That was the LA Times banner headline on May 9. Let’s see if we can do that with any of the other Commandments.
“Joy and disbelief greet Obama’s support of killing the unborn.” Oops. Shouldn’t have started with that one. How about, “Joy and disbelief greet Obama’s support of stealing from grocery stores?” How about, “Joy and disbelief greet Obama’s support of lying about your neighbor, lusting after his wife, disobeying your parents?”
If you can’t and ought not to say it about one Commandment, you shouldn’t and can’t about any another. But our country has been primed, tenderized, softened up in head and heart for this sort of pronouncement. No it didn’t start in 1973 with legalizing murder as long as it was in a womb and not a room. No it didn’t start with the widespread legalizing of gambling. The preparation for exchanging the truth for the lie started with stamping our money with the declaration that trust in a generic God is enough and teaching our kid’s that we are one nation under the same God regardless of what he, she, or it is called.
We are reaping the fruit sown by generation upon generation before us. We are reaping the fruit watered and weeded by generations of Christians who accepted pastors who taught them truth was relative and love was defined by feeling not Scripture. We are reaping the fruit that was harvested by generations of Christians who heard no more of God’s Word applied to their life than could be done in a Sunday sermon that lasted from 60 then to 45 then to 20 and now maybe 15 minutes. We are reaping the fruit of Christians who have refused to sit at the feet of the teachers the Lord has given them, and now have no defense against the lie other than sputtering, muttering, and fuming, “But, but, but that’s wrong!”
We are without excuse. The last days of Sodom, of Old Testament Israel, of the Greeks, and of the Romans too were marked by the widespread acceptance of homosexuality. The same news cycle that trumpeted Obama’s magnanimous acceptance of fornication also touted that the drug that has been used to treat HIV is now going to be proscribed to prevent HIV infection. We think we’re walking in the tall cotton now, but we’re really so deep into the weeds we can’t see over them.
In Romans 1 Paul describes the acceptance of homosexuality as the crowning sin of a bankrupt, debauched society. But please note he says it’s preceded by men abandoning the natural function of women which is having babies. When men lose site of the God-given function of the female anatomy any orifice will do.
But let us not lose sight of where Paul ultimately ends either. After reaching the apogee of what men do once they suppress the truth (accept homosexuality), he then goes go to say that God gives them over to a depraved mind which is filled with such things as unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, envy, murder, strife and more. However, the crowning thing that marks such fallen men, the last thing in Paul’s list is: lack of mercy.
Let’s not be those men. Let’s have mercy on those caught up in the sin of homosexuality. Let’s not consign them to the fire by hardening our hearts toward them so as not to be willing to preach the full counsel of God: The Law that condemns homosexuals to punishment right now and forever in eternity, and the Gospel that says Christ Jesus can rescue them from their fallenness, as He has us, by forgiving their sins.
It is not up to us to decide when a person is so far gone they can’t be reached. It is not up to us to give up on anyone. Obama and all the supporters of homosexuality have made it harder for us to reach them, but nothing but our own fallen hearts will make it harder for us to be merciful. Jesus says it is out of the heart that all sins, including sexual ones, both hetro and homo, come. That means all those sins are in all our hearts. That means but for the grace of God go I. And being graced by God will lead us to mercy men regardless of how far or in what way they have fallen.
