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the week the gay marriage issue became THE issue

3/30/2014

11 Comments

 
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This week, I've felt the need to write about something that is probably not in my best interest to write about. One, writing it will likely eat up a large chunk of my day, and it's not like I don't have a million other things to do. Furthermore, my words will do very little to settle the growing angst I feel over this topic, or bring any sort of civilness to a war that is in my estimation approaching the peak of Mt. Irrational. 

I had coffee with a good friend Friday. I like bouncing ideas off her; she is incredibly insightful and honest. We began discussing this topic that had been weighing on my mind. She actually brought it up in response to a story she'd seen on the news. I told her I was inclined to write a blog post about it. She warned me - don't go near there. You've got plenty else to write about. 

When I left her, I left the idea behind. But then it showed back up the next morning. Right there in the same corner of my mind it showed up in the day before. It seemed to warn me, until I put it down on paper it's going to harass me. I knew, like so many ideas before it, until I did it wouldn't leave me alone. 

So here I go.

Gay marriage. 

Putting those two words together in a blog guarantees a spike in visitors to my site who have never visited before, and who will likely never stop by again. Outside of some possible competition from Barrack Obama and George Bush, gay-marriage may be the most divisive two word combination in the history of man. 

The division, as best as I can sum it up, goes like this. Homosexual people fall in love and would like to have the opportunity to have their relationship recognized in a way that many heterosexual people who fall in love have their relationships recognized. They would like the chance to get married and receive the benefits received by those in heterosexual marriages. Many in this country support their wishes. 

But there's a side that doesn't support that idea. That side is almost solely rooted in Christianity and various other religions that believe homosexuality is a sin. To condone same-sex marriage would somehow make them complicit to sinning, as their side sees it.  

I get where both groups are coming from. 

Although I've never been homosexual, I have fallen in love. I don't know exactly how that happens between people of the same sex, because I've never experienced it. So I simply choose to look at it through the eyes of the part I do understand - falling in love. And so on some level I get it.

On the other hand, I am a Christian. I spend considerable time in the bible. There is no argument that within the pages of that book, listed among the things that God finds unfavorable, is homosexuality. Be sure, though, there are many other things listed.  I can't deny that every time I've rooted one of the things on that list out of my life, my life has improved. I also know this; there are many things on that list I have not rooted out of my life, try as I might or might not.  

So this is what I've come to conclude about the bible and sin as it applies to me. Until I've got the list perfected in my own life, I should probably stay focused on my list and nobody else's. In the areas where God has helped me conquer my sins, I sing his praises high and proud. In the areas where I continue to struggle, I continue to ask God to help me. Those two burdens God has placed on me as a result of my own sin leave me zero time to assess the depths of someone else's sins, or to encourage them to live a life more in line with my sinful life. So please don't ask me to do either.  

That doesn't mean I don't think I or other Christians don't have an obligation to be involved in and influence other people's lives. We do, but in a way that shares love without dictating its terms. In fact, one of the questions I've asked over and over of Christians who amplify this debate over gay marriage: Where is this kind of passion we have for lovingly suggesting how marriage should be defined when it comes to lovingly reaching out to starving and dying babies in this world? Granted, only 6 million of them die each year, but I still think it's a cause worth our attention. I mean, have I completely lost my mind because I consider the fight for someone's right to eat a more productive advancement of Christ's idea for our lives than fighting against someone else's idea of how our government should define marriage? Can't we fight for both, one might ask? Well, that would be a credible question if it didn't appear we've narrowed our Christian attention and fight to a single issue, no matter what the expense.  

There has been no stronger proof of that to date than the events of last week.

Last week, one of the largest organizations in the world dealing with hunger and poverty and sex trafficking, and one who does it incredibly well - World Vision - made a hiring policy change. They decided they would hire employees who were involved in legally recognized same sex marriages. Within hours, some of the most outspoken and powerful evangelical leaders in our country offered their disapproval.

Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary said this:

"World Vision has made a decisive difference in millions of lives around the world. Its humanitarian work is urgently important in a world of unspeakable need. Last year the organization had a total financial reach of almost $3 billion. Its scale and expertise are unprecedented in the Christian world. That is what makes this policy shift so ominous and threatening."

It doesn't take much to read between those lines.

John Piper, Chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary and author of over 50 books said this:

"World Vision has aligned itself with liberal Christians who choose not to renounce homosexual practice. Culturally, historically, and biblically this is a huge step toward the powerlessness and growing irrelevance of the mainline liberal establishment. You cannot undermine biblical authority, and trivialize perdition and its blood-bought remedy, and expect to maintain a vibrant spiritual base. It isn’t going to happen."

"This means that, without repentance and change, World Vision will go the way of worldliness and weakness. A great superstructure will remain for a season, but the Christian soul will disappear. And who will suffer most? The poor."

George O. Wood, on behalf of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, encouraged his folks to remove sponsorships from World Vision and move them elsewhere:

"Because of this policy change and the need to maintain continuity of care for the people who most need our help, I encourage Assemblies of God churches and individuals to begin gradually shifting their support away from the U.S. branch of World Vision to Assemblies of God World Missions and other Pentecostal and evangelical charities that maintain biblical standards of sexual morality."

But here's the thing. Those World Vision sponsorships are attached to real children. It's not like they were threatening to pull money out of an undedicated big bucket of cash to fight an unknown poverty. There are kids already eating on sponsored money. Kids who've grown favorably accustomed to the idea of eating breakfast. I know that to be true because we sponsor 3 kids through World Vision. They send us letters. They thank us. They've come to depend on us. I share what we're doing as the strongest way I know how to say the attempt by some Christian leaders to leverage the generic poor to get World Vision to change their mind about a policy, was actually a threat against some very real faces that look like these:
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Nonetheless, their threats worked. World Vision changed their mind. They reverted back to their original hiring policy, which left me with some troubling questions.

How did the president and board of an organization as large as World Vision make a decision to change their hiring practices without anticipating this particular response from some powerful evangelicals? How could they have possibly been blindsided by it? And didn't they prayerfully consider the change? If they did, was their investment in God's guidance on that decision so weakly attached that they could abandoned it at the sounds of voices like Albert Mohler and others? 

Of the outcries of ordinary men like Mohler and Piper, men who are intelligent and hold many moral positions I respect, I'll say this. They make no effort to hide their general disdain for same sex marriage. But as their voices grow louder and more public, I'm having a hard time separating their disdain for the sin from their disdain for the sinner. Let there be no question now, though, there is power behind their views. They overturned an unprecedented decision by one of the world's largest charity organizations with the single push of the publish button on a blog post.

I think about God a lot, but this week I've found myself pondering the devil even more. If I was the devil, and I wanted to thwart the Christian movement in this world, I would be frightened of that group's potential to eradicate poverty. He knows as well as I do that Christians have the resources. If they ever chose to part with their almighty dollars, if they ever chose to respond to Christ's call to downsize their own lives to upsize the lives of others, that if they ever rallied and unified around the poor the way they've rallied to influence what the government thinks about marriage, the greatest and most enduring oppression known to man - poverty - would be eradicated in a year. Completely gone. And if they were ever to do that, the world would receive a Christ-like message unlike any since Christ himself walked the earth. The devil, he's not a big fan of the world receiving Christ-like messages of that magnitude.

So what would I do about that if I was the devil? I'd keep the Christians rallied around a cause that - even if they were successful - would work against them. Like the defense of marriage. Because don't be fooled, the devil is the master of bait and switch. Distracting us away from issues that advertise love for one another while pointing us to issues that promote disdain. And oh, the brilliancy, if in the midst of the distraction the devil could coordinate a take over of an organization like World Vision that directs a few billion dollars of nourishment each year to babies who would otherwise have none. That would be quite a bonus. 

I don't know. Maybe the devil has nothing to do with it. I suppose it's possible continuing to fight a battle all reasonable scientific polls indicate will be a battle lost, maybe that really is God's plan. If so, I have to admit, that's one thing I don't get. But if that is indeed the case, my prayer is we lose that battle sooner than later. Because I'm afraid only then will we have enough time and undistracted energy to unite our efforts around feeding starving babies. In the meantime, 6 million babies will die this year waiting on us. 
11 Comments
Rose Bailey
3/30/2014 05:42:57 am

Another blog to make my mind think about what is the most important issues to focus on today. Keep up the good work!

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Keith Cartwright
3/30/2014 06:35:52 am

Thank you Rose.

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Heidi Williams
3/30/2014 06:05:54 am

As someone said recently: "When World Vision embraces as an acceptable alternative behavior what God says will lead to eternal suffering (1 Corinthians 6:9–10), it sets a trajectory of lovelessness." Bait and switch, indeed.

I believe that Satan has been attacking marriage full throttle because it is the greatest and most intimate example of Christ's relationship with his people. And he has been doing it patiently, diligently and subtly as an angel of light, and in he case of acts of homosexuality, masking an act that is sin in a costume of love. And with it he is taking out massive casualties.

To actively participate in any sin without a true repentance and desire for God's grace to save us from ourselves is to mock Christ's sacrifice for us and to live in death. Satan despises God. He despises us. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to destroy us and drag us into the pit of hell with him.

Satan is eroding our very foundation of having a relationship with God, he is mocking Christ's death, he is mocking God and he is deceiving all of humanity, even Christ's followers, "the elect" so to speak. As it says in Scripture he would do. Scripture is full of references to the constant war we are in against sin and Satan and his deceit, and it is full of warnings for us to take a stand against sin and our own desires. God doesn't tell us this for his sake. It is for our sakes. Sin leads to death. And death is separation from God. And God is Love. Therefore, death is separation from Love, for which we were created. Sin separates us from the very purpose for which we were created to live eternally....in perfect Love.

God does not need us to defend him. He will not be mocked. And he will not change. He is holy. Because he is holy it is impossible for him to accept sin. He loves us despite our sin and has offered us reconciliation with him through Christ's sacrifice. We need to be wise and not be deceived....if we accept deceit as truth, the truth is no longer in us.

And when we see our brothers and sisters living in the grip of sin, we are not loving them if we leave them there. We become complicit in creating casualties. We are complicit in condemning them to death... Not necessarily physical or spiritual death, because we cannot condemn others (we can only condemn ourselves), but we become complicit in condemning them to the death that comes with separation from a perfect and holy relationship with our Creator, with Love.

Taking a stand for the truth takes courage. As humanity strays further and further from Christ and his truth, even Christians are becoming deceived. This brings confusion and division...which furthers Satan's agenda. And those that stand for truth become more and more despised. Jesus said "all men shall hate you because of me".

Reply
Keith Cartwright
3/30/2014 06:45:56 am

Heidi. I'm not going to debate anything you've said. I respect what you've said. But I'm going to comment on one thing. You said:

"I believe that Satan has been attacking marriage full throttle because it is the greatest and most intimate example of Christ's relationship with his people." I could not agree more. Which begs the question, why have so many prominent Christians focused on homosexuality as the primary source of that attack. Our televisions are filled with images that mock the traditional marriage and glorify broken marriages, yet no prominent pastor has called for Christians to get rid of their televisions, at least not as vocally as they call for them to condemn homosexuality. For years the number of teen age pregnancies occurring out of wedlock has skyrocketed, yet prominent Christians are in comparison very quiet on that issue. Christians leaders almost appear to have given up on the issue of divorce. Pornography among men is an epidemic, has one prominent pastor called for us to dispose of our computers? Quite the opposite, they use them. Here is my theory, they have no problem confronting homosexuality because they are not confronting - for the most part - people in their congregations. To fully confront the breakdown of marriage, they would have to confront their own. That would be a courageous stand in my book. Like I said, I'm just not sure how this came to be THE issue among so many. That's all.

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Heidi Williams
3/30/2014 07:35:02 am

You are rigt Keith. When I speak of attacks that is exactly what I mean; I inserted homosexual acts because it happens to be the context of the current subject. The truth is, we live in a messy world dominated by sin and failure. We all are casualties of evil and of our own selfish desires. That is why we are all in desperate need of God's grace... His desires are unimaginably far greater for us than our own.

Thanks for having courage to post this. It is a messy topic but one that we cannot ignore any more. And you are so right about the children who are becoming the greatest casualties... For generations. But I have confidence that by God's grace Love always wins.

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Tyler
3/31/2014 12:42:56 am

You are the best writer I know.

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Keith Cartwright
3/31/2014 02:20:13 am

And you hang out with Hollywood writers. Thank you my friend. You're a good soul.

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Sunny
3/31/2014 01:12:35 am

"Sin" covers a lot of turf. Sin as defined in biblical terms gets messy. I don't pretend to grasp all the categories and nuances, even after spending more than half a century reading and prayerfully studying the Bible. My beliefs are just that - mine. I would never presume to even attempt to impose my beliefs on any other person, let alone pass judgment on them. God knows their hearts. That's good enough for me.
My duty is to live a life that reflects the love of God, shine a bit of light into this earthly world, bloom where I am planted. I know same-gender couples, law-abiding, very decent people in long-term loving relationships. Some of them are friends I love and cherish. They have faces, they have names. I have no right to judge them. The Bible tells me that, quite bluntly.
I've seen the face of evil in this world. It is raw, and ugly, and painful, and terrifying. It is real. Facing down evil is an ongoing battle that deserves our focused efforts.
I feel pity for, and am admittedly a bit afraid of, the highly vocal zealots of any religion. "Love one another" is a pretty straightforward command. I pray every day that I walk that walk. Casting stones, verbal or otherwise, is not on my agenda. I would pray, dear reader, that it is not on yours either.

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Keith Cartwright
3/31/2014 02:18:21 am

Sunny. Quite simply, thank you.

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Stephen link
3/31/2014 07:58:16 am

Can we be best friends? Very well written, Keith.

Reply
Keith Cartwright
3/31/2014 09:24:04 am

Request granted. Thanks.

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