Soft Peddling God's Moral Law: A Better Conversation about Homosexuality | Christianity Today

 ". . . the church has mistakenly given primacy to ethics over the narrative functions of doctrine and ministry." -- Christopher Benson

By Charlie J. Ray

Just when I thought Christianity Today could not get any worse I'm surprised by an article that introduced relativism and ambiguity to the issue of human sexuality.   As if there is any question whatsoever about God's original intentions in creation?  The Scripture lays out clearly the condition of humankind prior to the fall of Adam:

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:27-28 NKJ)

Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31 NKJ)

Jesus reaffirmed the original creation when He said:

And He answered and said to them, "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning`made them male and female,' 5 "and said,`For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh '? 6 "So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate." (Matthew 19:4-6 NKJ)

Combine these statements by Jesus with the prohibitions in the moral law against homosexuality and all sexual immorality and it becomes obvious that  Christopher Benson wishes to push "Evangelical" Christians to accept homosexuality as "moral" and "good" and not a perversion of God's purposes in creation.  God literally created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve or Laverne and Shirley!   (See 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Leviticus 18:22; Leviticus 20:13; Romans 1:26-27; Genesis 19:5; Deuteronomy 23:17; Judges 19:22).

But Mr. Benson would have us to believe that God's moral law does not "really" condemn homosexuality as immoral and a violation of  God's law, does it?  I am reminded of Satan's temptation of Eve when he said, "Has God really said...?"

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said,`You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" (Genesis 3:1 NKJ)

Deceivers always come in the guise of ministers of the light.  (2 Corinthians 11:14-15).  Benson is no different and neither is Christianity Today.  At one time Christian Century was considered a liberal periodical.  Now Christianity Today is right up there with the best of them along with Tony Campolo and other false prophets who wish to question the plain teaching of God's Word and the logical propositions of the Holy Scriptures. 

A good example of this is reframing the moral issues of Scripture in terms of situational ethics rather than the deontological, apodictic law as it is expressed in the Decalogue: 

Keeping with the church’s traditional consensus on the sin of homosexuality, Paris, O’Donovan, and Hill view the moral status of homosexuality as important but not all-important. Paris recounts an experience in graduate school when a bisexual, atheist classmate asked if she could handle going to a gay bar, even though she had never been to any bar before. Feeling “like a fish out of water or, more to the point, a conservative Christian out of church,” nothing about it shocked her. When this friend tested her—“Jenell, now that we’re on my turf, let me ask you this: Does Christianity really condemn homosexuality?”—she answered as most of us have answered with a simplistic message that affirms the sinfulness of homosexuality. Seeing the hurt and anger in her friend, regret followed. “I had stood up for my faith,” she writes, “so why did I feel like my faith had let me down?”

Maybe because she was thinking in terms of pleasing men rather than obeying God's law and pleasing God?  (Colossians 1:10; 2 Corinthians 5:9; Galatians 1:10).  The true Christian is not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  (Romans 1:16).  And even though the moral law reveals all men and women to be miserable sinners who fall way short of God's glory and holiness (Romans 3:10-23), the true Christian cannot shirk his or her duty to stand for the truth and not sell out to paganism or the immorality of the world.  (Ephesians 6:11, 13; 1 John 2:15-17; 1 John 3:1, 13; 1 John 4:1).

Perhaps the Arminian idea that we can persuade with human arguments the wicked and the reprobate to convert to Christ is the impetus behind such compromises of God's final Word on all matters of faith and practice?  But the Bible clearly teaches that God either hardens the reprobate (Romans 9:18-21) or softens the hearts of the elect (Acts 16:14).  No amount of persuasion can change the spots of the leopard or the skin of the Ethiopian and neither can the sinner convert himself by "free will".  (Jeremiah 13:23; John 3:3-8; John 6:44, 65).  The odds of persuading a homosexual or a trans-sexual into changing their self-deception is next to nil, particularly when society, the world, and even false churches and false prophets are all endorsing their immorality and agreeing with them.  (Romans 1:32).  Unless God regenerates and effectually calls the sinner and the homosexual and the trans-sexual there will be no change of mind, no repentance, and no true conversion.  Christianity Today has once again confirmed that that the editors and promoters of the magazine have forsaken Christ and gone into outright apostasy.

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Soft Peddling God's Moral Law:  A Better Conversation about Homosexuality | Christianity Today