DOMA Ruled Unconstitutional; Bible Ignorance Runs Rampant
by Mitchell Moss
Source: Wikimedia Commons/Upstate NYerHere we are at last: The Supreme Court of America has ruled that the law that defined marriage as between one man and one woman (the Defense of Marriage Act, aka DOMA) is unconstitutional. The Court also declined to rule on whether a state constitutional amendment in the state of California (called Proposition 8) that likewise defined marriage as between one man and one woman is constitutional or not.
It's insane how the cries to recognize same-sex marriage by law in this country have reached a fever pitch. I was joking this morning with a friend that I finally understand why conservative Baby Boomers are so upset about America—they lived through the '60s and '70s when moral decay really started to get going, where as I was born into the consequences of those two decades and accepted as normal the immorality around me. But now things are once again shifting dramatically toward the immoral, and suddenly I'm outraged.
It's not especially surprising that non-religious people would want to legalize gay marriage. If their only moral bearing is what the constitution specifically says, and they ignore the moral foundation it was built on of the Bible, then of course they're going to interpret it in whatever way will let them do what they want when it suits them. If a small majority of people decide shoplifting should be OK, it wouldn't surprise anybody that they would interpret the constitution to allow for that and push for Congress to pass laws to allow shoplifting. Those people don't bother me. What really bothers me are the people who claim Christianity in whatever small or large way in their life, but who are being carried away by the secular crowd and support gay marriage, but then try and use the Bible to justify it.
To me, the perfect crystalization of the outright insanity of this came in the form of this tweet, which was retweeted by a friend of mine from high school:
Unbelievable. It took me a while even to express in words why this tweet is such absolute nonsense.
Here's a person whose point of view is representative of a large group of people, so don't think I'm picking only on her. What she does is not only misuse the scripture that captures much of what the Christian life is all about (faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love), but misquotes Jesus Himself in a bad play on words that is utterly ignorant of what He was actually saying. The words she plays on and so badly misunderstands are the one where He describes that the way of life that leads to eternal life is one that is difficult—and that the one that leads to destruction is easy. That the sinful life is easy and it leads to destruction, but the godly life is hard and its reward is eternal life. That it's hard to have self-discipline and to not do everything that just feels good. That it's hard to obey God and follow Christ, especially when it means that the core of who you are is contrary to His way of life. That it's bearing your cross daily (self-denial of the things that are wrong because you are putting God first) is the only way, but it's the harder way.
But this tweet tramples on the sacrifice of Christ by embracing something He would so strongly condemn, but using His own words (and the words He inspired as written down by the apostle Paul) to defend that same thing! He died so that the penalty of our sins could be wiped away if we choose to claim that sacrifice. People who support gay marriage but also claim to accept Christ's sacrifice are nailing His hands to the cross all over again.
All this serves just to remind us to stick our nose in the scriptures and understand what they mean then live by them, so that we aren't carried away by these popular messages which feel right, but which are in fact morally bankrupt. Now more than ever we need to be practicing our religion and becoming more like Christ.
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