No, the same-sex “marriage” ruling by the American Supreme Court is not the end of the world.  It is, however, the end of the world as you and I have known it.

For starters, no one should be surprised.  The death-beetles (which infest all human attempts at governance) in the great American oak have been intensely active since the ‘60s, with notable outbreaks in Supreme Court decisions Roe, and two recent decisions on “Obama-care,” but this case is in a class by itself because it poisons the roots of the essential institution of civilization.  Five centuries of recorded history have taught us the significance of the institution of covenant marriage between one man and one woman, permanent monogamy.  Confessedly, that institution has always been an elusive ideal, but it has served as a bulwark against personal and societal anarchies of all sorts. 

The central certainty of the decision promises unintended (or intended?) consequences which truly boggle the mind.  One could write a tome on serious implications for public and private schools, for ministers and ministries of every sort which must now (impossibly) attempt to function without offending the current “law of the land,” forever broadening definitions of “marriage,” etc. endlessly.  Writ large, for a further destabilization of a crumbling culture.  One is reminded of that horrible attribution of Jeremiah to Israel, “…you have a whore’s forehead, you refuse to be ashamed.” (Jeremiah 3:3)

How should people of faith, specifically evangelicals, respond, not to the tectonic shift itself (which was going on underground anyway), but to the act of codifying it into law?  (Although not technically a “law;” it will function as one.)

(1)  The real surprise is that any knowledgeable Christian is surprised!  Read, very carefully I Timothy 4 and II Timothy 3 for starters.  And then perhaps Revelation 13 for the end of the story.  (Psalm 82 is especially appropriate here in re perverse judges.)  God has told us from the beginning that human society will degenerate until the cataclysm at the end.  One of our essential problems is that, while millions of Christians around the world have been called to die for their faith, we have lived in a safe bubble in the west.  The bubble is leaking!

(2)  We should expect America, increasingly, to be ruled by “judicial activism,” that is, for the court to continue to pursue, with avidity, a leftist agenda.  It is difficult to imagine that the court will reverse itself, although it has reversed or revised its actions more than a hundred times.  The slide will continue, producing many new interpretations of the law “at the edges,” meaning “where you and I live every day” and which will be, often, grindingly onerous.  “Marriage” will, in fact, lose it meaning; a word that means everything will now mean nothing. 

(3)  We shall increasingly, in personal and corporate contexts, be the butt of  jokes, the jest of the cultural elites, “the hopeless defender of lost causes.”  Get this: much of what our ministers now say is already criminalized; the laws simply are not being executed against us. 

(4)  Let all churches prepare to lose, in time, tax-exempt status.  We should not worry about that or base ministry on it.  We must give, in every sense of the word, while we can and more generously than ever before.  The day of our current measure of opportunity may well be closing.

(5)  We must remember that God has not abdicated His throne!  Our watch-word is Revelation 19:6, “Alleluia! For the Lord God omnipotent reigns.”  He has, does, and will finally and eternally reign, subduing everything and everybody to His perfect rule.  (Heb,12:25-29)  The American Supreme Court is not THE Supreme Court at all; it is manifestly (hang on for that revelation!) a very low court.

(6)  We will be called on to what the Babylonian captives did, i.e., to “sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.” (Ps. 137:2)  In fact, we must sing it more passionately, more persistently, more persuasively, more believingly, than ever! 

(7)  All of this will place immense pressure on churches to come into congregational conflict; the enemy will fracture every church-family he can.  The answer?  Simply this: stay in the book and let its message prevail.

(8)  To my own clan (four children, fifteen grandchildren, and five great-grand-children (with two more on the way): God must love you in a special way to allow you to live in such a critical cultural context!  It’s tough, but you’re tougher.  You’re champions and I love you and am proud of every one of you!  A man once prayed for “London Grace.”  A friend asked him later what that meant.  “The grace necessary,” he said, “to live effectively for God in London!”  Your Mom and I have, and will, pray for “America grace” on all of us!  And God will give it!

Bill Anderson

(see my article on Tony Campolo, on this subject, at billandersonministries.com)

Tony Campolo, one of the best-known speakers on the modern American university-seminary circuit, has come out of the closet: he has called for a tectonic shift in American church life: “Christian gay couples” he says, should now enjoy “full acceptance into the Church.” One may be certain he means the entire LGBTQ “community.”  Who believes his concern for sexual “openness” extends only to gay couples.

Actually, it’s not quite “tectonic.“ For decades Campolo has walked at the edges of theological and ecclesiastical orthodoxy. We may expect a raised eye-brow here and there, but little shock. This is his MO, his penchant, his schtick.

Campolo knows “gays” have the megaphone of western civilization, and he, with a keen sense of cultural shift and historical context, shouts a loud “Amen” to their small but vocal band.

Questions bristle:

1. What took him so long to come out? Hypocrisy? Fear? Political incorrectness? Homophobia? The one excuse he can never offer, given his educational background, is ignorance. He could not possibly not have known what the Bible teaches on the subject which, previously, he often admitted and accepted. The screaming fact is that the new Campolo makes absolutely no reference to scripture in defense of his sexual about-face.

2. Why at this specific moment does he choose to come out? Does it have anything to do with the upcoming vote of the Supreme Court which may clarify marriage to include same sex unions? Did he want to get on the right side of history before the court does? (The odds are, we are told, that even if the court leaves the matter to the states, in the long run, it will all come to the same thing.)

3. What new revelation(s) might we expect from Campolo? That marriage may include any number of people? If two members of the same gender, why not six? Bestiality? Remember the PETA spokesperson saying recently, “Animals are people too!”? Will abortion be the next morally permissible act? Everybody being saved in the end? Those anti-biblical positions already have their defenders in the name of tolerance and are becoming increasingly popular. To put the question another way: does God have the right to say no? And does He ever need to? Many forces produced Jesus’ death, one of which was His capacity to say no. Would the Romans ever have murdered him if He agreed often enough with them?

4. Is the church ready for the fall-out? That assumes Campolo is in the flow of what is, or will one day become, the cultural norm. It is easy to imagine local churches saying, ”Pastor, we love and admire you, but look, the feds say we lose our tax exemption or you have to go. No hard feelings, but happy trails!” Sound wild? Hang on! (Such possibilities must never dictate our theology or ecclesiology; it is but to toss out a warning.)

5. What do we do if we find one day that God really did mean what He said, and explicitly said, about homosexuality, as Campolo admitted for decades? Does one imagine Him saying, “Tony, I am so happy that you revised what I said and made it more palatable in your historical context. Your new message is so much more humane than what I said. Thanks a million for making Me more believable!”

6. What if, the Bible aside, we find that aberrant forms of sexuality (i.e., non-biblical sexuality) do in fact—as we have believed for centuries—produce lethal results to humans—mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, societally, etc.,? Shall we then stand against such practices, not because we are biblically informed, but, are simply being pragmatic? Put otherwise, will functionality trump God?

7. Do you remember Jesus’ word, spoken on the way to the cross, “If these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” If this in good times, what in evil times? Surely, modern American church morality is at least a part of what He had in mind. How do we say no to anything or anyone now?

We all remember a horrifically demonized man in Gadara who, touched by Jesus, was found “sitting (not running about in a graveyard frenzy), clothed (true redemption inevitably produces modesty, a sexual matter) and in his right mind (not a psychopathic demoniac).” That event is a mother lode of spiritual (and societal!) gold for a lifetime of study.

First-century Christianity, as every serious student knows, was an island of sexual sanity in an ocean of sexual insanity. The waves are getting higher.

Alas: so much for the church being the conscience of the culture. It appears at times that the last footholds of moral order are being dislodged in our culture; we have a right to expect the darkness.