All sins are NOT created equal

The current issue of Newsweek magazine includes an article on how Obama got elected and how young evangelical Christians have moved in his direction. The numbers of evangelicals that moved to Obama were not overly large, as the article admits. However, most of those were young and it does seem to confirm some direction in evangelical churches in recent years towards the 'emerging' church movement and a more existential approach to their faith. The article follows a young man who left his church, then came back, and now is starting his own non-denominational church. In what is presented as one of the 'clinchers' in why he left to start his own church, his former church has put up a sign during an election referendum on gay marriage to support the vote in favor of traditional marriage. His reaction was something like 'is this any way to welcome seekers?' and 'would we put up a sign like this for other sins?', so he left. The article goes on to say that according to some poll, most young evangelicals are accepting of gay marriage.


This a concern. It seems to indicate a common but incorrect teaching that 'all sins are equal' as he equates gay marriage with any other sin. Unfortunately, this is not particularly new with the current younger generation. The Scripture does not teach that all sins are equal. Some are worse, and homosexuality is one of those that are worse than many others.

How can that be? Well, first of all homosexuality is not alone; murder, adultery, and fornication would all fall in a similar category, and all except murder seem to be increasingly acceptable in both the church and in society in general. The Bible does not teach that all acts of sin are equal; it does teach that all humans are equally in need of forgiveness. These are 2 very different things. We are born sinful. That state of sinfulness requires God's intervention and we all equally need that. That sinfulness, however, shows itself in varying acts of sin at varying levels of severity. Some people have more self-control than others in controlling how their sinful nature plays out, resulting in less severe acts of sin. No one in their right mind would say that petty larceny is equal to murder.

So the thing that is equal in all of us is our sin nature. Specific acts of sin have a large range of impacts, however, some more serious than others, especially in their impacts here and now. To pretend that all acts of sin are equal is nonsense. Sins like homosexuality, adultery, fornication, murder are much more serious than petty larceny, for instance. However, among these serious sins, only homosexuality is insisting that society view it as something good, something equivalent to marriage. It is not just claiming to be no worse than other sins, it is claiming to be a virtue. To ignore this in the name of 'acceptance' and being 'seeker sensitive' is nonsense. We cannot say nothing while our culture tries to turn virtue on its head.

The Trinity of marriage

The passage in Proverbs that a 'cord of 3 strands in not easily broken' is often quoted in marriage ceremonies, and the 3 cords are typically thought of as referring to the husband, wife, and the Holy Spirit. I think that is correct and an important concept in how marriage is holy to God and depends on God for sustenance. However, there is another type of 'trinity' I have in mind for this discussion as well.

Think of a marriage as supported by a 3-legged stool, to use a common illustration. Those 3 legs are the relationship of the 2 people, the office of marriage, and the truth of our nature. Relationship, Office, and Truth (or Nature). In writing from his jail cell during World War 2 to counsel a couple preparing for marriage, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, ' Up till now it has been your love that has protected your marriage plans; from now on it is also your marriage that protects your love.' This has to do with the office, the status of marriage. While love leads you to marriage, every love relationship waxes and wanes and will face some hard times. During those times the vows you make, the commitments, the responsibilities you take on, the children that are born all constitute the office of marriage and those things protect your love relationship during the hard times. Marriage is a relationship, but it is not just a relationship. As C.S.Lewis has written in The Four Loves, we all know that we must do the works of Eros (Lewis refers to being 'in love' as Eros after an ancient usage; he is not referring to the common contemporary use of the word 'erotic' in any way) even when Eros is not present; that is because of the commitments we make, the promises we need to keep, the office we need to uphold. As Lewis also points out, Eros makes promises that she cannot keep so we need the office to help us keep them.

There is also the matter of Truth and Nature. Man and woman are clearly designed for each other, for propagation as well as for mutual support. This is simply who we are, how we are made, and that is a foundation for marriage. All Truth is God's Truth, and this is one part of it. Simply put, we need each other as men and women.

Now, marriage cannot be what it should be with any of the 3 legs missing on the stool. Our contemporary culture, however, focuses only on the relationship part. However, if 2 people claim to be in love but refuse to marry, what conclusion do most people immediately reach about their commitment? It doesn't exist. The 'office' portion is missing. Similarly, if 2 of the same sex want to indulge in homosexual union, the Truth of our nature is missing. Gay 'marriage' denies the truth of who we are, and living together unmarried denies the need for commitments to be able to raise healthy children and reliable citizens. Marriage cannot be what it needs to be without understanding all 3 elements of the marriage union. We as Christians have contributed to the confusion about this by focusing our own marriage teaching and ceremonies too much on the relationship by itself.

The same is true of the church. Christianity is indeed a relationship, but like marriage it is not just a relationship. Just as the marriage protects the love of the bride and groom, the church protects the relationship with God. Especially when times get tough. It is no mistake that the church is 'the bride of Christ'. There is the personal relationship with Christ that must be a personal commitment, there is the office of church membership, and there is the truth of what Christ has done for us to make salvation possible. As with marriage, by focusing on just some of the 3 the church contributes to confusion. The sacramental churches focus on the office and the truth and pretty much ignore the relationship; the evangelical churches focus on the relationship and the truth and pretty much ignore the office.

We as believers have contributed to the cultural confusion on both marriage and Christianity by not keeping the stool firmly planted on all 3 legs.

Obama, Israel, and Motherhood

As we approach the inauguration of President-elect Obama the euphoria of the press remains a bit 'over the top'. This is no surprise, of course, but it is getting old. It remains difficult to be happy about bringing in a president who has promised to increase abortions on his first day in office by removing any barriers that he can, even for the abomination of partial-birth abortion. Since the MLK holiday is tomorrow, the day before inauguration, it is instructive to look at some comments from MLK that were pointed out recently in the Winter edition of 'The City' ( 'The City' is a quarterly journal that you can subscribe to free from Houston Baptist University at www.civitate.org). In the article Ryan Anderson points out that MLK, in his 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail' refers to the philosopher Martin Buber in arguing that racial segregation substitutes an 'I-it' relationship for the 'I-thou' relationship that is intended by God, thereby relegating persons to the status of things. People are not to be treated like things. That is a powerful argument against racial injustice as well as against slavery, and it is, as Mr. Anderson points out, exactly the same thing that abortion proponents do, making the unborn child an 'it', relegating that new life to the status of a thing instead of a person. Their crime is no different than killing a slave that you 'own'.

As a racial minority, Mr. Obama as well as blacks in general should understand this. Yet it seems to be lost on them. Blacks continue to account for abortions at a rate about 3 times the rest of the U.S. population. It is maybe a strange connection, but with Israel in the news recently due to their fighting with Hamas in Gaza and with the Christmas holidays, I was reminded again of how Israel gave birth to the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. He was the promised child of Isaiah 53, and Revelation 12:1-7 paints a vivid picture of Israel as a woman giving birth to this child. It struck me that for a woman to kill her own baby is very much like Israel killing the Messiah to which she gave birth. Israel, of course, fails to see this just as abortion supporters fail to see their own crimes. If it is justified to view a baby has an 'it' to be terminated at our convenience, why not view black people that way? Or old people? Or sick people? We should point out this at every opportunity: for a black president to rejoice that he is no longer relegated to the status of a thing while doing his best to relegate thousands of others at the verge of birth to that status is hypocrisy of the highest order.