Posted on 05/29/2015 6:00:47 AM PDT by wagglebee
May 28, 2015 (BreakPoint.org) -- For five years, Dr. Abigail Rine has been teaching a course on gender theory at George Fox University, an evangelical school in the Quaker tradition.
At the beginning of the semester, she tells her students that “they are guaranteed to read something they will find disagreeable, probably even offensive.”
Writing at FirstThings.com recently, she related how five years ago it was easy to find readings that challenged and even offended the evangelical college students “considering the secular bent of contemporary gender studies.”
But today, things are different. “Students now,” she says, “arrive in my class thoroughly versed in the language and categories of identity politics; they are reticent to disagree with anything for fear of seeming intolerant—except, of course, what they perceive to be intolerant.”
And what do they find “intolerant”? Well, in her class, an essay entitled “What is Marriage?” by Sherif Girgis, Robert George, and Ryan Anderson, which was the beginning of the book “What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense.”
In their article, Girgis, George, and Anderson defend what they call the conjugal view of marriage. “Marriage,” they write, “is the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other … that is naturally fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together.” They defend this view against what they call the “revisionist view” of marriage, which redefines marriage to include, among other things, same-sex couples.
“My students hate it,” Dr. Rine wrote. They “lambast the article.” “They also,” she adds, “seem unable to fully understand the argument.” And again, these are evangelical students at an evangelical school.
The only argument for conjugal marriage they’ve ever encountered has been the wooden proof-texting from the Bible. And besides, wrote Rine, “What the article names as a ‘revisionist’ idea of marriage—marriage as an emotional, romantic, sexual bond between two people—does not seem ‘new’ to my students at all, because this is the view of marriage they were raised with, albeit with a scriptural, heterosexual gloss.”
As Rine points out “the redefinition of marriage began decades ago” when “the link between sexuality and procreation was severed in our cultural imagination.”
And if marriage “has only an arbitrary relationship to reproduction,” then it seems mean-spirited to Rine’s students to argue that marriage by its very nature excludes same-sex couples.
And where do students get the idea that marriage “has only an arbitrary relationship to reproduction”? Well, everywhere—television, church, school, their homes, in youth groups.
Rine writes, “As I consider my own upbringing and the various ‘sex talks’ I encountered in evangelical church settings over the past twenty years, I realize that the view of marital sex presented there was primarily revisionist.”
In other words, once you say, “I do,” you get “the gift” of sex which is presented as “a ‘gift’ largely due to its [erotic], unitive properties, rather than its intrinsic capacity to create life.” Even in the Church, children have become an optional add-on to married life rather than its primary purpose.
What can we do to win back our children, our churches, and the culture? In our recent book “Same Sex Marriage,” Sean McDowell and I lay out a game plan. We offer strategies for the short-term and the long-term, with the ultimate goal: re-shaping the cultural imagination towards what God intended marriage to be, starting with the church. Come to BreakPoint.org to pick up your copy.
As Chuck Colson once said in a BreakPoint commentary about marriage, “We Christians are very good at saying ‘No.’ But we’ve got to get better at saying ‘Yes’: showing how God’s plan for humanity is a blessing. That His ways, including faithful, life-giving marriage between one man and one woman, lead to human flourishing physically, emotionally, and spiritually.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Reprinted with permission from Break Point.
That’s a good point.
Amen to that.
I didn’t understand what you were saying, either. Did you mean that all morality comes from God?
Jesus said, "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me."
One of those commandments is found in 1 Thess 1:4-8:
Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God; for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who£ has also given us His Holy Spirit.
God says sodomy is bad and we agree. Statistics show that homos have a high incidence of drug, alcohol and physical abuse among each other and that makes sense to us. But we can't prove that their problem is spiritual and the other side is successfully saying that a lack of acceptance is why they are emotionally troubled.
At some point "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" is the only argument a Christian has.
Does #45 help?
Not really.
I always run to the bible for such high level things. The verse that came to mind was Jesus saying "If you, being EVIL, know how to give good gifts to your children..."
We know man is evil yet knows right from wrong and is capable of doing what is good. The "Comes from God" aspect of your question can go all the way to the fact that He created us the ability to know and choose right from wrong and that is all of Him.
But I place no faith in man's ability to define morals though he stumbles upon being good once in a while.
Christians and conservatives could fix education almost immediately and a major correction in the direction of media and pop culture would follow in as little as ten to 30 years.
How?
Remove the children! There are whole counties and even entire states where, if conservatives and Christians removed their kids, the godless government K-12 system of compulsory education would **immediately** collapse!
That makes no sense.
If a big space ship hovered over the U.S. and sucked up every government K-12 school, imagine how many spouses of ministers would be out of a job!
That and the civil rights, since homosexual marriage is primarilly used by people who do not want to share genetic make up. It is the same Sanger mantra of aborting negro children from black lovers, treating the plantation womb and relationships as extended slavery as a concept.
It is contradictory to the constitution and should require a constitutional amandment if things were done properly, but instead we have chaos and dictat
Thank you for your patience. I agree.
Sodomy is any sex act that is intrinsically sterile, or HAS BEEN MADE sterile.
That is all well and good...but does the above include a man and woman employing the so called ‘rhythm method’ so as to minimize the chance of conception...?
It’s been going on for centuries...all of them sodomites...?
“At some point “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” is the only argument a Christian has.”
And that is exactly why the majority of our country supports gay marriage. In an increasingly secular society, we need to make secular arguments. Especially when there are left-leaning churches claiming God for themselves.
My pleasure.
My son works at Chick Fil A and they say "My pleasure" in response to every thank-you. It's a nice thing. I love Christian companies.
I'm afraid I disagree. Secular arguments do not spread the gospel.
I’ve heard only good things about Chick Fil A. :)
It's the best first job that any of my 8 kids have had. One son worked at a local, ethnically diverse, grocery store and came out of it damaged goods. My son at Chick Fil A was allowed to play his trombone with his brother on the baritone during Christmas. They welcome Christians singing hymns at Christmas time. Most of the employees are Christians and a really good percentage of the patrons too.
I've recently dumped Taco Bells for Wendy's for the same reason.
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