New York and Gay Marriage

New York's Supreme Court recently upheld the state's marriage law that says marriage is between men and women. In so doing, they have upheld the civilized world's long standing position that God instituted in Genesis 1 when he made male and female and brought them together.

Not unexpectedly, this has many people up in arms. Those who praised the Massachusett's court ruling of 2004 are condemning the NY decision. What do many of these all have in common? They are gay marriage supporters who have never been able to win in the legislature and so they have taken their battle to the courts. They are the same people who praise the courts when they rule for them, and condemn the courts when they rule against them. While that is not unique to them, it shows that they are not driven by principle of government, but by principle of position. When they get what they want, the givers are enlightened, forward thinking progressives. When the same people do not give them what they want, those same people are backwards thinking regressives who would still own slaves if they could get away with it.

New York Representative Jerrold Nadler says,

This is a sad day for families, a sad day for justice, and a sad day in the struggle for equal rights for all Americans. The promise that, in this nation, all people are created equal, and entitled to equal rights, compels us to end discrimination against same-sex couples. Today, the Court of Appeals has failed to take that stand.

Why doesn't Mr. Nadler solve the problem by getting the congress to adopt his position? Simple: He can't. Because the vast majority of Americans do not agree with him, and their representative in Congress do not agree with him. At every turn, Americans have voted overwhelming against gay marrigae.

Consider Mr. Nadler's statement. He argues that all people are created equal and are entitled to equal rights. The truth is that all people do have equal rights. Gay people are not prevented from getting married. They are allowed to go down, apply for a marriage license, and get married just like everyone else in this country. And just like everyone else, they must obey all relevant laws. There is no discrimination against same sex couples here, not unless discrimination has changed meaning and I did not get the memo.

Conservatives have too long allowed the discussion to be framed as "gay marriage." What is that? Nothing. It is like talking about a round square. Gay marriage does not exist by definition. Marriage is the union of a man and woman. It has always been that way. What homosexual activists are looking for is a redefinition of marriage.

Conservatives need to emphasize loudly and clearly that homosexuals can get married. They simply have to do it like everyone else. Find a partner of the opposite sex and marry them. That's what we had to do. If you can't, then stay single, just like everyone else who did not (or could not, as the case may be) find a partner of the opposite to marry them.

If that has legal and financial consequences for you, then accept it. Be a hero, not a whiner. That is the price of making choices. When I got married, it had legal and financial consequences for me. As I often remind my wife, it is a decision that I will pay for for the rest of my life. (And it is worth every penny it costs me.)

Too often we live in a world where people want to make decisions without accepting the consequences of those decision. If you choose to live with a partner of the same sex, you choose to accept all the consequencese of that decision. You may argue that you were created that way, that you have a built in attraction to the same sex. Fine. That may or may not be true. Science has not proven either way, and attraction is not easily defensible from Scripture. Many people have evil attractions and many people have good attractions. Your attraction is not at issue.

What is at issue is your choices. You may not have chosen to be attracted to the same sex, but you do choose who you take your clothes off with. Nobody forces that on you. And you do choose who you love. Nobody forces that on you.

So if being homosexual is more important than getting married, then be homosexual But realize that you must accept the consequences that are built in to that choice. Do not pretend like you are greatly persecuted. Do not pretend like you have no choice. You do. So live like it.

If you want to win the legal battle, then do it at the ballot box. Do not shame our constitution and the laws of this land by circumventing either. As the NY court said, there is a remedy; it is in the legislature. Win your battles there, not at the bench.

Elders and Pastors

I recently finished Mark Dever's excellent book entitled The Deliberate Church. This is a book well worth reading. But something caught my attention.

Dever rightly defines elders as pastors. He says "A pastor, then, is an elder, and an elder is a bishop/overseer—all three terms refer to the same office and the same work of pastoring" (p. 131, appealing to Acts 20:18-38 and Titus 1:5-7; cf. 1 Peter 5:1-2).

Curiously, he later says "Churches can get away without having elders. It happens all the time. But the biblical pattern is consistent, and the practical benefits are clear, both for the pastor and the congregation" (p. 135).

Now, if elders are pastors (as he rightly says), then how does a church get away without having elders? Surely he is not going to appeal to the plural form of elder vs. the singular form of pastor. He seems to be saying that a church with a pastor is getting away without having elders.

Which leads to my point: Our imprecise use of these terms has created much confusion, and led to a bifurcation of the office of pastor. It leads us to talk of "elders" and "pastors" as if they are two different offices. It seems that Dever falls prey to this several times throughout his book.

If we assert that elders are pastors, and pastors are elders, then let's quit referring to them differently.

Independence Day

I recently visited the site of some of the fiercest fighting of World War II. Remnants of fighting were all around. Tanks and guns still dot the landscape. Memorials to fallen soldiers and civilians stand in their memory. Bunkers, air raid shelters, and pillboxes can still be seen as a reminder that history really happened somewhere besides a textbook and movie reel.

As I traveled from place to place, I tried to imagine the terrain of sixty-two years ago, as waves of young men in the "bright morning of their lives" gave what Abraham Lincoln had eighty years earlier called "their last full measure of devotion." They stormed ahead into the fierce conflict to fight an enemy they had never seen, hoping to kill if only to avoid being killed. They knew they must defeat a foe whose desire was world domination, in contrast to their own desire of world freedom from tyranny.

They knew each breath could be their last. They knew the next whistling bullet could be theirs. Men from the streets of New York City and Chicago to the farms of Kansas and Oklahoma joined together in common cause for the sake of freedom. It is doubtful that anyone of them wanted to die, but they were willing todie because of the evident danger of standing aside and doing nothing. When their country called, they answered. When the bell rang, they sprang to action.

I can only imagine the fear of those days, loading into a landing craft knowing that the door will soon drop and you will have to exit the craft into an onslaught of machine gun fire. If you made it to the beach, you would have to fight inch by inch against an enemy well-prepared, who was dug in and waiting. You never knew what might spring out from behind the rock in front of you, or jump up from the tall grass in which you were walking. You knew some of the men beside you had seen their last sunrise, and if you survived, if might be your responsibility to carry the bodies of your fallen compatriots.

It is hard now to see the bodies, strewn across the landscape, bloody and lifeless. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a picture will never do justice to the things these men faced. The Greatest Generation it has been called. More than 400,000 never saw their homes again. They left behind wives and children, mother and fathers, brothers and sisters, all because they were willing to fight for something bigger than themselves, even if they did not want to.

So on this Independence Day, thank a veteran for being there then so that we could be here now. Thank a soldier for following in the footsteps of the Greatest Generation, who followed in the footsteps of those before them.

Remember that the freedoms we enjoy to disagree, to have political fights, and to speak our minds did not come cheaply. The blood of soldiers marks the spots were freedom was won.

Carry a Mop

I am reminded of a recent church planting conference I was at (no, not that one), where a speaker talked about ministry and people. He said if you want to be involved in ministry, you better carry a mop and a bucket because there will be ... uh ... stuff all over the floor. (He did not use the word "stuff," nor the epithet that starts with the same letter, but since I do not want to be the next blog pinata I will not say what he said exactly. Email me if you are that desperate to know and can't figure it out. It was a very picturesque word that certainly drove home the point in a way that other words might not have.)

It has been said that ministry would be a good life if it weren't for the people. Of course, ministry wouldn't be if it weren't for the people.

I heard of a guy who was called to pastor a church and turned it down because it wasn't big enough for him to just study and preach. He was going to have to work with the people. My advice to him: Go dig ditches. The pastorate cannot stand people with that attitude. Fortunately, there aren't any churches that fit that description, especially that will hire a guy right out of seminary.

Ministry hurts. It involves a lot of tears, and pain, and upset stomachs. It involves watching people reap the consequences of their actions, or the actions of others. It involves total helplessness because your best scriptural advice won't change anything unless the person is willing to be changed. It will cause you to lose sleep (and not just because you are up late on Saturday night preparing your message for Sunday). It will cause you to throw up and sit up and wade through the mess. You cannot send them home with a verse and a pat on the back.

It will hurt because we have been called to love and serve broken people. We have been called to embrace the unlovely, to weep with the broken, to step in the messes that people leave on the floor, and to carry the mop to try to clean them up, often while the mess is still being made.

You have to be willing to take abuse and scorn. You have to have broad shoulders to carry the weight. You have to willing to sit and say nothing. And then to say the right thing. You have to be willing to invest in someone else, who probably looks like a bad investment.

So if you don't want to carry a mop and a bucket, then go sell cars, dig ditches, build widgets, or panhandle as a last resort. But please do not become a pastor.

Do We Need More Testosterone?

A Washington Post article points out what many of us already know. Modern churches are pretty un-manly. Modern Christianity is for women. Or at least you would think so by looking at the typical evangelical church.

The gender gap is not a distinctly American one but it is a Christian one, according to Murrow. The theology and practices of Judaism, Buddhism and Islam offer "uniquely masculine" experiences for men, he said.

"Every Muslim man knows that he is locked in a great battle between good and evil, and although that was a prevalent teaching in Christianity until about 100 years ago, today it's primarily about having a relationship with a man who loves you unconditionally," Murrow said.

"And if that's the punch line of the Gospel, then you're going to have a lot more women than men taking you up on your offer because women are interested in a personal relationship with a man who loves you unconditionally. Men, generally, are not."

Murrow says on Sunday morning, "we're going to sing love songs to Jesus and there's going to be fresh flowers on the altar and quilted banners on the walls."

Perhaps the church needs to quit complaining about the lack of strong men and ask what we are doing that is perpetuating the problem.

I am quite sure that the problem is real. Next time you are watching some TV preacher, pay close attention when they pan the audience. See who is in it. Next time you sit in church, look around at who is there.

I am not quite sure what causes the problem, nor how we fix it. So if you, speak up.