Courage and Contending, Part 1
‘I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once and for all entrusted to the saints. For certain men…have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men who change the grace of God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.’ (Jude vs. 3b, 4)
The NY Times celebrated 12/12/2012 with a front page photo of two brides (one indistinguishable from a man) making out on the subway. The caption celebrating their ‘gay marriage’: A Day They Won’t Forget.
The world won’t let us forget the gains gay activists have made. Every day and everywhere we are inundated with the delusion that gay anything is just great, especially ‘gay marriage.’
Activists are smart. When gays redefine marriage according to their distorted image, they have won. The boundary lines change for generations to come. And it does not stop at the ‘new normal’ of two brides or two grooms. All must bow at the altar of every gender variation that the GLBT community demands of us. Anyone who differs is a bigot, cruel and unjust.
Having been persuaded that ‘love means never having to say you are sorry’ for actions that grieve the heart of our Creator, we begin to adopt a wholly secular set of values. We speak of tolerance and compassion, ‘marriage rights’ and equality. We consider winsome same-sex attracted friends and think: ‘They deserve marriage.’
For non-believers, that kind of flat morality may make sense. No God, no godly values. But when Christians begin to accommodate, even defend ‘gay marriage’, they reveal that they have become worldly and have forgotten the very essence of the faith: that God made us in His image as male and female, and that Jesus redeems us according to that image.
Christians have been entrusted with the truth of the Creator’s design for all humanity. That is precisely why Pope Benedict pointed out in his Christmas message that ‘gay marriage’ is idolatry: the creature shaking its fist at the Creator and recreating itself in an image that seems right to him or her. We are the real victims, every one of us. To deny the Creator is to forsake the ground of our dignity as persons.
We the Church must repent of our worldliness. We must confess and renounce how we have distorted the good news of the Gospel for worldly drivel that issues out of wanting to be popular, not truthful. But grace is meaningful only when we uphold what is real and true about God’s desire for us. Our only chance at real beauty and real dignity is to forsake false identities like the ‘gay self’ and its devolution in ‘gay marriage’.
We turn to the One who makes all things new, ‘who shares in our human weakness in order to transform it according to the power of Resurrection.’ (Porta Fidei, Pope Benedict)
The fight for the restoration of the homosexual is at core a fight for the Gospel. Let us pray for courage to contend for the Gospel amid counterfeit expressions like ‘gay marriage.’
‘I know your deeds, your love and faith, your faith and perseverance. But I have this against you. You tolerate this woman Jezebel…By her teaching, she misleads my servants into sexual immorality…So I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely unless they repent of their ways.
To him who overcomes and does My Will to the end, I will give authority over the nations.’ (Rev. 2: 20-26)
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