this question was put to me yesterday after the supreme court gave their ruling and I have been praying and considering since. What do you think is coming next now that the supreme court has ruled in favor of same sex marriage?

rdg

according to Chief Justice Roberts, in his recent great dissent

" Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise
religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new
right to same-sex marriage—when, for example, a religious
college provides married student housing only to
opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption
agency declines to place children with same-sex married
couples. Indeed, the Solicitor General candidly acknowledged
that the tax exemptions of some religious institutions
would be in question if they opposed same-sex marriage.
See Tr. of Oral Arg. on Question 1, at 36–38. There
is little doubt that these and similar questions will soon be
before this Court. Unfortunately, people of faith can take
no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today."


but still Christ is on the throne, laughing at the futility of wicked Kings and rulers..
andy

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andy

I think John MacArthur was spot on. We must never let our faith wander, this should only help increase our faith as to the truth in the word of God, as God told us these days were coming....Our greatest hope is, just to know God is still in control, all the SCOTUS has free wills, and God will not violate our free will.

C. S. Lewis put the idea this way: “Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo.

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Bill

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Lisa

We had a large absent contingent from our home group last night. Three folks came. We sat in a small circle in our living room. We discussed a lot about who we are to be in this hour. Some words of wisdom were spoken. I lead us in a prayer about many things, but first a prayer of repentance.

My prayer is that God will forgive me, a man in His church, and all other men, for failing to teach the Truth, for failing to pattern His Way for others sufficiently, for not proclaiming to the lost the full gospel of Jesus and for not insisting that we as believers be about God's business in this hour such that homosexual sin is even an issue. It was a prayer of other things too. That God bring into our fellowship those persons and gifts to form us into that which honors Him and accomplishes for His glory that which He calls us to do and be. We are on the cusp of saying this is a local expression of His body, a church if you will, but He is first to bring to us that gifting and unction that is necessary, and a sense of "now you are that". We are asking Him to form us into a body that pleases Him and clearly states to the people around us the Truth about who He is so that they cannot deny having heard Him, having known of Him, and so they will come to Him in faith.

That is what is next, and what is now, where we sit.

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Tim

The night before the Supreme Court decision, I felt a troubling in my spirit.

I knew that the Supreme Court decision about this was impending, and I had a suspicion that it would be 5-4 in favor of immorality. After all, the court tends to release the most controversial decisions at the end of the week and Justice Kennedy takes a misguided libertarian view on such matters. The next morning, I turned on my cell phone as soon as I woke up and read the headline. I was deeply grieved and spent about an hour in silent, tearful prayer (so as to not awaken my wife).

On Friday, someone called me to tell me that he still had a copy of short paper that I wrote about what I thought that the consequences of the 2008 election (and subsequently updated to include the 2012 election) would be. In it, I stated that I believed that lower courts would be stacked with Liberal judicial activists and that things like homosexual marriage, gays opening serving in the military, universal health care with a financial requirement to participate, transgender sports/bathrooms, the DNC backtracking on Israel, some race riots, etc... would be consequences of the elections. He argued with me and even told me that he didn't believe back then that those things would even be possible in such a short time. In retrospect, he admitted that it proved correct.

I strongly believe that the 5-4 decision was wrong. Definitions like this are often a state's right issue (per the 10th Amendment). Even "equal access" is limited by each state's decision. For instance, siblings cannot marry in any state. Cousins cannot marry in most states. Even first cousins once removed are prohibited from marriage in several states. Yet, this open-ended decision by the four Left Wing judicial activists and the one libertarian open the door to everything from incestuous marriages to polygamy.

Yet, this -- as with everything in this universe -- is a spiritual issue. In particular, these are issues of sin and immorality. As bad as this is for a nation and the other nations that might follow American politicians' lead (or "lead from behind"), it is still a spiritual issue at heart.

In other words, the Christians in America need to be prepared (as we always should have been) because the consequences of being a Christian may become more real in this nation. Even now, there are newspapers that are banning op eds against "gay marriage." For-profit message boards and forums are deleting the opinions of those who disagree with this single-vote majority ruling. CEO's have already been forced out of companies for not complying with the views of gay activists.

Websites are turning their logos into rainbows to celebrate this attempt by activists to justify their sins. Christians who embrace the Bible are being labeled as "hateful," "hatemongers," "bigots" and even "Puritans." In their place, the media is choosing faux Christians -- those who embrace immorality and sin and who reject the Bible -- to be the public "norms" of Christianity.

What now? Christians need to be prepared for the consequences of being a Christian. Christians need to be prepared to face the consequences for believing in Christ, the Bible and the message of the Cross.

Now, it is easy to say that we have always believed such things. However, this fallen world is ready to pounce upon anyone who stands in the way of their goals, agendas and ideology. The world is ready to publicly shame us. They want to represent us as followers of an ancient, misguided myth that is "harmful if believed."

I have never believed that homosexuals wanted the "equal protections" with marriage. In fact, they were suing states that had civil unions that were the same as marriage but differed by gender/numeric makeup of the civil contract (i.e., "marriage" = one man and one woman; "civil union" = two men or two women). Rather, LGBT groups were using the courts to legitimize or justify their sin by having the state call their sexual practices "normal."

To quote Leonard Ravenhill, we must pledge our heads to heaven for the Gospel. We must pledge our vocations, our families, our possessions and even our reputation for Christ and be prepared to suffer the "shame" that the evil in this world are prepared to extend to us.

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Christopher

Hi ccchhhrrriiisss,

I was wondering if you would pop up and comment on this issue, as you usually have strong political opinions ;)

This is pretty much the point-of-no-return for the current incarnation of the American republic, because the Supreme Court has the final say in such matters. The only way to reverse that is to have a constitutional amendment, and it is unlikely that such a move would garner the necessary support from the grassroots, state and federal levels.

This ruling would indeed set the tone for the rest of the world, given America's dominance over the global media and internet realm. Citizens in other countries would look to America and agitate for the same "rights". Meanwhile, even Nintendo has decided to cave in after a previous backlash and include same-sex relationships in its games...

On religious liberty: while there is a clause for "free exercise" of religion in the Constitution - in practice, that has been restrained before. An example: Reynolds v. United States (1878) - where the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibited Congress from legislating against religious opinion, but allowed it to legislate against religious action.

The Constitution thus provides no guarantee that religious liberty will prevail in America. That would depend on the whim of the Supreme Court judges.