2 Dangerous Arguments Christians Are Buying Into
“I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me, God. Amen.” —Martin Luther
I lean libertarian politically. I’m not sure why the government has any say in marriage—that which was founded as a religious institution for thousands of years. I don’t believe you can legislate morality, but at the same time, laws are needed to protect a country’s citizens.
Today, Christians who won’t budge on the major issues are being branded as bigoted religious haters. This exact strategy was outlined in the landmark book After the Ball: How Americans Will Overcome Their Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ’90s.
In this book, the authors, Kirk and Madsen, suggest isolating conservative Christians by presenting them as “hysterical backwoods preachers, drooling with hate to a degree that looks both comical and deranged.” They offered a vivid proposition of how this strategy could be used in the media:
“For example, for several seconds an unctuous, beady-eyed Southern preacher is shown pounding the pulpit in rage against ‘those perverted, abominable creatures.'” While his tirade continues over the soundtrack, the picture switches to heart-rending photos of badly beaten persons, or of gays who look decent, harmless and likable; and then we cut back to the poisonous face of the preacher. The contrast speaks for itself. The effect is devastating.”
In just one short year between 2011 and 2012, this issue went from having minority to majority support. And this victory for the homosexual marriage movement certainly has in large part had to do with painting Christians as outlandish outsiders who “drool with deranged hate”—the very same individuals who start charities, fight for the oppressed and rescue the helpless.
These are the most common arguments for Christians to just “get over their deeply held religious convictions”:
1. If you’re going to take a stance on homosexual marriage, you’d have to take the same stance on divorce.
This is true. However, I would say that one sin does not cancel out the other. Divorce is sin, the practice of homosexuality is sin, just like lying, cheating, infidelity and adultery.
2. If we’re talking about sin, being judgmental is a sin, and your judgment of other people’s sin is sin, (referencing Romans 2).
This argument has three different points.
Point #1: No, it isn’t right to judge the world, as in looking down on people and hating them for their behavior. However, it isn’t wrong to assess the behavior and avoid the behavior ourselves if we believe with our own conscience it’s wrong. In this case, we discern the difference between right and wrong in our own lives. This isn’t judging someone else—it’s making our own choice.
Point #2: This argument on judging homosexuals goes so far as to say that in order to not judge someone we need to be accepting, active participants of the behavior, or in other words, perform a gay wedding ceremony or agree to be a servicer of a homosexual wedding.
Let me ask you something. If another sin, such as theft or human trafficking or murder, happens to be legal, how is it in anyone’s best interest to be an accomplice of sorts in that sin? Perhaps people don’t view this as the same thing as actually performing any sin themselves, but if you hand someone a knife to kill someone with, aren’t your fingerprints on the handle? Many Christians, afraid of being framed as unloving and hateful, now say we should accept and even participate in something the Bible says is a sin. Sin is sin, and the moment we dull our conscience to any sin in our lives, we enter dangerous territory.
“… who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, while their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them” (Rom. 2:15).
Point #3: It’s true the Bible says not to judge outsiders, but in tandem it actually tells us to judge our brothers and sisters within the body of Christ who are unrepentantly sinning and to “remove the evil person from among you.”
“I wrote to you in my letter not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I did not mean the sexually immoral people of this world, or the covetous and extortioners, or the idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. But I have written to you not to keep company with any man who is called a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner. Do not even eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But God judges those who are outside. Therefore ‘put away from among yourselves that wicked person'” (1 Cor. 5:9-13).
If loving people involves being an active part of sin and violating one’s conscience, that doesn’t sound like love to me. It sounds like mind control wrapped in flowery words such as love, acceptance and tolerance.
This issue is concerning because of all the moral revisionism that leads to easy brainwashing and adopting a state-directed conscience that suits those in power. Don’t think I’m being outlandish here—history tells us quite the opposite.
