A Case Study in Conformism

Brendan O'Neill writes perceptively in this article about the intellectual and rhetorical landscape of the last decade's so called 'debate' over same-sex marriage. You might say he writes bravely even. And that, really, is his point. 

In the course of his piece he quotes Christopher Caldwell's paper 'Gay Rites':

 ‘Public opinion does not change this fast in free societies. Either opinion is not changing as fast as it appears to be, or society is not as free.’

Mmmm.  

Is 'same sex' marriage good for society?

It really kicks off at 3:57 with Peter Hitchens' introduction. It is meandering. And long. And frustrating as debates can be. But it is very good. And don't whatever you do miss the last 15 mins.

blindingly obvious

Sorry, I've been ill since Sunday, so this is a bit late, but here are the notes of last Sunday's sermon. We continue our series in Romans. It is unpolished I am afraid - but will be mostly intelligible I think. 

 

Sermon 4 Notes

An evangelical redefinition of marriage

Last Sunday night I was called on to preach in the evening as well as the morning.  Without a lot of time to prepare and in light of Tuesday's Vote in the House of Commons I spoke about the Redefinition of Marriage amongst evangelical Christians. 

The elephant in the room. 

e is for ... education. 

The notes and handout are below. 

Sermon (a bit note like in parts) / Handout

We closed the service with a hymn I had never sung before, but which I am very glad to have stumbled on. 

God of grace and God of glory,
On Thy people pour Thy power.
Crown Thine ancient church’s story,
Bring her bud to glorious flower.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the facing of this hour,
For the facing of this hour.

Lo! the hosts of evil ’round us,
Scorn Thy Christ, assail His ways.
From the fears that long have bound us,
Free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the living of these days,
For the living of these days.

Cure Thy children’s warring madness,
Bend our pride to Thy control.
Shame our wanton selfish gladness,
Rich in things and poor in soul.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal.

Set our feet on lofty places,
Gird our lives that they may be,
Armored with all Christ-like graces,
In the fight to set men free.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
That we fail not man nor Thee,
That we fail not man nor Thee.

Save us from weak resignation,
To the evils we deplore.
Let the search for Thy salvation,
Be our glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Serving Thee Whom we adore,
Serving Thee Whom we adore.

[In case you are parachuting into this blog ... and think this is all very serious and REFORMED (aka dull) or something... the morning service was our monthly 'Parade' Service, carrying on a series in Romans. It included the smashing of an egg, explosions, Powerpuff girls and the playing of SNAP's 'I've got the power'.]

Homosexuality and shellfish

A very helpful 12 minutes addressing the issue that troubles many or is brought up in debate: Christians just pick and choose regarding the Levitical Laws. Why say that homosexuality is wrong when we happily eat shellfish, wear 'mixed cloth' and the rest?

{It is worth remembering that 'pants' mean 'trousers' in the States [first 30 seconds!]}

Lesbian Professor to Pastor's Wife

Rosaria Butterfield has written a book called: The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. Carl Trueman has reviewed it, saying: 'I do not agree with everything she says; but I did learn from everything she wrote. It deserves the widest possible readership' So it sounds like a book to read once it makes its way to this side of the pond. Amazon.co.uk don't seem to have it yet, except for kindle.  

In the same blog post [which really is worth a read] Carl Trueman (a Black Country Boy abroad in the States) amusingly and astutely writes about the Daily Mail 'protocol' and Christian Testimonies like this:

The second problem is what I call 'The Daily Mail protocol.' For those who live in blissful ignorance of Britain's newspaper, The Daily Mail, it is an absurdly right wing production which covers exactly the same kind of bedhopping kiss-and-tell scandals as the other, more notorious tabloids, but it always does so with an air of moral outrage and splenetic indignation. Thus, the reader has access to all of the prurient details of the latest activities of some ghastly boy band but without feeling that they have dirtied themselves in finding out the information. Such, it seems to me, are many of the Christian memoirs that become popular with plotlines such "I was a murderous biker/a porn star/a drug addict/a politician but then I found Jesus." If we are honest, most of us read such books for the salacious details of the preconversion life of the author, not the testimony to God's grace. Indeed, I have often thought of writing my own Christian autobiography: 'I was a basically well-behaved studious teenager from a good home and then I found Jesus and continued to be basically well-behaved and studious.' Unlikely to make it to the Barnes and Noble Top Ten, I suspect.

Hear hear. 

But this is not that: 

How an Unbelieving Lesbian English Professor became a Pastor's Wife

The Limits of Revolution

AN Wilson writes :

The truth is that the Sexual Revolution had the power to alter our way of life, but it could not alter our essential nature; it could not alter the reality of who and what we are as human beings. [click here for the entire (and very good) article]

Children of LGBT Parents

The statistical studies:

The Kids Aren’t All Right: New Family Structures and the “No Differences” Claim

A personal testimony:

Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View

HT Matthew Mason via Facebook

Sexual by Design - Creation Sexuality

Click to get to the video

Not sure you want to watch this? Well, check out the advert: 

Now,  you decide what you want to do. 

Not his normal Sunday morning crowd! 

;) 

Goo or Genesis

An excellent little article on why the debate about marriage is at heart a theological one (for those on both sides of the isle) and why Christians must begin with Genesis and NOT with 'traditional' values. Here are some nuggets:

Marriage is a political act, and not an individual choice. How you marry is a way of testifying to what city you belong to. Who defines marriage? The difficulty we are having in our generation in answering this question shows how theology shapes and drives everything.

If God created the world, and put one man and one woman in it, married them to each other, and established that as a pattern for the rest of human history, then marriage should be defined in accordance with that reality. If He did nothing of the kind, and we actually evolved out of the primordial goo, then we get to shape and define it however we would like it to go.

One other item of Christian theology has to be taken into account, and that is the reality of the fall into sin. The Christian approach to marriage in the context of mere Christendom deals with both of these realities -- the creational given of male and female, and the sinful propensity we have to hump the world. Creational sexuality and sinful sexuality are both factors.

Our laws about marriage must therefore do two things, not just one. They must honor what God has established in the first place, and they must restrain (by not honoring with the recognition of marriage) any of the other forms of sexual congress that sinful men have come up with... 

... The marriage debates are a prime illustration of why governmental neutrality on basic religious issues is an impossibility. He who says A must eventually say B, and now that we are getting to the end of this seamy chain of syllogisms, we are confronted with the demand to allow homosexuals to marry. But this is not the end of it, and shows why it is so important to get down to first principles.
The secularists want to say that in addition to straights, we have a range of options with the fetching label of GLBTQ. Anybody who thinks that list of letters won't grow just isn't paying attention. Pederasty, bestiality, hetero-polygamy, hetero-polyandry, and bisexual-polyoptions are all waiting in the wings.
The reason why homosexual marriage won't end the debates (and the hate crimes of those who take up the wrong side of the debate) is that these marriage "reforms" clearly have not solved the problems of the bisexuals. With our arbitrary limitation of marital status to two and only two people, we are plainly telling the bisexual that he must choose between a heterosexual marriage or a homosexual marriage, but that he can't do both. "But I am both!" he wails . . . suppose this poor little buster wants to express all of his sexual yearnings within the holy bonds of matrimony, and the clerk down at the county courthouse, just seething with hate, won't give him a license with a place on it for three signatures. And then the Muslim guy, next in line, wants one with a place for four signatures... 

... Christians can't fight this on the basis of "traditional values." The sexual traditions of humanity, considered apart from God's Word, have contained way too many child brides, harems, serial polygamists, and concubines to provide us with the appropriate guidance here. 

Free Sex - Who Pays?

Some cuddly thoughts for Valentine's Day here! A report by the Jubilee Centre (you can find it direct here) about the financial fallout of sexual sin would not be news to the writer of Proverbs: 

20 My son, keep your father’s command
and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. 

21 Bind them always on your heart; 

fasten them around your neck.

22 When you walk, they will guide you; 

when you sleep, they will watch over you; 

when you awake, they will speak to you. 

23 For this command is a lamp, this teaching is a light, 

and correction and instruction are the way to life, 

24 keeping you from your neighbor’s wife, 

from the smooth talk of a wayward woman. 

25 Do not lust in your heart after her beauty 

or let her captivate you with her eyes.

26 For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, 

but another man’s wife preys on your very life.

27 Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned?

28 Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched? 

29 So is he who sleeps with another man’s wife; 

no one who touches her will go unpunished. 

30 People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving. 

31 Yet if he is caught, he must pay sevenfold, 

though it costs him all the wealth of his house. 

32 But a man who commits adultery has no sense; 

whoever does so destroys himself. 

33 Blows and disgrace are his lot,

and his shame will never be wiped away. 

34 For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, 

and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge. 

35 He will not accept any compensation; 

he will refuse a bribe, however great it is.

The Peasant Princess

Loads of materials here

Sex symbol

A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing. 

I have never liked sex. I do not think I ever will. It seems just the opposite of love.

The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another. 

Marilyn Monroe died on August 5th 1962, apparently having commited suicide, not long after one of the (12/14?) abortions she had.

Putting to death

'Struggle' - Jordan Taylor

The sexual revolution

The sexual revolution was supposed to bring us liberty and fulfilment, yet society seems to have more hang-ups than ever. We have - it is claimed - better sex education than ever (it is certainly more explicit), yet it results in single teenage mothers and millions of abortions each year. We are told that sex is recreational and purely for pleasure, yet we are also told that it gives our lives meaning and purpose. Can it really be both? We have more sexual crimes than ever, and women seem to feel less safe on our streets than ever before. We find a high-tech pornography business that, on a worldwide basis, makes more money than the entire car industry. We know more about the mechanics of the orgasm than ever before, yet we seem to know less about how to make a relationship last beyond a few months. Is it possible that what we took to be the gateway to freedom was , in fact, the door to slavery? 

p78 Ten: Living the Ten Commandments in the 21st Century

it's not the pornography that's the problem

the problem with pornography is not the pornography

One of the more important lessons for us to learn is that while the occasions for sin are external and 'out there', the real problem is with our lusts within. 

We must come to rethink the relationship between masculinity and being seduced. John Milton uses a striking phrase in Paradise Lost, referring to those men who were seduced by the 'daughters of men.' When shown the future seduction of these men, these descendents of his, Adam attempts to blame the women involved -'Man's woe holds on the same, from Woman to begin.' The angel replies to the contrary: ' From Man's effeminate slackness it begins.' 

At the heart of masculinity is the possession of authority and taking of initiative; by creation design a man is intended by God to be a head, a head willing to sacrifice himself. But part of our word seduction comes from the Latin word duco, which means 'I lead'. 

When a man is seduced he is being led, when a woman seduces she is leading. So when a man is seduced (whether by a living woman or a pornographic woman is immaterial) he is relinquishing and abdicating his assigned role. 

p21-22 Fidelity: What It Means to Be a One-Woman Man

The google book can be viewed here

Sex in heaven?

Are your sexpectations right?

Glad to be Gay?

I was very challenged in reading this article by Martin Hallett of the True freedom Trust, and this quote in particular, in which he makes a clear distinction between sex and sexuality (celibate homosexuality, I guess, or holy homosexuality?): 

Many liberal Christians claim to find freedom and acceptance when they embrace their sexuality, which for them also involves sex. They then say, "I thank God for my sexuality." I cannot agree with their sexual moral choices, but perhaps our more conservative Christian response would be taken more seriously and even be a more positive witness, if we can say, "Yes, I can thank God for the gift of my sexuality!" 

Sexuality - a gift from God? by Martin Hallett (June 2000)

Pure