AND THE CHURCH BELLS RANG

From My Perspective - - -

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a Five to Four vote, struck down the Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA had prevented same-gender couples from being recipients of federal benefits allowable to heterosexual married couples. In this decision, the majority vote of SCOTUS gave tacit approval to same-gender marriage.

How did the so-called “christian” community respond to this decision? CBS News reported that in Washington, DC: “The National Cathedral is pealing its church bells, along with some other Washington churches, to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decisions on gay marriage…the bells rang at noon Wednesday for 45 minutes to an hour. Bells also rang at other Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Unitarian and other Christian Churches. The Cathedral scheduled a Prayer Service for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender families Wednesday at 7 p.m. to celebrate the ruling…the cathedral’s dean…says the church is ringing its bells to celebrate the extension of federal marriage equality to all the same-sex couples modeling God’s love in lifelong covenants…the ruling should serve as a call for Christians to embrace religious marriage equality.”

The President of the United States offered this statement regarding the SCOTUS decision: “I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. This was discrimination enshrined in law. It treated loving, committed gay and lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people. The Supreme Court has righted that wrong, and our country is better off for it. We are a people who declared that we are all created equal — and the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. This ruling is a victory for couples who have long fought for equal treatment under the law; for children whose parents’ marriages will now be recognized, rightly, as legitimate; for families that, at long last, will get the respect and protection they deserve; and for friends and supporters who have wanted nothing more than to see their loved ones treated fairly and have worked hard to persuade their nation to change for the better. So we welcome today’s decision, and I’ve directed the Attorney General to work with other members of my Cabinet to review all relevant federal statutes to ensure this decision, including its implications for Federal benefits and obligations, is implemented swiftly and smoothly. On an issue as sensitive as this, knowing that Americans hold a wide range of views based on deeply held beliefs, maintaining our nation’s commitment to religious freedom is also vital.  How religious institutions define and consecrate marriage has always been up to those institutions.  Nothing about this decision – which applies only to civil marriages – changes that. The laws of our land are catching up to the fundamental truth that millions of Americans hold in our hearts:  when all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.”

How does the Biblically-oriented remnant respond to this decision and these words? How should the Biblical-community-of-believers react and respond? More pointedly, how does the Sovereign and Eternal God view these matters? Has He or His Moral Standard changed? An apt summary of God’s thought in this regard is stated in Jude 1:5-8 – “Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day-- just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.” It echoes Romans 1:24-32, “…God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie…For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with…And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done…” The bells of heaven are not ringing in celebration of this law that condones that which God calls “a debased mind.” Consider these things with me.