Editor’s

      Page                

                       

     

            

AMERICA - WHERE IS HER

                    MORALITY?

 

      It is getting more and more difficult to find morality based on the Word of God in our country. Tolerance is redefined to a new low. If you do not approve of another person’s lifestyle, degraded as it might be, you are a bigot. Same-sex marriages are quickly pushing their way into this country’s culture. Homosexuality is already accepted as just another lifestyle by many and has crept into our educational system as a part of an approved alternate lifestyle, teaching children this so-called new tolerance.

 

      Our liberal judges and politicians have bent over backwards in supporting what not so many years ago was never even discussed in public. Our laws continue to be re-interpreted in favor of this new definition of tolerance. Many of today’s magazines and television shows are dedicated to promoting this liberal agenda, considering themselves pioneers of freedom and justice.

 

      You often see posters or bumper stickers saying, “God bless America,” but is America blessing God? What is she doing to be worthy of God’s blessing? God is being put down at every turn.

 

      The Scriptures are clear and concise in condemning this alternate lifestyle, yet we have some ministers in the pulpit who not only openly admit they are “gay,” but speak proudly of the fact that they are living as homosexuals as well. Satan, as the god of this world, has done an amazing job of blinding the eyes of his subjects (2 Corinthians 4:4).

 

     Let us look at what the Apostle Paul wrote on this topic in Romans 1:26, 27, “For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.” Moses stated in Leviticus 18:22, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.”  The Scriptures are quite plain as to what position God’s takes on this subject. It is not a matter for discussion with Him but a principle of righteous and moral conduct versus unrighteous immorality.

 

      Same-sex marriages have been performed since 2004 in the State of Massachusetts. So far, our nation as a whole has not endorsed this. However, worldwide, it is being done in such countries as Belgium since 2003, Canada since 2005, Netherlands since 2001, and Spain since 2005. Several political parties in the United States such as the Green Party, the Libertarian Part, and several state Democratic Parties also support gay marriages.  Some States, though they haven’t legalized same-sex marriages have granted job benefits such as insurance and other beneficiary coverage.

 

   William Barclay, writing on these verses in Romans, says this:

“Romans 1:26-32 might seem the work of some almost hysterical moralist who was exaggerating the contemporary situation and painting it in colors of rhetorical hyperbole.  It describes a situation of degeneracy of morals almost without parallel in human history.  However, Paul said nothing that the Greek and Roman writers of the age did not themselves say: 

   (1)  It was an age when things seemed…out of control... It was a world where violence had run amok. When Tacitus came to write the history of this period he wrote, “I am entering upon the history of a period rich in disasters, gloomy with wars, rent with seditions, savage in its very hours of peace…” 

   (2) It was an age of unparalleled luxury…An age so weary of ordinary things that it was avid for new sensations.

   (3) It was an age of unparalleled immorality…one of moral suicide.  There had not been one single case of divorce in the first 520 years of the history of the Roman republic…But now, Seneca writes, “women were married to be divorced and divorced to be married.” Juvenal writes of the case of a woman who had eight husbands in five years. Society was riddled from top to bottom with unnatural vice with 14 out of 15 Emperors being homosexual. “

 

      Do any of these definitions of Rome sound familiar to us today? While we do not believe our work is to change the world at present, nor do we advocate, as stewards of the Lord’s goods, the spending our money, time and efforts along these lines, we do feel, as Christians, we should speak out against the things the Lord’s Word speaks out against as the Lord gives us opportunity.  However, let us always remember to “speak the truth in love” and “to love the sinner while hating the sin.”  Perhaps in so doing, some may turn from their sinful ways to paths of righteousness.  Moses asked, “Who is on the Lord’s side?”  Let’s make sure we are and that we do not condone what the Scriptures clearly speak out as “an abomination” to our Lord.                                                                                     E. Weeks