Posted on 07/19/2014 4:26:54 PM PDT by WXRGina
From behind a smoking sniper rifle high atop his ivory tower peers the secular-”progressive.” He surveys his many victims, strewn across the American landscape below and mockingly sneers, “War on Christianity? What war on Christianity?”
He then resumes shooting, all the while insisting that those uncooperative Christians who scatter for cover behind the word of God and the U.S. Constitution somehow suffer from a “persecution complex” (the baker, the photographer, the florist, the innkeeper, the Christian school administrator, etc.).
Though there are many, it is plain for all to see that abortion and “sexual liberation” remain the two principal theaters in the ongoing culture war battlefront.
To fully advance the causes of radical feminism, abortion-on-demand, unfettered sexual license, “gay marriage” and the like, the pagan left must do away with religious free exercise altogether. Under the guise of “anti-discrimination,” Christians today face discrimination at unprecedented levels.
Let’s see if we can make this abundantly clear. Christians, true Christians – regenerate, Bible-believing Christians who strive their level best to maintain fidelity to the word of God and honor His commands – will not, indeed cannot, participate in, approve of, facilitate or encourage certain behaviors deemed by the Holy Scriptures to be immoral or sinful.
This is both our constitutionally affirmed human right and our Christian duty.
It is not done from hate. It is not done from bigotry. It is done neither from a position of superiority nor a desire to “impose our beliefs” upon others.
It is done from both obedience to Christ and compassion for our fellow fallen who yet wallow in folly.
Central to Christianity, and clearly delineated throughout both the Old and New Testaments, is the unambiguous and timeless proposition that any sexual practice outside the bonds of true man-woman marriage constitutes sexual immorality and results in separation from God. This, of course, includes sexual acting out between members of the same sex, whether or not such acting out is tied to the novel notion of so-called “same-sex marriage.”
Likewise central to Christianity is the relatively easy-to-understand concept that a Christ follower must neither take the life of a pre-born child nor aid and abet, in any way, the taking of such life.
It is not so much that Christians wish, willy-nilly, to call abortion, homosexual behavior, fornication, adultery, bestiality, incest or any other disordered sexual proclivity “sinful.” It is, rather, that we must. For the true Christian, God’s objective truths will always trump man’s subjective desires.
Newton’s Third Law states: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
For every law, regulation, activist court ruling or presidential edict that demands Christians violate their sincerely held religious beliefs and adopt a postmodern, moral relativist way of life, there increases, in exact proportion, the likelihood of widespread civil disobedience – disobedience of the sort we haven’t seen since the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ’60s.
Indeed, if, in the spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., we, his fellow Christian travelers, must again face the water hoses, then face them we shall.
As the recent Hobby Lobby decision reaffirmed, the government cannot legislate away religious free exercise. Where your desire, intense though it may be, for me to employ you despite your antagonistic values system, pay for your abortion, or host, photograph or otherwise bake a rainbow cake for your faux “wedding,” comes into conflict with my absolute right to religious liberty, the result is a forgone conclusion.
I win, you lose.
We have seen and will continue to see an exponential increase in Christian business owners refusing to violate God’s commands by complying with unconstitutional, immoral and unjust government dictates.
For 2,000 years, whenever such conflicts have arisen, Christians have placed the laws of God above the laws of man.
What makes you think we’re about to change now?
As many in the early church refused to bow a knee to Caesar in worship, so, too, will many modern Christians refuse, under any circumstances, to obey any law that presumes to make sin obligatory.
If the ancient church, through the power of the Holy Spirit, was able to face the lions in hopeful anticipation of joining Jesus, then we, too, under the same Spirit, will face anything today’s pagan left can threaten.
In the ongoing culture war, it seems there are no rules of engagement. The secular left will accept nothing short of unconditional surrender. That is to say, the pagans demand that we Christians abandon the biblical worldview altogether, and adopt their own.
This will never happen.
Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared, “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
In 2012, after the Obama administration unilaterally issued its now gutted HHS contraception/abortion mandate, Catholic priests from across the nation, to their great credit, read from the pulpit a letter that contained the following declaration: “We cannot – we will not – comply with this unjust law.”
As our secularist government increasingly imposes similar laws, so, too, increases the certitude of civil disobedience.
While there are those who will give way out of fear, weakness or a desire to conform to the world, there are many others who will not. Christians must peacefully come together, lock arms and redouble our resistance to evil.
Even when that evil is adorned with the presidential seal and signature.
Excellent! Thanks for the link, Dynachrome.
Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end. And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.
A true child of Christ does not center his life on violence (two swords are enough) but is willing to use deadly force as needed in God's work (go and buy a sword). There are times and places in this world when Christians need to "sell their garments".
The Bible is much more than a single script for living our lives. It is a tapestry woven from the several Godly options we may face (as in Ecclesiastes 3: To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven). It is not always the time to reach for a sword, but there are times when that is the right answer. The trick is correctly identifying those times, and that is what prayer is for.
> As our Founders themselves understood - you CAN NOT APPEASE TYRANNY BY CIVIL MEANS.
PERIOD.
Truth. When it comes down to it the use of force is the ultimate law of the land. You cannot reason or bargain with tyrants. They are worse than cancer and will never be appeased. The only solution because of their very nature is either lifetime confinement or death.
Thanks, O W S.
Amen.
It’s kind of interesting that before Pres. Lincoln and CW1 we had Pres. James Buchanan in office who was most likely light in the loafers.
Today we have Bath House Barry who most likely is, also. Maybe CW2 will begin during the next President’s time in office.
Ping — excellent piece.
Ping to a great read.
Interesting observation.
Thank you for the Ping Finny! =^.^=
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan
After Coleman’s death, Buchanan never courted another woman or seemed to show any emotional or physical interest; a rumor circulated of an affair with President James K. Polk’s widow, Sarah Childress Polk but it had no basis.[72] It has been suggested that Anne’s death in fact served to deflect awkward questions about his sexuality and bachelorhood.[71] While Buchanan may have been asexual or celibate, there are many indicators that suggest he was homosexual. The argument has been put forward by Shelley Ross, biographer Jean Baker, sociologist James W. Loewen, Robert P. Watson, and historian John Howard.[73]
A source of this interest has been Buchanan’s close and intimate relationship with William Rufus King (who became Vice President under Franklin Pierce). The two men lived together in a Washington boardinghouse for 10 years from 1834 until King’s departure for France in 1844, after which point they never again shared a residence. King referred to the relationship as a “communion”,[72] and the two attended social functions together. Contemporaries also noted the closeness. Andrew Jackson called them “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy” (the former being a 19th-century euphemism for an effeminate man[74]), while Aaron V. Brown referred to King as Buchanan’s “better half”.[75] James W. Loewen described Buchanan and King as “siamese twins.” In later years Kat Thompson, the wife of a cabinet member, expressed her anxiety that “there was something unhealthy in the president’s attitude”.[72]
Buchanan adopted King’s mannerisms and romanticised view of southern culture. Both had strong political ambitions and in 1844 they planned to run as president and vice president. One historian has found them both to be soft, effeminate, and eccentric.[72] In May 1844, Buchanan wrote to Cornelia Roosevelt, “I am now ‘solitary and alone,’ having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone, and [I] should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.”[72]
King became ill in 1853 and died of tuberculosis shortly after Pierce’s inauguration, four years before Buchanan became President. Buchanan described him as “among the best, the purest and most consistent public men I have known.”[72] The length and intimacy of their surviving letters illustrate “the affection of a special friendship.”
I'm guessing you're referencing Jesus' words in Matthew 5, where He is instructing us on personally relating to other people, matters such as: making vows (swearing), divorce, how you speak ("yes" and "no"), lawsuits, not repaying evil with evil. If you consider the entire context of that chapter, Jesus is not telling us to not resist lawless rulers. Jesus is a God of order and lawfulness, not anarchy and oppression.
Maybe when, the next time some sourpuss atheists use the law to disable a Christian display of lights, a cross, whatever, on public property such as a Veterans' park, we stand post at the site to keep them from disabling it, and say, "Not on my watch."
I think Americans are already on that page, we just don't hear about it. Remember 9-11 in 2013, when an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million Americans on Harleys -- bikers -- showed up in Washington, D.C.? Probably not, because it was reported as "thousands" or "hundreds of thousands" of bikers. Not "well over half a million," or anything like that. But they were there in very large numbers, and they were ticked.
...when it comes my guess is Christians will rise up and the government will back down. I pray I am right.
I pray you are right, too.
Amen.
Steve, you know what? Ultimately, they are right. Prayerful, yes. But also more.
Actually, I don't give a rip what "some think." I read the Word of God and trust His Spirit to illuminate its meaning, which He does to those who seek Him. Most people don't do that and therefore do not understand the meaning of God's Word--the Bible is clear on that point.
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