Posted on 09/09/2019 8:13:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
For years now, Christians defending the biblical definition of marriage have dealt with a particularly frustrating retort: “Well, Christians used to be against interracial marriage, too,” people will say.
Not only is this assertion meant to equate Christian morality with racism, it implies an historical inevitability—that, in a generation or two, Christians will join the march of progress and affirm same-sex relationships, just as they affirm relationships between men and women of different skin colors.
America’s very real and shameful history of racial prejudice and violence—and especially the sinful co-option of Christians, clergy, churches, and entire denominations in that history—gives those who make such a comparison plenty of ammo. And stories like the one out of Mississippi last week don’t help. But this one has an interesting twist.
Last week, the owner of Boone’s Camp Event Hall, a wedding venue, reportedly canceled the ceremony of a mixed-race couple, citing her Christian beliefs. She was later caught on camera equating interracial marriage with gay marriage, and saying her facility can’t host either because of her faith.
What she did was indefensible, as is what she said. But don’t miss what happened next: She changed her mind and publicly apologized. Why? Well, when confronted about her actions, and with the urging of her pastor and husband, this business owner says she opened her Bible and found nothing there forbidding or even mentioning interracial marriage. And so, she changed her mind.
Happy ending? Not for critics of the Christian view of marriage, who couldn’t let such a good headline go to waste. Many saw the incident as proof that objections to gay “marriage” are really no different from objections to interracial marriage. If a plea of religious freedom doesn’t excuse one type of discrimination, they say, it shouldn’t excuse the other. In other words, Jack Philips is really no different from Jim Crow.
Now, I can’t deal with the religious freedom question in this commentary—specifically, whether religious freedom justifies racists running their businesses in racist ways. For the record, I think the answer is “no.” Religious freedom has limits.
Instead, I want to deal specifically with the claim that Christians who believe in man-woman marriage today are just doing the same thing that those who opposed interracial marriage did in past generations. And for the record, I think the answer to this question is also “no.”
The reason this teachable business owner couldn’t find racist views of marriage in the Bible is because they’re not in there. Quite the opposite, in fact. St. Paul told the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens that God made every nation of mankind from “one blood.” The Christian view of “races,” quite frankly, is that there are none—at least not as defined since the 19th century.
On the other hand, Scripture is not silent at all on sexual morality and the structure of marriage. You could write a book about what it has to say on the subject—in fact, I have! The biblical testimony for one man and one woman marriage is overwhelming.
Genesis, which Jesus points to when He is asked about marriage, clearly describes how and why God created humans—not black and white, not gay or straight, but male and female. He joins the two, forbidding anyone to put them asunder, and then tells them to be fruitful and multiply. Our Western concept of race is irrelevant to this biblical definition of marriage, but being male and female is central. And Scripture frequently and directly condemns homosexual behavior.
So to be clear: Support for same-sex “marriage” and opposition to interracial marriage both require the dismissal of Scripture. Study the Scriptures and you’ll discover, like this person did in Mississippi, that God condemns racism in all its forms, and that there is no biblical case to be found in opposing interracial marriage. Nor is there a biblical case to be found in supporting same-sex marriage.
Now this is an example of the sort of issue that creates really tough questions for Christians to answer, and that’s why the “What Would You Say?” video project is so important. Every single week, we will release a video that articulates a Christian answer to one of the most difficult questions to come out of our culture.
Two males or two females cannot combine to be one.
A female completes a male, and vice versa. This isn’t debatable either. The male and female sex organs were made for each other.
OTOH,it's always been abnormal...AND immoral...to engage in homosexual acts. And as for homosexual "marriage"...the immorality is off the charts,despite what some might claim.
The bible recognizes interracial marriage, but not same-sex. That is recognized as an abomination, nothing else.
There is no such thing as a gay marriage. It’s a “parts” thing and defines “marriage”.
Their argument isn’t with us anti-gay-marriage homophobes.
It’s with nature itself. Reproduction follows sexual intercourse of man and woman of different “races.” When sex acts between two men or two women start producing offspring, let me know. That’s why historically homosexual activity was often politely referred to “unnatural acts.”
RE: The bible recognizes interracial marriage, but not same-sex.
Moses, an Israelite, married a Cushite woman, Zipporah.
A Cushite is from Cush, a region south of Ethiopia, where the people are known for their black skin.
We know this because of Jeremiah 13:23: “Can the Ethiopian [the same Hebrew word translated “Cushite” in Numbers 12:1] change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” Attention is drawn to the difference of the skin of the Cushite people.
In his book From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race, Daniel Hays writes that Cush “is used regularly to refer to the area south of Egypt, and above the cataracts on the Nile, where a Black African civilization flourished for over two thousand years. Thus it is quite clear that Moses marries a Black African woman”
“What she did was indefensible, as is what she said. But don’t miss what happened next: She changed her mind and publicly apologized. Why? “
Because the media was exposing her and that drew the attention of government lawyers.
And Solomon also married an Ethiopian. It’s not even a controversial thing. But liberals like to equate homosexual marriage (i.e. abomination) with interracial marriage as though they are equally controversial, which they are not.
Marriage has always been between men and women as long as we have records of it. It has never been between men or between women.
The Orwellian term "Gay Marriage". Presumes marriage is defined by the government, not by thousands of years of history and word usage.
Leftists, Progressives, in general, see man as completely malleable; whatever the government says something is, that is what it is.
This is why Progressive deny the theory of natural rights. To them, government defines what rights are, nothing else.
Male-Female marriage has been the universal norm around the world the tens of thousands of years.
All of this same sex rot is post war (WWII) radical socialist claptrap.
The United States fell to this agenda sooner than much of the West.
Homofascists including NOW founder Kate Millett and Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers promoted homosexuality as a way of “smashing monogamy”.
Marriage is about a monogamous relationship.
Leftist rhetoric is anti-marriage.
Homisexuals aren’t suddenly backing the institution they said should be ‘smashed’.
Yes and no.
Moses married the Cushite woman in his old age. Likely when a widower.
We don’t know anything more about her, she may have been an elderly herself.
Zipporah’s people were from the north and east of Egypt, and she was not a Cushite.
All human beings in the world today are classified as Homo sapiens Sapiens. Scientists today admit that, biologically, there really is only one race of humans.
For instance, a scientist at the Advancement of Science Convention in Atlanta stated, “Race is a social construct derived mainly from perceptions conditioned by events of recorded history, and it has no basic biological reality.”
SOURCE: Robert Lee Hotz, “Race has no basis in biology, researchers say,” Los Angeles Times article reprinted in the Cincinnati Enquirer, p. A3, 20 February 1997.
The Bible does not even use the word race in reference to people, but does describe all human beings as being of “one blood” (Acts 17:26). This of course emphasizes that we are all related, as all humans are descendants of the first man, Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45).
The truth though is that these so-called “racial characteristics” are only minor variations among people groups. If one were to take any two people anywhere in the world, scientists have found that the basic genetic differences between these two people would typically be around 0.2 percent—even if they came from the same people group.
The only reason many people think these differences are major is because they’ve been brought up in a culture that has taught them to see the differences this way.
Real science in the present fits with the biblical view that all people are rather closely related—there is only one “race” biologically. Therefore, there is in essence no such thing as “inter-racial marriage.”
It’s not clear that she was indeed a Cushite.
Psalm 7 cals Saul ‘Cush’. Amos 9 calls the Jewish people children of Cush. Implication that it is an expression meaning something like ‘of a clear and undeniable identity’, like having very dark skin.
When Miriam criticized Moses for marrying a Cushite (Ethiopian/black), God struck her with leprosy.
Exactly. Skin colour is not even relevant to God. Homosexuality is a sin.
Very simply “interracial” marriages do not entail, imply or require a redefinition of marriage, where as “gay marriage” does.
God isn’t concerned about Christians getting married ‘outside their race’.... but he is totally concerned with believers marrying non-believers as this passage in 2 Corinthians makes perfectly clear......
2 Corinthians 6:14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
That's why contraception is also an "unnatural act." Sabotaging or disabling potential fertility renders the act of sexual intercourse intentionally unnatural, even anti-natural --- morally comparable in some ways with sodomy.
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