|
The Sunday after the Supreme Court's horrendous decision affirming the legality of the abomination called same-sex marriage, my pastor, Glenn Meredith, proclaimed that we as Christians need to face up to the fact that we have lost the culture war that has been raging in our nation for the last 60 years.
The loss of that war is a reality that is hard to face up to, but it is the truth. We will, of course, continue to speak out against the rampaging immorality in our society. We have to. Jesus Himself called us to be salt and light. But increasingly, we are going to be pushed aside and written off as marginal and irrelevant. Worse still, we are going to have to face increasing persecution for our biblical beliefs.
Christian beliefs have been producing persecution in our public universities for some time now. All across our nation university professors are being refused jobs or they are being passed over for tenure because of their Christian beliefs. Christian students are likewise suffering systematic discrimination in grades because of their biblical beliefs.
But this problem is not confined to the universities. Job discrimination based on Christian beliefs has become commonplace. A classic example of what I am talking about is the case of Dr. Eric Walsh in Georgia. Dr. Walsh is a renowned public health expert who also serves as a lay minister among Seventh Day Adventist Churches. He was hired by the state of Georgia to serve as a district health director in May of 2014. Soon thereafter some state officials ordered workers within the Department of Health to start investigating Dr. Walsh's sermons! As a result of their review of what he had preached regarding sexuality, world religions and creationism, he was fired. And this was done despite the fact that the Department's own counsel twice warned that "under federal law Dr. Walsh's religious beliefs could play no role in any employment decision by the Department of Health."
Think about this incredible story for a moment: public officials assigned to review the sermons of a colleague! What has this nation come to? I can answer that question. Because of our persistent rebellion and our refusal to repent, God has delivered us over to a depraved mind (Romans 1:28).
Churches are going to come under increasing attacks. Demands that they host same-sex marriages are going to increase and lead to expensive lawsuits. We are headed toward the total secularization of marriage — as is the case in most nations of the world where only the state can perform a legal marriage, and any follow-up at a church will be only window-dressing.
Pastors and ministry staffs are going to be stripped of their tax-exempt housing allowances. Demands will be made for all ministries and churches that refuse to endorse sexual perversion to be deprived of their tax exempt status. And pastors and evangelists who have the audacity to speak out against sexual perversion will be threatened with prosecution for engaging in "hate speech." It is already illegal in Canada to speak out against abortion or homosexuality on the public airwaves.
This coming wave of persecution was made clear recently in a stunningly candid essay by Dr. Mark Tushnet, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School. The essay was prompted by the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In the essay, Dr. Tushnet declared a total victory for liberals in the culture war. His message to Evangelical Christians was, "You lost, deal with it."
He then proceeded to advocate a hard line toward the "losers." He argued that being nice to losers does not work, as evidenced by what happened when that approach was used after the Civil War and after the Brown Decision mandating an end to segregation in the public schools.
Instead, he called for moral conservatives of all types to be treated like Germany and Japan at the end of World War II — a demand for unconditional surrender.
So, forget our constitution and its guarantee of protection of freedom of religion. The best interests of a secular and pagan society must prevail. Forget also about the original meaning of our constitution. After all, for our constitution to be relevant, it must be a "living document" that is constantly adapting to changes in the basic nature of our society.
Actually, we have already arrived at this point because our Supreme Court has made it very clear that our constitution means whatever the Court says it means.
Will we as Christians stand firm for the Word of God in the midst of increasing persecution, or will we seek popularity and acceptance by crawling in bed with society and endorsing its sins? Each professing Christian is going to be faced with this dilemma in one way or another. We need to decide now whether we are going to stand for the Lord or surrender to the god of this world.
|
