The Attack on Marriage
We call marriage a sacrament because it is a sign of God and His creation. It’s the definition of the word creation. We’ve got to restore this and teach it in the churches. We’ve got to take this simple little nugget of truth and build on it so that eventually we permeate public consciousness with the realization that this isn’t just about equality. This isn’t just about rights for gays versus straights. This isn’t about civil rights. This is about the plan of creation. And if we destroy that, we’re going to bring the wrath of God upon us. We’re actually going to destroy the very nature of the world we live in, the very purpose of the world and the very purpose of life.
—Charles Colson—
Key point: The Supreme Court decision that redefined marriage in the United States to include same-sex couples didn’t just redefine marriage but also what it means to be human.
For summaries of all the articles in this series, go here.
The final Supreme Court decision my friend Steve cited in his 338-word description of America’s moral unraveling was Obergefell v. Hodges—the 5-4 decision, issued June 26, 2015, that expanded the government’s definition of marriage to include same-sex couples. We’ve discussed the implications and effects of this decision extensively in many articles at Word Foundations; here I’d like to dig into the archives and quote from one of them. In a post I wrote and published within a month of the decision, I cited “Eight Reasons Why the Supreme Court Has Crossed an Ominous Line.” I picked up five of the eight items from the July 6, 2015 edition of Dr. R. C. Sproul’s radio program Renewing Your Mind. The remaining three arose from my own burden on this issue and my own observations. Here I’ll cite two of the five, and one of the three.
During the radio program, Dr. R. C. Sproul, Dr. R.C. Sproul Jr., Chris Larson, and Lee Webb made these two points among others. Some statements in these summaries come closer to quotes than others, but all accurately reflect the concerns raised.
- The church doesn’t expect the state to do the work of the church, but it does expect the state to do the work of the state. The state, remember, also is ordained by God. Protecting life and protecting marriage aren’t just religious values but humanitarian values. When we say we object to the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples, our concern isn’t that the state has separated itself from the church, but that it has separated itself from God! Since the state is a God-ordained institution, it is doing this to its own peril and to the detriment of its people.
- What we’re talking about here is not just a rejection of God as Redeemer or as potential Redeemer. We’re talking about a rejection of God as Maker. This is what Paul warns about in Romans 1 when he talks about homosexuality—but the Court went even further than this. This ruling shakes a fist at God and says, “You made all of us, redeemed or not, to be this way (meaning that a man and a woman fit together naturally in marriage), and we’re going to turn this on its head; we’re going to pervert this as heinously as we can. We’re going to celebrate it, too!” This isn’t just telling God, “We know better than You; You’re mistaken and we’re wiser than you.” It’s “This will really tick You off because we hate You!”
A third reason Obergefell moves America and Americans in an especially dangerous direction is multi-faceted.
- The Court didn’t bring marriage to same-sex couples; instead, it brought same-sex couples to marriage. In other words, the Court didn’t just bestow marriage on same-sex couples that desire it; it brought the characteristics of a same-sex relationship into the institution of marriage, thereby negating those things about natural marriage that make it special.
- The Court severed sex and sex differences from the meaning of marriage. In a practical sense, the institution of marriage no longer is about the dynamics inherent in opposite sex relationships; it isn’t about male and female differences anymore.
- The Court separated procreation from marriage. Marriage no longer is about a relationship that can produce children. This portends ominously for the future of civilization and its youngest and most innocent citizens.
- The Court severed male-female dynamics from parenting, negating the unique contributions of both mothers and fathers from the family. Marriage and the family are no longer about the special skills and contributions a man can make as a father or that a woman can make as a mother.
- The Court, rather than validating children, has trampled on their emotional needs by depriving many of them of either a mom or a dad [in every same-sex parent family]. Put another way, the Court ignored the needs children have for the protective influence of a father and the unique, nurturing touch of a mother.
When a society favors adults’ rights over children’s needs, it has become barbaric in the worst possible way.
Tracing the Nation’s Steps
Summarizing or nation’s moral decline, we can say the following. To some extent we are oversimplifying, but not much!
- Engel v. Vitale was an initial step in the process that effectively cut off a generation, and future generations, from voluntarily acknowledging God in a public environment.
- Having been cut off from God, America had no reference point for recognizing the intrinsic value of human life. Therefore, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton effectively legitimized in people’s minds, and in the eyes of the law, the practice of turning against the youngest, most innocent, and most vulnerable members of the human family and killing them. To the Court’s majority, they weren’t persons!
- Obergefell went even further, denying what it actually is to be a human being. Natural man-woman marriage, you see, affirms what being a human being is all about. This is not to say that single people or homosexual individuals aren’t human; of course they are! It is to say that natural marriage affirms what being human means. Same-sex “marriage” doesn’t just distort that affirmation; it eliminates it—because if two men or two women can marry each other and have exactly what one man and one woman married to each other have (this notion obviously is a lie), marriage has nothing to do with sex, procreation, children, fatherhood, motherhood, male-female dynamics in a relationship, or anything else that truly makes marriage what it is, and that makes being a human being what he or she is. Marriage, after all, is unique among human beings. It is unknown in the animal kingdom!
Natural man-woman marriage affirms everything about what it means to be a human being. After all, marriage is unknown in the animal kingdom. Only people marry!
What about love? someone will ask. Isn’t marriage about love? Marriage is about love, but it’s not about love exclusively. It isn’t about sex exclusively, either. Authentic marital love cannot be divorced from everything else that we’ve named in item #3. As we indicated, the traits that make natural marriage what it is also empower it to affirm what being human is all about.
Marriage is about love, but it’s not about love exclusively.
Is it any wonder, then, that Steve cited Romans 1:18-32 and said it describes “the current state of the culture of the United States”? Can we really deny that our culture is behaving unnaturally? (See 2 Tim. 3:1-3, KJV.) The Obergefell marriage ruling goes against everything nature teaches us about human relationships—but so do the 1973 rulings that legalized abortion nationwide. It is unnatural, not only for two men or two women to be sexually intimate with each other, but also for a mother to abort her own child, and for a father to approve of eliminating his own flesh and blood!
Witnessing all of these things, can we deny the distinct probability that God has given this country over to its own desires? When we speak of God’s releasing a nation to it’s base appetites, we do not mean that He has done something like releasing a porcelain pitcher in outer space and letting it float gently away. No! Instead, He has done something akin to letting go of the pitcher on earth, where gravity pulls it to the ground and the impact causes it to shatter irreparably.
Everyone is free to sin if he or she chooses to do so. Collectively, a nation may choose to give itself over to sin; and again, it is free to make that choice. However, both individually and corporately, the choice to engage in habitual sin inevitably will bring dire consequences.
Love Thy Neighbor
Let us have compassion and love for women who’ve had abortions and men who have encouraged them. When a woman faces an unwanted pregnancy she very likely may know no one to whom she can turn for help. Every voice she hears, including the father’s, may be encouraging her to abort her baby. These women need understanding, help, and encouragement to choose life for unborn children.
Let us also care deeply about and help homosexuals and everyone experiencing confusion about his or her gender identity. Let us reach out to them with understanding and friendship—but let us also not fail to present the truth. True compassion, after all, is honest as well as loving.
And of course, we need to be lovingly honest both with individuals and with society at large. We are on a dangerous path as a nation!
America is on a dangerous path!
Has America stepped beyond God’s saving reach? We have no right or authority to assume that she has, but we must heed the warnings Scripture gives us regarding right and wrong, good and evil.
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isa. 5:20).
If my people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land (2 Chron. 7:14).
But seek first the kingdom of god and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matt. 6:33).
Next time, we’ll look at where the church is in the midst of this cultural moral morass.
Copyright © 2018 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture has been taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
About “Law” (pictured at top, photo credit here)
At the National Monument to the Forefathers in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Faith stands atop the Monument, with Liberty and Morality seated at the base in front of her, and Law and Education seated at the base behind her. In a country that enjoys authentic liberty, laws do not stand alone. That nation’s laws are not arbitrary but consistent with the other virtues and ideals depicted at the Monument, and therefore consistent with “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The National Monument to the Forefathers was dedicated on August 1, 1889.
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