Why Is This Happening? "Gay Marriage" as a Scourge

What happens to a country where, although the great majority of citizens profess to be Christians, only a very few of them actually have a Biblical worldview?

“Gay marriage” happens.

Abolition of school prayer; establishment of an abortion industry; attacks on Christmas; new laws permitting human cloning; government funding of “art” designed to offend and demean Christians; judicial jihad against the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance.

That's what happens.

According to a poll released in January by researcher George Barna, a mere 9% of all “born again adults” and 7% of Protestants in general “possess a biblical worldview” (see barna.org). In other words, fewer than 1 in 10 Christians in America actually believe in God's Word as proclaimed by Scripture.

Barna based his poll on seven Biblical teachings supposedly held in common by all Christian denominations (see worldmag.com/world/issue/02-07004/cultural_.asp):

1. There is absolute moral truth based on the Bible.
2. Biblical teaching is accurate.
3. Jesus was without sin.
4. Satan literally exists.
5. God is omnipotent and omniscient.
6. Salvation is by grace alone.
7. Christians have a personal responsibility to evangelize.

You'd think any Christian, regardless of denomination, would be able to sign on to all seven of these. But according to the Barna poll, even Protestant pastors, as a group, can't quite manage it. In the poll, 49% of the pastors rejected these scripturally-based statements of belief. (For all the details of the poll's findings, see the websites cited above.)

What Does It Mean?

Many of us have been wondering how, in a supposedly Christian country, we find ourselves watching helplessly, dazedly, as our whole way of life is dismantled, piece by piece, by liberal judges, lawsuit-happy atheists, alleged “entertainers,” so-called “educators,” and even out-of-control elected officials. How can this be happening? Why can't we stop it? Every time we cut off one head of this hydra, two more grow up in its place.

A false religion, secular humanism, has hijacked our institutions and turned them against us. Our schools and universities, courts, media, popular culture, many of our business corporations, our political parties, and even some of our churches, all have fallen into the hands of the enemy.

They believe in their religion, that man is in the place of God.

Too many of us don't believe in ours, and that leaves us practically defenseless.

A Biblical Parallel

The children of Israel were in Egypt for so long that Moses, when God spoke to him in the burning bush, protested that the people wouldn't know what he was talking about when he said the God of their fathers had sent him to them (see Exodus 3:13-15). They'd been in Egypt long enough to know how to fashion a golden calf and worship it as an idol, but they'd forgotten how to worship the God of Israel.

Similarly, Christians came to the New World hundreds of years ago and set up a Christian polity. But then things got going well, prosperity, peace, growth into a global superpower, and while “religion” flourished here, many of us stopped thinking about what this “religion” really meant. We preserved the outward forms of Christianity, church attendance, celebration of holidays, whatever, while losing the inward experience of faith that made it real. As this inner fire sputtered out, we reconciled ourselves to (and soon embraced) such things as state schools run by humanists, spiritually enervating television, and all the rest.

Now we find ourselves in captivity, not to Pharaoh, but to a modern humanist state. After all these insults to our religion, all of which continue to be thrust on us every day, the humanists seek to ram “gay marriage” down our throats as the final insult, intended to destroy, forever, America's pretensions to be a “Christian” country.

St. Paul described this in Romans 1. Having gone through the whole process of rejecting God, and coming to worship the creature instead of the Creator, God “gave them up to vile affections” (v. 26) and “to a reprobate mind” (v. 28).

Is this not precisely where we are today?

God meant to redeem Israel from Pharaoh's brick pits, but He also had to teach them, all over again, how to be God's people. That was the whole meaning of the Exodus experience: the plagues, the first Passover, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the revelation of the Law.

God has a history of using the ungodly (the Assyrians, the Babylonians) to scourge His people. Is it not possible that this is exactly what He's doing now, today, in America? For Assyrians or Babylonians, read humanists. For Israel and Judah, read the Christian church.

Godless humanism has grown into a great tree that now casts its shadow over America and all the world. Even as He permitted Pharaoh to oppress Israel and hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would not let the people go, so has God allowed this tree to grow to such a height.

Someday, when it has grown to the fullness of its might and arrogance, the Lord will cut it down.

Our only question is whether we have the inner strength to regenerate ourselves as Christians before this happens, or whether God will do it for us, as once He did for Israel.