BEHAVIOR AFFECTS OUR POLITICAL AND MORAL WORLDVIEW

LifeSiteNews.com reports that researchers from Northeastern University, Colorado College, and Texas Christian University have issued a report entitled "Identifying Effective Counter-Trafficking Programs and Practices in the U.S.:

·       One of their conclusions was that "[s]ex-related behaviors affect beliefs about human trafficking." Viewing pornography, strip bar attendance, and engaging in prostitution all contributed to a more laissez-faire attitude toward the practice of such "human slavery."

·       The study states, "Respondents who consumed pornography within the last year have more knowledge of human trafficking, but they think that it should be less of a government priority."

·       Also, men who attended strip clubs considered human trafficking less problematic. The study concluded, "Respondents visiting a strip club within the last year reported lower levels of concern about human trafficking and thought that human trafficking should be less of a government priority than those respondents not visiting a strip club within the last year."

Lifestyle impacts our beliefs – political, moral, and religious. If we are practicing porn, adultery, or pedophilia, the church is the last place we want to be. We would rather be with our own kind where we’ll feel accepted instead of judged. Rather than thinking that church-goers are honest and moral, we’ll convince ourselves that they are just narrow-minded hypocrites. This will tend to alleviate our own sense of being judged and condemned for our behavior.

Consequently, the more that our lifestyles diverge from biblical morality, the more disdained the Bible and Christians are! The Apostle Paul warned about this very thing:

·       But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

Consequently, they will no longer have any tolerance for the Good News of Jesus:

·       For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

Let’s pray that the Lord would revive His Church! That’s where revival must begin.

Sexual Assault, College, and its Causes

• The Association of American Universities on Monday released the overall results of a survey that asked students at 27 universities about their experiences with sexual assault and sexual misconduct, drawing responses from more than 150,000 students. 

• More than 20 percent of female undergraduates at an array of prominent universities said this year they were victims of sexual assault and misconduct, echoing findings elsewhere, according to one of the largest studies ever of college sexual violence.

• The survey found that 23 percent of undergraduate women and 5 percent of undergraduate men said they were victims of non-consensual sexual contact – ranging from penetration to sexual touching — due to force or incapacitation. Eleven percent of undergraduate women said they were victims of non-consensual penetration or attempted penetration… 20 percent of students said sexual assault and misconduct is very or extremely problematic on their own campus.

What can account for this epidemic? One thoughtful respondent appropriately commented:

• I don't for a minute want to minimize the roll that drunkenness plays in campus sexual assaults, but drunkenness on college campuses is not new… What is new on college campuses across the nation, as a result of the explosive growth of the World Wide Web, is college facilitated access to a "smorgasbord" of hardcore pornography that depicts the abuse, degradation, and exploitation of females. 

However true this might be, there is also another consideration. The normalization of almost any form of sexual acting-act is routinely promoted. In a New York Times Op-Ed, Charles M. Blow glowingly affirmed Miley Cyrus’ statements:

• “I’m very open about it — I’m pansexual.”

• I am literally open to every single thing that is consenting and doesn’t involve an animal and everyone is of age. Everything that’s legal, I’m down with. Yo, I’m down with any adult — anyone over the age of 18 who is down to love me.”

For Blow, these statements represent what sexuality should be about – “casual,”  “carefree,” and non-judgmental sex.

• There was something about the casual, carefree-ness of the statements that I found both charming and revolutionary. It took a happy-go-lucky sledgehammer to the must-fit-a-box binary that constrains and restricts our understanding of the complexity of human sexuality.

Since the NYT doesn’t discuss the down-side of the sexual revolution, we can assume that they too regard uncommitted sex as something that should be fun, playful, “happy-go-lucky,” and perhaps even a bit mischievous – something that our college students can readily applaud.

Blow rejects the traditional approach to sexuality as sacred, as something that “restricts our understanding of the complexity of human sexuality.” How ironic! It is the media and the universities which have silenced and struck down any message counter to the rampant sexual permissiveness and experimentation. Does the university offer any talks on the value of chastity? On traditional marriage? Instead, such discussions are taboo, routinely screamed down, and even penalized. Meanwhile, polyamory and other unsustainable practices are given free range to entice the minds of the susceptible.

However, it is Blow’s and Cyrus’ message, loudly proclaimed on almost every campus, that has helped to unleash sexual experimentation – the exploration of one’s sexuality. One popular form of sexual exploration is, understandably, forceful, bodily, sexual proselytizing. Well, isn’t it natural enough?

Isn’t it true that everyone wants and needs sex? What then is the problem? Sexual taboos, of course! Well then, what’s wrong with penetrating through these taboos in a persuasive, although somewhat aggressive manner? Perhaps these sexual trend-setters have even convinced themselves that they are providing a needful service to their victims? After all, the pedophiles have convinced themselves of this – the children a better-off because of them!

Behavior can no more be separated from belief than life from blood. If our youth are taught the primacy of choice above everything else, they will exercise their choice, albeit harmfully. If they are taught that their nature should govern their behavior, they will act out according to their nature. However, if they are taught that they must govern their natural impulses, and when they do not, they violate heaven’s dictates, they will think twice. (Also, our law-makers and universities will think twice!) However, this has become the forbidden message, the message that must be silenced.  

Jailing a Woman of Conscience, Kim Davis

On September 3, 2015, a federal judge ordered county clerk Kim Davis to jail for contempt, since she, citing her religious beliefs and "God's authority," refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. She stated:

• "You can't be separated from something that's in your heart and in your soul," Davis told the judge as she explained how the Supreme Court's ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide conflicts with the vows she made when she became a born-again Christian. I promised to love Him with all my heart, mind and soul because I wanted to make heaven my home.” 

• "I have no animosity toward anyone and harbor no ill will. To me this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God's word," her statement said.

Judge Bunning’s ruling seems to be more than extreme. Republican presidential candidate, Ted Cruz, charged that it was lawless:

• “Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny. Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America.

• “I stand with Kim Davis. Unequivocally. I stand with every American that the Obama Administration is trying to force to chose between honoring his or her faith or complying with a lawless court decision.

• “In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts rightly observed that the Court’s marriage decision has nothing to do with the Constitution. Justice Scalia observed that the Court’s [5 against 4] decision was so contrary to law that state and local officials would choose to defy it. 

And several have bravely chosen to defy it. And how is the Court’s ruling illegal? The American Family Association writes:

• So the Court had precisely zero authority to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was passed by overwhelming and bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, and signed into law by a Democrat president, Bill Clinton. DOMA makes it expressly clear that the business of defining marriage is an issue that belongs exclusively to the states. That is the LAW, passed by the elected representatives of the people in the constitutionally prescribed manner. If DOMA is to be amended or overturned, there is only one body on earth which has the legitimate power to do so, and that is Congress. The Supreme Court has absolutely no moral or constitutional authority to tamper with it at all. So if Congress by law has reserved to the states the right to define marriage, what has the state of Kentucky done about it? The people of Kentucky, according to the prescribed method outlined in its state constitution, have defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman, period. Kentuckians enacted their marriage amendment in 2004 with an overwhelming 75% of the vote. 

By overriding DOMA and the vote of 75% of Kentuckians, the five Supreme Court progressives have elevated ideology over the Constitution and a concern for the overall well-being of our nation. Their decisions can only serve to alienate, embitter, and breed greater distrust.

Our nation was not always so intolerant of religious belief. The secularism of our Founding Fathers bears little resemblance to the militant, coercive “secularism” of today. The historian, Edwin Scott Gaustad, quotes perhaps our most un-Christian Father to this effect:

• “Almighty God hath made the mind free.” It follows therefrom that mankind should do all that it can to keep minds unshackled and un-coerced. Let us consider, Jefferson noted, that if an all wise and powerful God restrained himself from coercing either the bodies or the minds of men and women, how utterly absurd it must be for “fallible and uninspired men” to arrogate to themselves the right to exercise “dominion over the faith of others…Be it enacted,” therefore, “that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.” One will suffer in no way for his or her religious opinions; on the contrary, all persons “shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.” And whatever their opinions, this will in no way affect their citizenship or their rights. (A Religious History of America, 119).

Jefferson might not have been a Christian, but he respected Christian conscience and regarded State coercion of religious conscience as needlessly repressive, as did the other Fathers.

There were many other options the Kentucky municipality could have adopted in regards to Davis. They could have allowed Davis room to not have to violate her faith. They could have directed gay clients to other clerks.

This is something that has been routinely done in mental health clinics. A new rape-case client is not assigned to a counselor who had just been raped. A Christian therapist is not assigned a same-sex (SS) couple. There had been respect for people’s feelings and faiths. What would it cost to make such allowances!

However, this is rapidly changing. Two Christian students were dismissed from graduate counseling programs in two different state schools because they refused to acknowledge that same-sex marriage is morally acceptable. This is a far cry from the Fathers who proclaimed that government should in no way exercise “dominion over the faith of others.” Jefferson had insisted that all people “shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.”

In contrast to this, the Obama administration eliminated certain rights of health care professions to not have to participate in activities that violated their conscience. Must today’s secularism compel a dogmatic secularly religious conformity in these matters? (And isn’t this an establishment of a State sponsored secular religion!) Must it force the pharmacist to prescribe the morning-after pill against his conscience? Must uniformity be imposed on all? On the same page of this World Magazine edition,

• A chaplain at a briefing asked a senior Pentagon official if a biblical worldview on homosexuality would be protected in the post-DADT [Don’t Ask, Don’t’ Tell] military. The reply he received was chilling: If you cannot come in line with the policy, then resign your commission.

We still don’t know how the repeal of DADT will play out for the chaplaincy and religion. However, this Pentagon official, reflecting the opinion of many others, is essentially saying, “The only religion will be our secular religion! We no longer allow religious diversity.” But why not? We’ve made provisions for the conscientious objector (CO) who refused to bear arms because of religious convictions. Why not also for the integrity of the religion which has provided the very foundation for this nation? In God of Liberty, historian Thomas S. Kidd writes:

• Whether evangelical or rationalist, most Patriots assumed that Christianity would, in some sense, be the cornerstone for the preservation of the new American Republic. (112)

According to Kidd, these sentiments were broadly held for quite a while:

• Through the era of the Civil War most Americans would continue to believe that the Christian religion should assist government in lifting people’s moral dispositions, so that they might contribute positively to the freedom of the Republic. Even the skeptical Thomas Jefferson believed that Christianity… “is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty.” (114)

The religion of the Founding Fathers allowed for religious diversity, as Jefferson proclaimed: “Almighty God hath made the mind free.” Therefore, this should guarantee the free expression of religious conscience. However, today’s secularism wants to place us in shackles: “You must believe in SS marriage, or else! No alternative speech will be tolerated!”

Our Founding Fathers were wise. They realized that by compelling religious conformity, they would not only be promoting a State religion, but also would jeopardize any possibility of unity. Meanwhile, today’s aggressively militant secularistic religion is placing this unity in jeopardy.

After Judge Bunning’s decision:

• Hundreds of people chanted and screamed, "Love won! Love won!" as word of these decisions reached the crowds outside the federal courthouse. (OneNewsNow)

Love didn’t win! Had love won, diversity of faith and freedom would have been upheld. Perhaps Davis might have been relieved of the responsibility of issuing marriage licenses or perhaps SS marriage requests might have been re-routed elsewhere.

No! Love didn’t win! Intolerance and the pressures for uniformity of belief and social conformity won! The very consensus that had once made this country great has been shattered and, with it, its vitality.

TOLERANCE - SECULAR STYLE

At a secular discussion group on "spirituality," we were assured that spirituality took many different forms, and all were okay. Spirituality could be merely a matter of watching a program on astronomy or a enjoying a sunset.

Sounds tolerant and broad-minded, doesn't it? The group thought so until the subject of God came up. One male thought that others had a right to their faith, but that's all it is - naked faith! He insisted that no one could prove that there is a God.

I wanted to say that he couldn't prove such an outrageous claim, but I didn't get an opportunity.

One writer rose to proclaim that spirituality could only be found within ourselves and not in any external spiritual entity to many nods of agreement.

Another declared that she wished that religion would just disappear. Clearly, she didn't view “spirituality,” especially her spirituality, as religious. She continued that religion was the cause of hatred and warfare.

I could no longer hold back and interjected, "Do you regard your statements as a form of hatred?" She didn't seem to have a clue about what I was trying to point out. Nor did anyone else! (I later found out that at least one other did get it!)

I wasn’t shocked. I had seen it a thousand times before. Her words have become a mantra or a shibboleth for entry into refined society. Spirituality was respectable, but God-centered religion was held in contempt. While it was acceptable to lampoon God, “spirituality” was coddled with the greatest sensitivity and encouragement. No one seemed to see the hypocrisy. All were convinced that they were perfectly tolerant, even enlightened. It reminded me of Paul’s quotation from Isaiah:

·       "'Go to this people and say, "You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving." For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.'” Acts 28:26-27)

But there is always hope! Before such discussions, my wife warns me to use grace and wit. However, I never seem to be able to rise to these standards, but I trust that God can still use my impassioned words.