One of
the greatest of today’s apologists is Dr. Voddie Baucham. I’ve always believed in using logical
response to questions by unbelievers in evangelism; and nobody does it better
than he.
He begins his message at Dr. John MacArthur’s Grace church
with the following wake-up quote: “I’m going to address what I believe is
the most pressing cultural issue that we face today: same-sex marriage.”
It is an issue that has its roots in our understanding of origins. He
will give us how this issue has been framed by its promoters to put Christians
on the defensive. How it has been co-opted by our educational
system. And he wants to give us some logical apologetic response to
verbal attacks by non-believers. The rest of my paper is a summary of his
statements.
The data suggest that acceptance of homosexual lifestyle is
winning American culture: In 2007, 49% of Americans say this lifestyle
should be accepted vs. 72% agree in 2019. Even among those who say
“religion is very important” in their lives, still 57% are accepting of
homosexuality. But this varies widely, from 12% acceptance among
Jehovah’s Witnesses to 96% Unitarians. If Christians knew their Bibles, far
less than a majority would feel that tolerant. What does Genesis teach us
about marriage? Genesis 2:24-25:
Therefore a man shall leave his
father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become
one flesh. 25 And
they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
It is clear here that marriage is a
relationship between two corresponding halves of humanity—men and women. The
phrase “one flesh” suggests a corresponding complementary makeup of the two who
are to unite—which only men and women physically are truly able. And how that
bears favorable fruit. All you have to
do is look at their bodies that He created, and you get a pretty good
clue. Then, several months later, you
get a bonus clue that says, “Yep. That
was how it was supposed to happen.”
A note: This argument against
homosexuals from Genesis is also an argument against those (pastors) who say
that Genesis, being in the Old Testament, is not that important (so say more of
them, unfortunately). They think that
origins—arguments over whether there were six literal days of creation, or
whether there was a literal Adam and Eve, etc—are not worth getting heated up
over; they say that What Matters is Just the Cross!”
Dr. Baucham counters “OK, well, Who
died on the Cross?” Let’s hear what
Jesus says about homosexuality. (Yes, He
does speak on this issue, despite arguments we hear otherwise. But you need a deeper knowledge of Scripture
to see that.) Matthew 19:3-6:
The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him,
and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” 4 And He answered and said
to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and
female,’ 5 and
said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and
be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one
flesh’? 6 So
then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined
together, let not man separate.”
A side note: Jesus’ teaching on
divorce is also rooted on His analysis of Genesis. He is asserting these were real events—thus He
believes in a literal reading of these texts. (“Literal” reading is when the
Bible reads like history—i.e., Adam was real, not a moral tale or
allegory). Jesus derives a second argument
against a too-popular sin from Genesis, divorce. Let nobody tell you to ignore the Old
Testament.
Further, from Genesis we learn the
three-fold purpose of marriage: procreation,
illustration, and sanctification. On procreation; they are told to “be fruitful,
multiply, and fill the earth.” Adam
can’t do that alone. Regarding illustration:
The family--father, mother, and child--are a picture of the Triune God.
(We are not suggesting the gender of the Holy Spirit has to be feminine—the
correlation is not intended to go that far.
Nor are we suggesting that if a man and woman cannot bear a child, that they’re
not a family). There is also Christ and
His bride, the church, a Groom and a Virgin Bride. Regarding sanctification: there is a holiness in their marriage. For
example, here, they were naked but unashamed. (Paul has a few additional things
to say about marriage on the subject of avoiding temptation for sanctification,
but Dr. Baucham doesn’t cover that).
Homosexuality is a violation of the
created order. Male and male (or female and female) were not made for each
other, physically. That arrangement
denounces procreation categorically. God
designed male and female to give birth, raise, rear, and protect children. It
also blasphemes the illustration. Christ and His male bride? No way. Finally, on sanctification: it takes what God calls sinful and an
“abomination” (a term used for the most sinful of sins--elsewhere in Scripture
you’ll find that term) and some want to call it righteous. Homosexuality is so
evil that it is the only sin that God destroys cities with fire and brimstone
in historical Scripture. An unbiased reading of Genesis 18 and 19 cannot deny
that.
Let’s talk about Education’s role in
this growing disease. Arne Duncan was
Pres. Biden’s Secretary of Education.
His resume is ‘sterling,’ as you shall see: Right after his term as Secretary of
Education in Illinois, 83% of 8th graders couldn’t read at grade
level; 87% couldn’t do Math at grade level; 77% couldn’t write at grade level;
and 84% couldn’t do Science at grade level! He did this by spending a ‘modest’
$10,555 per student. The residents of
Illinois paid that, including home schooling parents. The media, and the teacher’s unions, complain
that they could do better with more money, that they’re underpaid. He says, “No, that’s not the reason. Home
schooled students outperform both public and private students, and their
parents spend an average of $600 per year per student.”
Since Duncan clearly lacks skills for
the job, why was he Biden’s pick?
Because he was also “innovative”—in a wrong way. He started Chicago’s Annenberg Challenge, a Marxist program. Bill Ayers (background: A co-founder of Weather Underground, a
militant activist group in the 1960s, for those who can remember those bad old
days; described as a terrorist group by the FBI; a self-described communist
revolutionary group that bombed public buildings, including police stations,
the U.S. Capitol, and the Pentagon. He
kept out of prison on a technicality)
and Barack Obama (former president, but who aroused controversy in 2008
over his connections with Ayers in those days) served together on the board of
the Annenberg Challenge in Illinois. And
here’s where it touches our subject: Duncan also endorsed establishing the
Chicago social justice high schools’ Pride campus, a gay campus that promoted
and reinforced the sodomite lifestyle.
Education was also blessed with Kevin
Jennings—a founder of the Gay-Lesbian-Straight Education Network. His goal was to have Gay-Straight Alliance in
every school in America. As of right
now, virtually every school district has Gay-Straight Alliances in them. He also introduced a program called Safe
Schools (SS), which supposedly has an anti-bullying curriculum. But in reality, it is a pro-homosexual
curriculum designed to indoctrinate school children toward the homosexual
lifestyle.
It so happens that Education
Secretary Duncan brought Jennings to Washington to be the Safe Schools czar—to
federalize (i.e., requirement for all schools) his SS, pro-homosexual
curriculum.
Dr. Baucham then considers the gay
argument that “this is the way I was made; morals have nothing to do with
that.” He argues that, even if that were
the case. morals would still have to be considered. If I had a genetic predisposition for drunkenness,
does that make it OK to drive drunk?
No! You may kill someone—a moral
issue. A police officer won’t let you off by playing the “genetic
predisposition” card.
The gay sympathizers claim 1 in 10,
or 10%, of people are born gay. This
number only has Kinsey research to back it, but Kinsey’s research has been
debunked and is known to be unreliable.
The most widely respected survey is from the National Health and Social
Life. Their numbers: 2.8% of males, and 1.4% of females, are reported
as having same-sex preference.
Pro-gay activists include gay
activists, black civil rights leaders, some business and political leaders, and
unfortunately religious leaders. Their
leaders never fail to obey the saying, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” In 1989 in a book, After The Ball, in outlining
their strategies, they coldly sized up the AIDS epidemic and said, “As cynical
though it seems, the victim strategy for AIDS worked; so it can pave our way to establish ourselves as another victimized
minority, legitimately deserving America’s special protection and care.”
Then they asked, “How can we maximize
the sympathy and minimize the fear?”
They called for “unabashed propaganda firmly grounded in
long-established principles of psychology and advertising.” Shamelessly, they
recognize that that propaganda relies on three things: emotional manipulation; lies--and those are
subjective and one-sided. This is what
they wanted to use on the public—and they certainly have done it, as we shall
soon see. For their media campaign, they
outlined three strategies:
desensitizing, jamming, and conversion. (By the way, these are the exact
steps to brainwashing.)
For desensitizing, they would
inundate us in a flood of gay-related advertising, presenting gays in the least
offensive way possible. They also want
us to hear from outed movie and TV stars, and especially athletes. In the movies, the homosexual character is
always the best-dressed, or most intelligent, or wittiest, etc.
In jamming, they are taking two
contradictory images and jamming them together.
(I.e., what we think a gay person is like, vs. Michael Sam, who once was
a defensive lineman in football), for instance, who appears as a healthy, rich athlete, and happy). In doing
this, they want to portray anti-gay institutions as backwards and out-of-step
with the culture and with the “findings” of modern psychology. One way gays make Christians look like bigots
is portraying, with national news, when Michael Sam, “came out.” President
Obama even congratulated him. (Ed. Note:
Let’s think again about how vile and blasphemous sodomy is—so we ask, where is
our country’s morals that our president feels he won’t endanger his credibility
by congratulating a sodomite?) Another
idea is, everyone hates the Nazis, skinheads, and KKK. They are racist, every
one. So what you do is, you portray
people who are opposed to same-sex marriage as being akin to Nazis, skinheads,
and KKK. Their leaders repeat this
every occasion they can. After a while, Christians look bigoted and
racist. This jamming works on most of
us, and we back off our opposition. Now we are more “moderate.” We mutter or don’t speak about it. If we get emotional, we “need” to
apologize. This is why when a pastor
deals with this issue, he spends a good deal of time apologizing and choosing
his words rather than stating the offense against God.
Imagine this from a pastor on a
Sunday morning: “Now, church, we are going to address the issue of adultery,
but I don’t want you to be alarmed. I’m
not here to bash adulterers; I love adulterers, Jesus loves adulterers, I have
friends who are adulterers, and I believe that our church needs to be open and
accepting towards adulterers”…You see what I’m saying? Hopefully that basis of
discussion wouldn’t fly. But every time a pastor goes to speak on
homosexuality, we expect that “introduction” to be upfront. Why? Because we’ve been jammed. That’s why the most onerous sin we can
imagine has us apologizing for repeating what God said.
Homosexuals assert “That’s how people
are born, right?” Truth is, none of the
studies has proven a genetic connection to homosexuality. The body is no
different. So how do you know a person is homosexual—only if they tell you.
There is no way to prove it otherwise. We just assume that it is. We don’t even question someone who says, “I
just knew, even as a little boy (or girl) that I was homosexual.” Folks, that’s not true. When they were that young, they
weren’t even sexualized; they didn’t know any of that. Boys playing with dolls doesn’t mean they’re
homosexual. He can’t assert that.
On the third strategy to make us
tolerate gays, namely conversion, gays want us to change our minds: they want us to like them. They even hate the idea Christians
express: “Hate the sin, but love the
sinner.” That’s not good enough, because
you’re still calling it sin—and they can’t abide that. They hope the media and the schools will
bring us around. But in doing so, we
would be abandoning what God has explicitly told us. One of their experts says, “Since it’s
genetic, it’s not like saying, “Tomorrow morning I’m going to stop being gay,” because
that’s like saying, “Tomorrow morning I’m going to stop being black.” So they
say.
Listen to what Brian McLaren says
about homosexuality (I covered his beliefs in my “Emerging Church” blog):
“Perhaps we need a 5-year moratorium on making decrees of judgement. In the meantime, we’ll practice prayerful
Christian dialogue, listening respectfully, disagreeing agreeably…we’ll keep
our ears attuned to scholars...etc ad nauseum…so we can patiently wait for the
wind of the Spirit to set our course; because you know, it’s just not clear in
the Bible.” Not clear?
Here is another element of their
strategy; it’s called an ad hominem argument, that is,
against the man. It’s what they do when they’re losing the debate. They can’t
make a logical argument, so they make an argument against you. This is like how
kids argue. They start losing the argument,
so they go “well...well…so you ugly.”
That means he’s got no logical argument left, and knows it. Listen this
from Rep. Barney Frank: “I wouldn’t want
the homosexual marriage issue to go to the U.S. Supreme Court now, because that
homophobe Antonin Scalia has too many votes on this current Court.” He’s saying this about a sitting Justice! Do
you notice that it’s not your opinion that’s wrong, it’s you; you are
intolerant, you are a homophobe—it’s your character. You as a person have been judged, not your
opinion. They always use ad hominem attacks. “You as a person don’t deserve to
be in this discussion.”
They say homosexuality is as
immutable as ethnicity. That’s not
true. Look at I Corinthians 6:9-11:
Do you not know that
the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be
deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor
homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor
thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will
inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And
such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord
Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
That’s 2000-year old evidence that
people stopped being homosexual!
Gays argue that they are
discriminated against in marriage, in having children, etc. But the word “discriminated” has a broader
meaning, some of it good. We want our
daughters to be discriminatory when she seeks a man to date, and ultimately to
marry, right? Actually, all laws are
discriminatory; i.e., it treats everyone the same in a category that it favors,
and equally to those categories it does not favor. Remember, that’s what we
want our daughters to do, right? Take this statement from the marriage covenant,
“When two people.” Start with
“when.” That means we discriminate
against all 13-year olds equally. “When
two.” We discriminate against polygamy
and polyamory, “When two people.” We
discriminate against bestiality and zooerasty (I’ll let you look that up). And so on.
So even the premise of their argument is out the window, since we make
and have laws that discriminate--as you can see above, for good reason.
All that works, at least, until the
public, having been sufficiently desensitized, jammed, and been—well,
partially—converted, change how we feel about homosexuals. (Ed. note:
Now I worry about polygamy, pedophilia, or bestiality being their next
goal. God help us.)
Now to the suggestions for you to
help beat back this growing immorality. Try Apologetics. First, we need to stop being back on our
heels—we have God’s Truth on our side.
We don’t need to mutter our objections, nor stick to “moderation.” Remember, that’s lukewarmness—which God
doesn’t speak kindly of in Revelation 3.
Oh, yes, prepare for the ad hominem arguments. You’ll be slandered. Expect persecution, but endure, the only sure
way to heaven. Make your life pleasing
to God, not your fellow fallen man.
Truly hate the things of the world—including those things in you. Fear, embarrassment. And we also have logic on our side. We need to understand that the other side
doesn’t care about truth—but that does not stop us from making our Scriptural
arguments.
They will use the genetic fallacy
argument—i.e., rejecting logic because of where it came from—that is, from
Christians. They say, “You can’t bring the Bible to bear on this argument,
because you can’t force your religious beliefs on other people.” Thus they
believe that religion has no listenable place in our society. I reject that
premise. Secondly, while you don’t want
to accept religion, you are trying to force your non-Bible religious beliefs on
me, and feel that you should be listened to, while I don’t have that privilege.
I reject that premise. Thirdly, you’re arguing that I should be loving and kind
toward you, which you get from my Bible, which you don’t acknowledge. As you
can see, that dog don’t hunt.
Last item. They complain about how we “pick and choose”
from Leviticus, especially. We often
quote Lev. 18:22 to them:
You shall not lie
with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.
But then there are strange things in
Leviticus which we ignore, like how it’s also an abomination to eat shellfish
(Ch. 11), or how it’s unlawful to clip off the edges of your beard (Ch. 19),
and not to sow different seeds in a field (also Ch 19). Well, let me help you. First, Christians could argue that “also in
Leviticus 18 is the proper way to treat your neighbor, which is what you want
me to do, right? So who’s “picking and
choosing,” huh? You like part of
Leviticus 18, but not another part.
Actually, this is just like I am.
But the difference is, I know why I’m picking and choosing. A little education: there are 3 types of laws
in the Bible. There is moral law, which is forever binding on all people in all
time. We have this summarized in the Ten
Commandments. Secondly, there is civil
law—they were for the nation of Israel, in the ancient Near East. These laws expired with the nation then, but
they are still of general equity because they were based on the moral law. Thirdly were the ceremonial laws, which were defined
to do two things: to identify Israel as
God’s unique and different people, worshipping Him uniquely in their
context—and also to point forward to the Person and work of Christ. So when you talk about cutting the edge of
the beard, that’s ceremonial law, and intended to show that Israel was
different, and not like the nations around them. Yes, dietary and civil laws
also were not like other nations.
(Actually, their civil laws were far better than most). Many of our own
laws, like negligent homicide, (the ox that gores in Leviticus) were based on
Jewish laws. (We call them
Judeo-Christian laws, citing their source).
So the reason I “pick and choose”
from the Old Testament, is because New Testament writers did that, and because
while Christ has come, and we are under the New Covenant, He has fulfilled the
whole law, and He enables me to keep the moral law. The moral law is still operable. So if I understand how the Bible was written,
and I use the Old Testament carefully, I’m not picking and choosing what I
like—which is the opposite of you, friend.
Tell me why you get to pick and choose from the Bible, since you don’t
know why, or how, you just pick what you like.
What’s better for our society—people who just pick what law they want,
and violate laws they don’t like; or people that understand and are subject to
a law that’s higher than themselves; people that are willing to obey and submit
to it. You answer that and then we can
go back to our discussion on same-sex marriage.
We haven’t covered all the Biblical
points on homosexuality, but I have given you tools to fight with. God be with you.
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