“Let the Redeemed of the Lord Say So”

Christians are admonished to “contend for the faith” in a hostile world and culture.

Monday, July 10, 2023

By Dr. Ray Rooney, Jr.

Reprinted from The Stand

Never. That’s how often you will find biblical support for the practice of homosexuality.

Not a single verse in the Bible supports same-sex romantic love, sexual practice, or marriage. Not even close.

So how is it possible that America has become a bastion of support and advocacy for a sexual practice which has been proven to be unhealthy and deadly (see HERE and HERE)? And how can it be that such a dangerous and deadly lifestyle is promoted with words like “gay” and “pride”? How can a society proudly promote a practice that if embraced by all would guarantee its annihilation? How can any segment of the church tout homosexuality knowing that the very first command to humanity was to “Be fruitful and multiply…” (Gen. 1:28)? Where did common sense go in American society and the church?

For one thing, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

Back in 1987 philosopher, author, and university professor, Allan Bloom wrote The Closing of the American Mind. It was a well-written academic polemic against the moral relativism that had taken root in higher education in America. The very first sentence of the book let the reader know that the future of America was in trouble:

“There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.”

Bloom went on to say that “Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason’s power” (p. 38). Thirty-six years later and now we have college students physically attacking speakers because they refuse to allow a different viewpoint to even be spoken in their presence. Professor Bloom has been proven right. When you embrace moral relativism you effectively ban reason and lose your soul (along with your mind).

Nine years later, Robert Bork (whose originalist belief that the Constitution should be interpreted as written by the Founders and opposition to Roe v. Wade cost him a Supreme Court seat) wrote Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. Bork seemed to be saying that America was on the verge of sliding off a cliff. As the subtitle denotes, liberalism was/is to blame.

The demand for an absolutist version of equality (that foments the abandonment of reason) coupled with a benighted spirit of acquiescence would ultimately lead to America’s undoing. Of particular interest was a chapter he dedicated to Christianity entitled “The Trouble in Religion.” He quotes Tocqueville saying “One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles and to purchase peace at the expense of logic” (p. 273).

The upheaval in society and the downward spiral in culture can only be countered by the unwavering conviction of a committed church. However, Bork sadly noted that “it is increasingly clear that very few people who claim a religion could truthfully say that it informs their attitudes and affects their behavior” (p.280) and “It is difficult to say that a religion even exists if it keeps giving up its tenets to appease its members and critics” (p. 281). Has not religion pollster George Barna effectively proven exactly that very thing?

The following year (1997) big government critic and prolific author Martin L. Gross published The End of Sanity: Social and Cultural Madness in America. He identified the purveyors of those committed to loosing America from its foundational moorings as “The New Establishment.” Here is his chilling description of it:

The New Establishment has all the tenets of a religion, or perhaps more accurately, a cult. It preaches a specious “goodness” and asks only that one give up one’s mind and reason in exchange for modern salvation-gaining the reputation among one’s peers for being “sensitive” or “concerned” (p.18).

And now here we are. A society that has completely abandoned reason and a church that has rejected the Word of God. We’ve elevated a sexual perversion inundated with rampant disease whose participants are much more susceptible to depression and suicide to a legally protected status while our ecclesial leaders tell us we’re not reading the Bible right about homosexuality. All those condemnations against homosexuality are really about hospitality. And we accept and believe it because as Gross says, we now believe our religious obligation to culture is no longer to reform and guide it but be seen as “being ‘sensitive’ or ‘concerned.’”

We are in effect building a new tower of Babel redefining faith, love, and grace as we go.

Faith is no longer centered on the work and will of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Instead, it is focused on our own ability to recognize and define the good. Love is no longer revealed as a selfless and sacrificial action (“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” John 15:13). Now, love is nothing more than an emotional feeling of longing and attachment. And grace? Grace is supposed to be the free gift of God’s unmerited favor upon the repentant. Today, grace is the divine accommodation of sin.

There are literally hundreds of issues ranging from education to immigration to gender fluidity to race relations all of which demonstrate that America has lost its collective mind. I chose to utilize just one for this blog (homosexuality) because it is the one issue among the many that the Bible leaves absolutely no wiggle room on. The biblical prohibition against homosexuality is steady, unwavering, and dire (see William J. Webb’s Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis). If the American Christian can be seduced into embracing such clearly prohibited behavior to the point that he/she believes it is actually a gift from God, then there is really no amount of reasoning that can change his/her mind. The desire to be seen as accommodating has overridden the biblical command to be faithful.

If our obligation to be faithful to God must take a back seat to appeasing culture we have no reason to think some great revival will suddenly sweep across our nation. The author of Hebrews put it this way:

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries (Heb. 10:26-27).

Then why write this blog if I believe that? One word… “if.”

It is not a given that we continue to lose our souls along with our minds. We can repent and we can counsel our nation to repent. We can choose to be the voice of one crying out in the wilderness of political, ideological, and religious progressivism to repent because the kingdom of God is at hand. The worst mistake the Christian church can make in these trying times is to embrace benign resignation in the same way the enemies of the cross have embraced belligerent rebellion. Both are equally sinful responses to the Word of God.

If Jonah could spark a revival with an insensitive message of impending judgment and doom, how much more can a Spirit-filled church prompt a move of God in a similarly sin-sick nation with a compassionate call to repent of what everyone already knows is wrong and doesn’t make any kind of sense?

Blows that wound cleanse away evil; strokes make clean the innermost parts (Prov. 20:30).

Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble…(Psalm 107:2).

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might (Eph. 6:10).