Friday, June 26, 2015

A Different Perspective on the Supreme Court Hearings; Part 2

Very well.  The United States Supreme Court has spoken and ordered that gay marriage shall be legal in all 50 states.  Franklin Graham says we need to prepare for persecution if we are going to stand by God's Law.  I agree.  I'm not a prophet, but I can read the writing on the wall.  Now that the Court has made it's law (not that they are supposed to make the law, but that's another story), what happens next?  Will pastors and Christian non-profits who refuse to comply and marry homosexual couples or accept them as part of their organization with full benefits be subject to investigations, fines, charges of hate crimes, or anything of the like?  We have to wait and see.  No one knows how this will work out in practicality.  Religious liberty has been trumped by homosexual rights, and we'll have to watch the game play out.

So what do we do on a practical level in response?

If you are a Christian judge, I think you are going to have to make a choice:  keep your job and marry homosexual couples or give up your job.

If you are a Christian business owner whose industry is directly involved with the wedding industry (florist, baker, photographer, etc.), you too will have to make a choice.  Will you obey the law and serve customers, even the ones you don't want to serve for religious reasons?  Will you refuse to serve and take the punishment that comes?  Will you change businesses?  I won't say that serving a homosexual couple is wrong; this is simply a matter of your choice as to how you live out your faith.  I will ask one question:  How do you know that the customer you are serving isn't a sinner?

If you are a Christian pastor who believes in the Word of God and that homosexuality is wrong, you may have some choices to make, too, depending on how this works out.  If the government leaves pastors alone and lets them choose whom they will marry, you'll be alright.  If the government informs you that you must marry anyone who asks you, no matter their sexual orientation, you now have a choice.  You can refuse and take the consequences, or you can acquiesce.   There may be another alternative, though.  As Christians, our marriages are not just legal by the State.  We do that for the purpose of taxes, benefits, etc.  Our marriages are vows taken in God's sight.  When we choose to marry, we do so because that is the path God has ordained for us.  As a pastor, you can say you will not perform marriages that will licensed by the State.  You can still perform the ceremony for those who want a Biblical marriage, but the couple will have to have a judge perform the ceremony for it to be legal with the State.  I don't say that's a great state of affairs, but it's workable.

As ordinary Christians whose business does not fall into this realm, this may not directly affect us for a while.  However, we may be shunned and disenfranchised when our beliefs are known.  We may even have investigations into our taxes by the IRS regarding to what organizations we donate.

I'm going to repeat something I said in Part 1, partly for encouraging my readers.  Since when has God promised us that practicing Christianity was going to be easy?  The Lord promised us trouble in this world (John 16:33); He promised us that the world would hate us (Matthew 10:22).  But He has also overcome the world.  We, painfully for us, are in that plane of existence that is between the "already accomplished" Kingdom and the "yet to come" Kingdom.   The State can take away our religious freedom as we know it, but it can NEVER take away our freedom from sin that we have in Christ.  There is absolutely nothing the State, the Supreme Court, the terrorists, no matter how powerful they may be, can do to undo or change what God plans.

Dark times are in store for us.  But as Gandalf said in The Lord of the Rings,  "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."   I say we "[keep our] conduct. . . honorable, so that when they speak against [us] as evildoers, they may see [our] good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation."  (I Peter 2:12)