We May Have Lost the Cultural Battle, but...

Unless you're one of the few who has never gone to a public school, worked for a large corporation, been to a coffee shop, watched television, or had access to the Internet ... then you've seen and heard the arguments by homosexuals being proclaimed from the rooftops.

Just what are the arguments?

(1) Same-sex marriage is marriage equality.
(2) It is a civil right.
(3) How can you honestly deny us happiness by denying us the same rights as straight couples?
(4) The only argument against it are religious reasons - don't try to force your religion on me.

The truly sad thing today is that any one of these arguments, by itself, would silence most opposition in our society. Especially the younger generation, who simply keel over at first hearing this kind of persuasion. No critical thought is applied whatsoever. I saw a poll on CBS that found 73% of people under 30 support gay marriage. I mean, what do you expect from an entire generation raised by a generation of secularists?

Since our President took office a second time, the realization hit me that we are losing the cultural battle ... if we haven't lost it already. We may have lost the cultural battle, but we have not lost the argument. More importantly, the gospel of Jesus Christ is just as relevant as ever, and we as the people of God ought to be eager to discuss sin, repentance, and the hope found solely in the Lord.

If it's okay with you, I'd briefly like to discuss the same-sex marriage arguments listed above. Because the first time I heard them, I was a bit surprised. After all, who wants to deny equality, civil rights, or the happiness of others? Or even, impose religious beliefs through legislation!

As a Christian man I don't hate homosexuals. But I do believe those behaviors are sinful, as described in the Bible. God is the Maker of heaven and earth, and He alone has the right to tell us how to live, who to love, and how to express that love. Furthermore, the Lord designed marriage as the first institution as that of one man and one woman. Marriage will always and forever be between a man and a woman, no matter how much our culture wishes to redefine it.

Redefinition is really what this is all about. Redefinition, and recognition. It is not enough that Christians tolerate homosexuals, we must approve of their behavior by calling it marriage. Others have rightly pointed out the inconsistency of the advocates of same-sex marriage who claim they want marriage equality. They don't want equality; not really anyways. If they did they would open the floodgates to allow anyone to marry any number of any thing he or she (or it) wants to marry.

But the vast majority of homosexuals would not support polyamory (polygamy), incestuous adult relationships, bestiality, or pedophilia. The question needs to be asked, however ... why don't you support these groups' civil right to marriage equality? They are also people with hopes, dreams and desires, who only want to be happy in this life. Do you want to deny them this? You're kidding yourself if you don't see the slippery slope the arguments for same-sex marriage have created. This is not to say that because paving the way for other redefinitions of marriage makes same-sex marriage sinful, it is just to point out that others will (and are) use the same arguments to further expand what marriage is.

The gay-marriage debate is not the Civil Rights debate from the 1960's. Christians are not saying that gays are unequal in value or human dignity as compared with the rest of the human race (unlike those 50 years ago). We are not denying services to homosexuals. What we refuse to do is redefine marriage to be something completely different. Because you claim to love someone does not inherently give you the right to marry that someone.

Are we trying to deny you happiness? If we hated homosexuals we would promote homosexuality and same-sex marriage, because it is sinful and is, therefore, the worst thing for you. But it is because we love God and our fellow man that we cannot endorse sin.

No amount of legislation, or government backing will make marriage something other than between one man and one woman. Western Civilization might call a same-sex relationship marriage, but it can never be marriage, not truly. God is the ruler of this universe, and has rightly ordained how His creatures should live.

So what message do we offer to the homosexual? What is our response to their arguments? Simply this: that they, along with the whole human race, are born sinful and guilty of the wrath of God. Homosexuality is a sin, and they are guilty of other sins as well. Because of their sin, they ought to be judged by the Lord, found guilty, and condemned to pay for those sins forever in Hell - where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Christians were born just as guilty as they are, and were once unbelievers who likewise hated God and refused to worship Him and give Him thanks.

But God, being rich in mercy, entered into His own creation and humbled Himself by taking the form of a man - Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity. Jesus lived a sinless life, and kept God's requirements of the Law that we are hopelessly unable to keep. He was also crucified on a cross to pay for the sins of God's people.

Death could not keep him, and three days later was resurrected for our justification.

Because we are hopelessly unable to keep the perfect standard that God requires of us, we all fall short of His glory and are deserving of judgment. If, however, you turn from your sins unto Christ, and trust in Him through faith (not by your own works/good deeds) to deliver you from the consequences and lifestyle of sin, you will have your sins forgiven, and a new relationship with the true and living God, being spared from the wrath to come. All those who have faith in Jesus have been justified - declared not guilty of their sins - and have a lasting peace with God that cannot be broken. Jesus bore His people's sins on the cross and fully paid for them; His righteousness is considered to be yours through faith alone, which is how you have a right-standing before God. Not by your own works, but by the works of Jesus Christ.

My prayer for you is that you will turn from your sins, unto the true God of the Bible. I pray that He might save you from your sins and your sinful lifestyle, and that you would come to know the one true Lord of all creation. I pray that the words of Paul, found in his first letter to the Corinthians would become true of you:

⁹ Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, ¹⁰ nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹ Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11, NASB).

Thanks for reading,
Metzger

The Existence of God: Part 1 – The Nature of Evidence and Why Logic?

The above image (source found here) is a classic example of modern secular thinking. Christians are irrational, illogical and unreasonable. They are fools for believing in God and even more foolish for the belief that this Jesus person is the incarnation of God. Atheists, in recent years, have taken the gloves off. They are no longer engaging in polite discourse. Although religion as a whole is under attack, it is Christians who bear the brunt. To find the truth of this statement one simply need only to spend a few minutes on any popular website or public forum such as reddit or facebook. The vast majority of the atheist venom is directed specifically toward the bible, the God of the bible, Jesus and His followers. They have taken the disagreement to the level of mockery and complete intolerance for the Christian perspective. They say belief in God is a psychological crutch for simpletons, unable to handle reality. And why is the Christian so mock-worthy? According to them, evidence contradicts the bible. 

Atheists argue that the evidence against the biblical perspective on origins specifically - but other matters as well - is overwhelming. The universe and life both have “natural” origins; therefore existence itself is not a proof of God. They take this perspective even further. The claim is that science precludes the existence of God. You cannot use God as an explanation for anything in science. In other words, science can’t prove or disprove God and if it can’t be accounted for scientifically it does not exist. Although this line of thinking is full of baseless presuppositions, I’m not going to specifically address those issues at this time, but I will address them (Lord willing) in a future article that will examine the atheist world view in a more general sense. For now we will look at two of atheism’s most basic foundations.

The second biggest (we will get to the biggest in a moment) problem with atheism is its reliance on evidence. Evidence does not prove anything. Much like beauty, evidence is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, evidence must be interpreted, and one must have a framework or basis for how they choose to interpret evidence. This is called a world view. Two quick examples of why we cannot use evidence to prove anything. The atheist will point to starlight and say something like, 

“That starlight you see is billions of lightyears away, so it took billions of years to get here. The bible only allows for the universe to be thousands of years old, not billions. The bible is wrong.”

The Christian might respond,

“You assume too much. Perhaps light has not always traveled at its current rate. Perhaps there is some unknown past cosmic event, or property of the universe that we don’t yet know or understand that could account for such a phenomenon. In fact there are Christian physicists working on that problem right now.”

Then the Christian will say,

“Look at comets. Each time they pass by the sun they lose some of their material. Even by the most generous calculations comets can only last for thousands of years, not even close to millions or billions of years. We still see comets today orbiting the sun, so the universe is only thousands of years old. The bible is right.”

Now the atheist can say,

“Well this guy named Oort came up with the idea of the Oort cloud. It’s a cloud of billions of comets around the solar system, and every once in a while there is some kind of gravitational event that throws more comets our way.”

Now I should point out that there is absolutely no reason to believe in the existence of the Oort cloud other than the fact that we still have comets orbiting the sun, just like Christians do not yet have an explanation for distant starlight. You see both sides can argue over evidence all day long, but we will only endlessly come up with reasons why the other's evidence does not affect our world views. Everyone has a world view, and they interpret everything on the basis of that world view. So our task - as the human race in the search for truth - is quite simple, examine the different world views and find the one that makes the most logical sense. But that leads to one very important question, why logic?

Proponent of atheism Dr. Gordon Stein has said, “The use of logic or reason is the only valid way to examine the truth or falsity of a statement which claims to be factual.” In other words, logic is the most fundamental rule by which we measure truth. You can’t prove anything without logic or reason. This is actually something Christians and atheists agree upon. The problem with this standard for truth is that it is in-and-of itself a claim of truth. So the atheist has to now prove by logic and reason, that it is by logic and reason that you prove everything. This is circular reasoning and begging the question, two logical fallacies that prove an argument to be false. The only option left for the atheist is to prove - by some method other than logic or reason - that it is by logic and reason that you prove everything. In which case, they destroy the argument on its own foundation. This is an inescapable trap and the biggest problem with atheism. The atheist perspective on its most basic foundation is totally irrational and self-refuting. The reason for this is that the atheist perspective cannot account for the existence of logic, so they have no logical reason for the use of logic and reason.  According to their own standards, science must be able to account for something for it to exist. But there is no “logic particle” or “planet logic” beaming logic (like radio waves) into the universe. But don’t Christians have the same problem? No they don’t, because their world view can account for logic and give a reason why it must be used. Logic is a reflection of God’s thinking. God is logical, and therefore logic is the standard by which we must think. To do otherwise violates God’s law and is therefore irrational. The same can be demonstrated with all non-physical properties of the universe such as morality and the laws of nature.

In closing there are four ways atheists try to get out of the logical trap their world view creates for them. The first is to try and say matter is logical therefore logic is a property of matter. There are two problems with this argument; the first is that matter changes and logic does not. If logic was based off of matter it would change. The second problem with this is that matter obeys the laws of logic and nature, laws do not obey matter therefore it cannot be the source. 

The second method of escape is to say the laws of logic are like the rules of grammar. They are not laws they are simply conventions among people. If that were true then logic would be different from culture to culture. For instance, in England it might make sense for me to contradict myself and say I am 100% a person and 100% not a person. 

The third escape is to say logic is created by chemical reactions in our brain. It is just how the human mind works. The first problem with this is that people are not always logical. That is why there are logical fallacies. If it was just how the human mind worked we would not have to be taught how to be logical. The second problem with this is that what happens in your brain is not what happens in mine. It is similar to the “matter source” and “conventions” arguments. Logic would then be changeable.

Finally they might try to say something along the lines of, “Just because you can prove something logically does not mean it actually exists.” This is referring, of course, to God. This is not really a method of escape, but rather an attack on the overall argument. What I say to this (and the three methods of escape in general) is that it is the atheist who is forced to deny and attack logic … not the Christian. It is not Christians who have to diminish logic or rational thought to try and uphold their world view. Christians can account for, or give a reason for, the use of logic. The atheist cannot. In fact in the rational world the atheist can’t prove anything because they have absolutely no basis for logic or any other kind of truth. They borrow from the Christian world view to try and fill in the gaps of their world view. The atheist world view is clearly inconsistent and irrational.

In part 2 (eta, soonish) we will broaden our view and tackle the atheist claim of neutrality, and the naturalist world view.