcilable differences are "those grounds which are determined by the 
court to be substantial reasons for not continuing the marriage and which 
make it appear that the marriage should be dissolved."[6] Obviously, this 
can mean anything, and that was exactly the intent of the law. Unlike the 
old system, a spouse need not offer any specific proof as to what the 
irreconcilable differences are. They simply need to be asserted, and the 
divorce will be granted. Even over the protestations of the other spouse.
With the advent of no-fault divorce, the marriage contract became the 
easiest legal contract to break. No other agreement between men could be 
broken with less formality or fewer legal consequences. The expressed design 
of no-fault divorce law was "to promote harmony and reduce fighting,"[7] 
particularly where children were involved (as if harmony can be increased in 
a process that is, by definition, inharmonious). But critics of the no-fault 
system counter that the actual result was an increase in the divorce rate 
and a casual and irresponsible attitude toward marriage and divorce. A move 
is currently underway in several states to repeal the no-fault statutes and 
return the concept of culpability to divorce.

Both sides of the debate are stacking up pragmatic arguments and waving the 
family values flag. The "no-faulters" claim that the statistical correlation 
between the divorce rate and no-fault statutes is negligible if not tenuous, 
that laws can't force people to stay together, that the costs of divorce 
will rise as spouse's spend more time litigating blame, that children will 
be caught in the middle of open war, and that if divorce is not readily 
available then people will opt to live together without matrimony rather 
than make a binding commitment. The "faulters" respond that no-fault laws 
have caused the divorce rate to skyrocket, that repealing them will 
encourage a greater sense of responsibility and commitment, that couples 
will have more incentive to work their problems out, and that the war over 
children rages on just as much now when deciding custody matters, and is no 
harder on them than the ultimate consequences of the divorce. Engaging these 
battles on pragmatic grounds have caused the real point of the war to be 
missed.

Marriage is ordained by God, not man, and we are not free to tinker with its 
creation or dissolution in an effort to modify it to fit our arbitrary 
standards of what a marriage should be. It is not primarily a loving, caring 
and nurturing relationship which can be had by pairings other than husband 
and wife, nor is it a haven for family values. It is fundamentally a picture 
of Christ's relationship to and interaction with His Church (Eph. 5:22-32). 
While that marriage can never be dissolved because its head is perfect, 
divorce is allowed among men because of our hardness of heart (Mark 10:2-9).
Of course no-fault divorce laws should be repealed and repented of. When the 
marriage covenant is broken, it is a recognition that one of the spouses has 
committed grievous sin. Someone really incurs moral blame. The civil 
magistrate, as God's minister, has a duty to require that people honor the 
marriage covenant as God ordained it.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: New man 
  To: vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 10:54 PM
  Subject: [Vision2020] Responsible for Moscow's Homosexual Sin: Evangelical Free, Bridge Bible Church, Trinity Baptist, Church of the Nazarene, Christian Life Center

  Garret Clevenger,

  On homosexuality, the Bible is clear. God hates them and has provided that they be put to death by the civil authority. Now, the implementation of all this must occur with all wisdom and love. Enforcement of God's law is compassion.

  On the other hand, it's not only the homosexuals of Moscow that need to repent. Spitiually castrated churches are the cause (e.g., Evangelical Free, Bridge Bible Church, Trinity Baptist, Church of the Nazarene, Christian Life Center, et al.). 

  I offer the following article to our local offending churches as a rebuke and a call to repentence.

  "Arrows in the Hand of a Limp-Wristed Man," by Ben Merkle

  The homosexual movement is by necessity a parasitic movement. Gay men don't reproduce and lesbians only do so with some clever science or helpful friends. Therefore, the gay world is a necessarily barren world and depends on the straight community for its children. Without the children of heterosexuals, the homosexuals could have no next generation. But, despite the homosexual sterility, the gay movement seems to have no shortage of new blood. So where do they all come from? The answer is fairly tragic. They come from the Church. 

  Christianity has become a spiritually castrated movement. As a Church we are not able to reproduce. We might produce children of the flesh, a host of Ishmaels, but no children of the promise, no Isaacs. Our children grow up in the Church only to lose interest in the faith and to walk away from the blood of Christ and the glories of the New Covenant. We have grown so used to losing our children to unbelief that we have begun to expect it. We expect apostasy so much that we grow skeptical of children who do not abandon the faith. And so the Church has become the incubator for the next generation of homosexuals. 

  But the expectation of apostasy is the spirit of the age and is actually larger than the Church. We expect our children to rebel against us, but so do the pagans. They all expect to face the day when their children will spit on the gods of their forefathers and strike out in a new direction. They expect this because this is what they did when they were young and (not being very imaginative) they can't fathom anyone being different. Vegetarians know that under the influence of bad friends their children will begin sneaking out in the middle of the night to McDonald's. Pacifists expect to discover their sons enlisted in the Marine Corps. Tree Huggers know that their children will someday probably take up whittling. Rebellion is an essential ingredient of American childhood. It's part of the American liturgy. So it's no wonder that the homosexual community expects our children to rebel since this is expected by everyone, including us. 

  The Church must repent of this terrible lack of faith. How can we say that we believe the Gospel, a Gospel which has been founded on promises to a thousand generations, when we don't even believe in blessings to the next generation? The Psalmist describes the children of one's youth as arrows in the hand of a mighty man. Our children are meant to stand next to us in the fight against God's enemies. But here we are staring at quivers full of arrows and all anyone sees are fresh recruits for our enemies. Run a thought experiment. Imagine two men in a small town debating the dangers of a particularly potent local Reformed Church which has begun causing a hubbub in the town.1 The congregation is about one thousand, which is particularly large for that community. Now one man says to the other, rather dismissively, that of those thousand church members, almost seven hundred are children. Should this fact make one more nervous or less nervous about the potency of the Church? What a terrible tragedy that a host of children in the Church's ranks calms the opposition, rather than filling them with fear. 

  Try another thought experiment. Imagine America at its founding, with a deep and glorious Christian heritage. Now imagine the overwhelming number of American Christian fathers raising their children to know the Lord. And imagine that continuing for just ten generations. What would modern America look like? How would things be different? So, why is it that we think the homosexual movement is a political problem requiring a political solution? Why is it that we think the heart of the problem is the shanghaiing of state legislatures or renegade judges in San Francisco? We continue our fevered politicking all the while handing the arrows made for the hand of a mighty man over to the opposition, generation after generation. The problem is us. The problem is in our churches and our families, not in our legislatures. We don't raise our children faithfully. And then, when our children turn on us and join the opposition, we blindly blame a political agenda. 

  Anyone serious about combating the homosexual movement must begin at home with repentance and faithful child rearing. And what a blessing from God that the most important battle the Church faces begins when you come home from work, take your tie off, and begin wrestling with your son. How many Christians, pastors in particular, neglect to play with their kids because they are busy doing the work of the kingdom? But in doing so, they are actually neglecting the most important work of the kingdom. Isn't it a tragedy that a young man would grow up to find the fellowship of sodomy more lovely and enjoyable than the fellowship of the saints? But how many Christian fathers are busy making it easy for their sons to draw just that sort of conclusion? 

  We have been given a kind, caring, loving Father in Heaven, whose attention is never hard to get, and we have been commanded to imitate Him to our children. In the whole fight against homosexuality, this is the most important agenda for us to pursue. 

  -- 
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