(Tim) When I was a child, Dad subscribed to Time for a time. Then came the day they ran an ad for men's cologne pictured in a bottle shaped like a phallus. Dad wrote them strenuously objecting to such degradation.
Since then, our family hasn't been big on news magazines. The only one that's ever entered our home is World, to which we have a lifetime gift subscription kindness of its founder. Truth be told, I'm not at all fond of Time and Newsweek (especially), and Newsweek's current issue provides a good example of my reasons.
The cover story is a puff piece on sodomite marriage. The really disgusting thing, though, is that Newsweek's editors allowed their female (and yes, I believe sex matters here) religion editor, Lisa Miller, to play the schoolmarm to the nation on the true doctrine of Scripture concerning sodomy. The story's title tells it all: "Gay Marriage: Our mutual joy; Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side."
Yes, of course; Newsweek's religion editor is going to lecture us on the Bible's teaching on love. And I'm guessing she believes in the slaughter of little babies in their mother's womb, too, and could lecture us on Scripture's doctrine of love there, also. Our chattering class has Goebbels' principle down cold...
So Rev. Lisa Miller tells assures us love is the heart of sodomite relationships and the prime motivation of those speaking up in defense of those relationships.
But this is detestable hypocrisy. Same-sex intimacy is always and in every case utterly destructive to the glory of God, the dignity of His creation, and the loving union of two persons bearing His Image. Start with the body parts, if you have the courage. They don't fit and I'm neither joking nor being mean.
Then move on to the psyches of two men or two women wanting to unite monogamously in heart, mind, and body for life. They don't fit, either. It's not just a body thing.
Even the sodomites' willing helpers, social scientists, haven't been quick enough to remove all the evidence quite yet. Did you know, for instance, that lesbians have the highest rate of physical abuse, and commit the most serious abuse of all couples? This is self-reported, even when asked to compare the abuse to prior heterosexual relationships.
Is self-proclaimed Prophet Tony Campolo brave enough to come to a single conclusion from this evidence? His wife? Maybe Brian McLaren's up to the job?
Is there anyone--anyone at all--willing to love, to really love sexual sinners today, rescuing them from physical and spiritual death?
Which of course brings us to the main point. When a culture talks endless about something, we can be sure it knows nothing about that thing. Today, for instance, every evangelical patters on about his passion for God. The reason?
We have no passion for God. We only have passion for ourselves, so we cover up our naked betrayal of the lover of our souls with words that claim we possess the very thing whose absence we mourn. You know, "Our first commitment here at Church of the Green Narrative, Square Glasses, and Chai is worship that risks expressing our deepest passion for God."
Yeah, right.
So also with love. All you need is love, love, love is all you need. Everybody now...
Because the church has traded love for lust, the world is blind to the distinction. Because the church has turned her back on God's story and now uses the pulpit to narrate her own, truth is dead and the world is lost in narcissism. Because the church hates her sons, she doesn't discipline them and the world concludes the man who disciplines is a monster motivated by hatred.
Listen; I'm not scandalized by Newsweek or her religion editor. Why not?
Because it's the church that's brought us to where we are. We have no one to blame but ourselves. And if we repent for our fornication, adultery, unbiblical divorce, pornography, masturbation, incest, molestation, and denial of our bodies to our spouses, disciplining those who call themselves "brother" while committing these sins, the Roman Empire will be reformed once more, just as it was in the past.
Pastors and elders and deacons and Titus 2 women, there's work to be done. And I'm not talking about writing another letter to the editor.
