Really, Really Random Ramblings

Hello, dear friends!

It's been a bit since I've checked in. As I mentioned, I've been super-busy lately - both with the usual run of life, and with the extra preparations for my husband's start date with his new job.

During the coming week, we will be getting our baby his annual check-up, taking the children to swim twice plus our church's kids' club, hosting two sets of family, working madly on shopping trips and home fix-it projects, getting my husband ready for his job, and preparing for and attending our state homeschool convention.

I'm tired just thinking about it!

Needless so say, I probably won't be around much for the next week or two. That's okay, of course, but do know that I am thinking of each of you!

Additionally, for the past few weeks I have been a bit down. To be specific, I have been grieving deeply over the recent Supreme Court decision here in the United States.

My head and my heart are bowed.

I am grieving for a people who have yet again made another step away from God - and which decision is both approved and applauded by leaders and populace alike.

I did not expect the decision to go any other way. The writing was on the wall, and the decision was made years (decades? centuries?) ago. But I still grieve.

I do not wish this blog to turn into a war zone. If you want to fight, please go elsewhere. But I would like to say that this issue is not "Big, mean, stupid Christians who want to deny civil rights to a repressed minority people." It's about Christians who believe that there are transcendent truths regarding human behavior, and that there is a God who has laid down the laws for human existence - laws that cannot be trifled with without severe long-term consequences.

And for a country that again has thumbed its nose at the Bible, and the Bible's God - I grieve for this country.

Thus, though we had a great 4th of July celebration, it was a bit subdued. It's hard to celebrate when one feels that our country has just made a decision both horrible and basically irreversible.

However, truth be told, our country has a long history of departure from God. It is now over 40 years since we declared open season on our precious unborn babies. And the ground of our nation is now stained with the innocent blood of millions upon millions of wee ones who were slaughtered in their mother's wombs, all with the full approval of the American courts.

It has been many years since this nation honored God - certainly not in my lifetime.

Friday's decision was just another step in the same direction.

As a matter of fact, it feels silly to be writing about this at all, because I spent hours upon hours (that I should have been using elsewhere!) writing an extremely long post about the topic last week. In many ways I am retracing my steps.

But I'm not sure whether or not I'll ever publish that article.

Firstly, I'm not a skilled debater (and I do not enjoy heated arguments).

Secondly, I don't really want this to become an issues-based blog.

Thirdly, as I discussed last week with a dear friend, it's hard for us Christian mommy bloggers to find the fine line between blogging and doctrinal teaching. God's Word forbids women from teaching in the church, and the written word from a blog is just as much teaching as the spoken word from the pulpit. I don't want to cross that line.

So I'll have to sit on it for a while. We'll see.

In the meantime, I will share two observations:

The fallout from this decision is going to be horrendous for the Christian church

If you choose to stay faithful to the Bible in coming years, you will pay. Your family will pay. Your church will pay.

Are you ready?

Are you ready to hated for following Christ? For following the Bible? For refusing the swim with the crowd?

(Am I ready?)

I am incredibly fearful (though I should not be), because I can see quite clearly the direction that this is heading, and it will most likely be ugly for the church. I do not think that we believers in this country (who have always known both respect and freedom) have any conception of where this could be headed. But our rights (of religion, assembly, expression, parenting, personal choice, etc.) are clearly on the way out in favor of extreme government power. And that scares me.

For those of you who claim to follow both Christ and the crowds - dear friends, please consider. You will be called to choose one or the other. We cannot choose to love God and to love the world's hatred of God at the same time.

(I know there are those who will respectfully disagree with me on this point. I love you anyway.)

Secondly, I invite each of us to consider how we, the church, helped lead our nation to this point. My other article (which will probably never be published) examined this issue in depth, but to put it briefly - by our actions (or lack thereof) we have gutted heterosexual marriage. And in doing so, we created a homosexual definition of marriage for ourselves - and then acted upset when the homosexuals wanted in on it. We can blame only ourselves for our selfishness, and we can begin to address the larger culture only by addressing the sins within our midst first.

Justin writes in his first-class summing-up:

"And yet, the people are getting something they deserve. While the courts and the government have set the American cultural slide into motion, the people have embraced it. When no-fault divorce came along, there was little real opposition, and today, many churches simply accept it. When coverture was overturned, no one batted an eye (today most people don’t even know what it is, and most pastors balk at the concept). Americans thrust themselves whole-heartedly into the idea that women ought to be able to take care of themselves, and as education and career replaced marriage, the churches were silent, or even encouraging. For decades, Biblical marriage has been slowly relegated to the dustbin of history, and only an outspoken few did anything to stop it."

And Cindy adds in her excellent article:

"While we’re calling gays to repentance, don’t we have some repenting of our own to do? While we’re rightly demanding the government to restore marriage, don’t we need to restore it in our own understanding, as well?

"Or do we prefer to continue treating marriage as if it were ours, to be entered, enjoyed, and disposed of in whatever fashion makes us happy? If so (and I sadly suspect it is so, given the number of Christians who have called me a fool for saying this utterly unsurprising and thoroughly biblical stuff), then I suggest you line up behind those confused, degenerate, hell-bound gays and affirm their marriages along with the government. If we’re not as a people going to get back to treating marriage as a sacred covenant, rather than a personally beneficial economic and sexual arrangement, then we might as well put the rainbow on our own Facebook profiles, because they only want the same thing so many professing Christians already have, and that is not traditional marriage, no matter what we want to call it."

I invite each of you to visit the links below. I regret that it is not a more exhaustive list - I only started keeping it recently, and thus missed a great many excellent articles.

There are at least three positives here:

(1) The Christian church is most likely on the brink of beginning to experience true persecution in this country. This is scary. But fire, while it burns, also purifies - and the church is in desperate need of that purification.

(2) The rise of the issues at hand has caused me to dive head-first into massive amounts of reading and research. I have learned so much! I have learned about marriage, human behavior, human sexuality, life ethics, theology, church history, politics, law, and theology and the Bible in general. I have also begun to make a lot of the "X led to Y" connections that are missing for so many of us in our understanding of history. This has been amazing and a huge blessing to me.

(3) For those of us in the church, we are going to learn a new skill - how to trust God when we don't have the security of respect from the culture and freedom of worship guaranteed by the government. We've been used to these securities, and I, like many, feel panicky as I survey the possibility of losing them. But many of our brothers in other countries have never known the freedoms we take for granted. It may be our turn soon to join their ranks.

(I apologize for my pessimism, but I think it's justified.)

Please pray for our country. For the Christian church. For our people.

Hope is not lost, but the trajectory of this time in history is clear.

Now, read!

(Readers, I do apologize for the downer tone of this post. It is a faithful reflection of my mood at the time of writing, however, and is now impossible to edit out. If I had had a more faith-filled response, here is what I would like to have written instead. Follow the link and enjoy!)


***


Fox, J. Mark (June 29, 2015). Christians, Practice What You Preach [blog post]. Retrieved from http://jmarkfox.com/2015/06/29/christians-practice-what-you-preach/

 

Kainz, Howard (July 7, 2011). If Contraception, Why Not Gay Marriage? [journal article]. Retrieved from http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/if-contraception-why-not-gay-marriage

 

Alexander, Lori (June 27, 2015). Grieving Over the Supreme Court's Decision [blog post comment]. Retrieved from http://lorialexander.blogspot.com/2015/06/grieving-over-supreme-courts-decision.html

 

French, David (June 26, 2015). The Supreme Court Ratifies a New Religion That Is Incompatible With Christianity [journal article]. Retrieved from http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420376/marriage-christians-religion-love

 

Mohler, Dr. Albert (June 27, 2015). Everything Has Changed and Nothing Has Changed - The Supreme Court Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage [blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/06/27/everything-has-changed-and-nothing-has-changed-the-supreme-court-and-same-sex-marriage/

 

Dyer, Cindy (June 29, 2015). I'm Not One to Say I Told You So [blog post]. Retrieved from http://getalonghome.com/2015/06/told/

 

Lawler, Leila (June 27, 2015). Bits and Pieces [blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.likemotherlikedaughter.org/2015/06/bits-pieces-56/

 

Headmistress (June 26, 2015). Supreme Court Rules We No Longer Live Under the Rule of Law [blog post]. Retrieved from http://thecommonroomblog.com/2015/06/supreme-court-rules-we-no-longer-live-under-the-rule-of-law.html?doing_wp_cron=1435714102.7762739658355712890625

 

Challies, Tim (July 1, 2015). You Don't Really Know Who Your Friends Are Until... [blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.challies.com/articles/you-dont-really-know-who-your-friends-are-until

Douthat, Ross (June 26, 2015). Gay Conservatism and Straight Liberation (jurnal article). Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-gay-marriage-and-straight-liberation.html?_r=1

Steyn, Mark (July 2, 2015). Going with the Flow (online journal post). Retrieved from http://www.steynonline.com/7032/going-with-the-flow

Jacqueline (July 5, 2015). Top US Hospital Embraces Political Correctness Over Truth (blog post). Retrieved from http://www.deeprootsathome.com/top-us-hospital-embraces-political-correctness-over-truth/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DeepRootsAtHome+%28Deep+Roots+at+Home%29

Justin (July 6, 2015). Justice Anthony Kennedy to Be Excommunicated? (blog post). Retrieved from http://titus25.com/justice-anthony-kennedy-to-be-excommunicated/


And for encouragement in dark times:
Don't miss these!

Neal, Rebekah (July 4, 2015). Love That Wins (blog post). Retrieved from http://www.readytobeoffered.com/2015/07/love-that-wins.html

Haupt, Heather (July 6, 2015). Intentional Parenting Means Raising Daniels (blog post). Retrieved from http://www.heatherhaupt.com/2015/07/05/raising-daniels/#comment-48964

Mackintosh, Jennifer (June 30, 2015) Truth and Beauty: Rebuilding Culture by Doing the Next Thing (blog post). Retrieved from http://wildflowersandmarbles.com/2015/06/30/truth-beauty-rebuilding-culture-by-doing-the-next-thing/