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POLITICAL POLARIZATION – WHY HAS IT BECOME SO EXTREME?

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A few years ago I was watching a television interview with a member of the new Trudeau government making the comment that they hoped there would be less partisanship and more cooperation in the next parliament.

I am a ‘social conservative’ and as such I foresee more partisanship, not less.  “Why?” you ask.  If I may be so bold, I suggest the answer lies with the left-leaning, liberal segments of society.
As a social conservative my viewpoint has for the most part been passed down from generation to generation.  The basic principles of what I deem to be right and appropriate are no different from my father’s or grandfather’s generations.  My sense of morality is based on absolutes rather than public or personal whim.  My sense of a civilized society is based upon respect for public order and the inherent responsibility that each individual has to the common good.  My sense of right and wrong are based on Judaeo-Christian principles that date back thousands of years.
Before someone throws in red-herring arguments, no, slavery is not acceptable to the social conservative.
A social conservative, who uses the Bible as his or her guide, has the privilege of being able to drive a stake in the ground to define a boundary beyond which he or she will strive not to venture.
A social liberal, on the other hand, has no such ideological point of reference; he or she will be swayed and motivated by personal or public opinion without the benefit of any [moral] constant 1.
Issues that would have been deemed socially and morally unacceptable by the majority of the Canadians just forty years ago are now promoted as ideals of modern liberalism; the demeaning of traditional marriage and family values, contempt for the sacred, sexual promiscuity, adultery, mass abortion, euthanasia, legalization of recreational drugs, celebration of homosexuality and transgenderism, rampant pornography, legalization of prostitution, and on the list goes.  The logical end for the social liberal’s ideal is total hedonism* and/or anarchy** – “The only person in the world that matters is me and you have no right to impose your values and opinions on me.”
Meanwhile I doggedly try and point out how far society is straying from the stake in the ground which safely tethers me to a righteous morality – not a relative morality.
On this basis, I propose that it is the social liberals who are turning the polarizing filter.  The further they turn the filter of liberalism the greater the degree of partisanship there will be.
Partisanship occurs when two parties move farther and farther away from each other. If the social conservative is firmly tethered to a stake in the ground, it must be the social liberal who is increasing the distance from that stake and correspondingly increasing the level of partisanship.  I don’t see that it can be explained any other way.

*Hedonism: the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.

**Anarchy: a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority.

1 In a recent public online survey, more than 7,500 Canadians responded to the following multiple choice statement: “Morality is defined as the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are ‘good’ (or right) and those that are ‘bad’ (or wrong). I believe morality is dictated by (check one):”  A graph of their responses is shown below. 


WHY DID THEY DIE? SO WE COULD LEGALIZE RECREATIONAL DRUGS?

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This morning our church held a Remembrance Service.  There were some moving images of our Veterans in battle from the First and Second World Wars and haunting reminders of those who returned from Afghanistan in flag draped boxes.

As the images came up on the screen I pondered what these heroic men and women, many of whom who paid the ultimate sacrifice, would think of the contempt with which we ‘honour’ the liberty they gave us?  We make it possible to kill our unborn children by the millions, legalize euthanasia, the Government proposing legislation to legalize the sale of mood altering drugs and of the segments of Canadian society who try and banish God from every aspect of public life?  

Tell me, what would they have thought of the contempt many of today’s generation show for the values they once held so dear?

After we stood for two-minutes of silence and reflection we sung Oh Canada, our National Anthem.  We, thankfully, sung the third verse as well.  The second and third stanzas, have too bee banished from the public square – the third honours God.

   Ruler supreme, who hearest humble prayer,  

   Hold our Dominion in thy loving care; 

   Help us to find, O God, in thee 

   A lasting, rich reward, 

   As waiting for the better Day, 

   We ever stand on guard.

We often sing, “God keep our land, glorious and free…” with great gusto at sporting and other events. Yet, with the rampant immorality we see in our society today, I no longer consider Canada to be glorious and the zealotry we see to keep God out of all things Canadian is not my definition of freedom.

I am glad most of these brave men and women are not hear to see the Canada we have become.  I fear they may have ultimately died in vain.

EVOLUTION’S GRAND CHALLENGE

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Above: A cross-section through a blade of marram grass. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humour?
I sometimes find myself struggling to explain my non-faith reasons for being a Creationist. Evolutionists and Creationists are both confronted with exactly the same material evidence, so why should I choose one argument over the other?  I stumbled(?) across this article on EvolutionNews.org, written by Steve Kaufmann, that articulates my arguments quite clearly. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I do not possess sufficient faith to believe that life ‘just happened’.  The article frequently uses the term ‘intelligent design’ which, as far as I am concerned, is a cop-out for giving the glory for the creation of life to Almighty God.
In a recent ENV article, mathematician Granville Sewell asked an intriguing question:
In the current debate between Darwinism and intelligent design, the strongest argument made by Darwinists is this: In every other field of science, naturalism has been spectacularly successful, so why should evolutionary biology be different? Even most scientists who doubt the Darwinist explanation for evolution are confident that science will eventually come up with a more plausible explanation. That’s the way science works. If one theory fails, we look for another one; why should evolution be so different? [Emphasis added.]
Dr. Sewell’s post mainly explored entropy and theory-based reasoning. From my own perspective as an architect of large information systems, I would like to suggest a different (but complementary) answer.
Enter Information, Stage Right
Evolutionary biology was very much like other sciences up until the 1950s, when the information-bearing capabilities of DNA and RNA were discovered inside living cells.
These discoveries fundamentally changed biology. And as the information payload is increasingly unraveled, we’re seeing ever more complex and interdependent assembly instructions, activation circuits, programming sequences, and message payloads. This information is decoded and operated on by molecular machines of similar complexity, and the whole (information + machines) is self-generating, self-sustaining, and self-replicating.
The information has some intriguing properties:
  • It must perform an astounding number of complex functions in order to create, sustain, and replicate life. Each function requires multiple distinct programs or sequences for the various phases of its lifecycle: assembly, operation, complex orchestration with other functions, error detection and correction, replication, and so on. These are functionally distinct types of activities, so it’s almost certain that they are encoded separately, perhaps with completely different coding structures and mechanisms.
  • It has no value without a complex collection of molecular machines, yet it must also include the instructions for generating those same machines. The result is an immensely complex choreography of separate but interrelated information and molecular machines. Neither can function without the other — a ginormous chicken-and-egg problem.
  • It exhibits the design properties of the best human-engineered software systems, yet its capabilities extend well beyond any current human-engineered systems. For example, no human-engineered system is capable of self-replicating both the software that operates on the machinery and the machinery that decodes the software.
Further, based on the observed functionality in living organisms, there are many undiscovered types of information that must be present in a living cell, but which haven’t been decoded or understood yet.
Kinesis [be sure to watch the video link!] offers a fascinating example of undiscovered information in action. What programs and machinery are required to assemble the structure and function of kinesin? What information is needed for kinesin to achieve its “runtime” functions? How does kinesin know where to go to pick up a load, what load to pick up, what path to take, and where to drop its load? How does it know what to do next? All this functionality takes information, which must be encoded somewhere.
Indeed, the level of complexity is monotonically increasing, with no end in sight.
With no possibility that new discoveries will ever decrease the observed complexity, it may not be long before we see a seismic shift in the research paradigm — from the study of biological systems that happen to contain information, to the study of information systems that happen to be encoded in biology.
Causal Requirements and Causal Forces
Aside from the obvious (and intriguing) challenge of understanding the enormous complexity of life’s information payload, evolution purports to explain its origins.
The origin of life is perhaps the most obvious example of information’s formidable hurdle to evolutionary explanations. First life requires all of the following:
    • Sufficient complex programs and sequencing to support first life’s complete lifecycle (i.e., the directions have to be complete and correct).
    • Sufficient machinery to interpret the programs and to operate life (i.e., the directions must have proper effect).
  • Sufficient programs and machinery to replicate both the programs and the machinery (i.e., the directions must be passed to the next generation).
And all this must be present at the same time, in the same place, in at least one instant in history, at which point the whole must somehow be animated to create life. And all this must occur, by definition, before an organism can reproduce. Without reproduction, there is no possibility to accumulate function, from simple to complex, as required by evolution. Hence, the programs must have contained all the complexity required for first life at inception.
By definition, then, the minimal programs and machinery required for first life must have predated any creative capabilities (real or imagined) of Darwinian processes.
Further, since the information necessary for first life must have been assembled prior to the animation of first life, the minimal information payload must have predated first life. And it must, therefore, have derived from a source beyond biology as we know it.
This poses a causal quandary for evolutionary biology. For there are only two known classes of causal forces, and these have dramatically different qualities.
First, there are physical laws, which include mathematics, physics, and chemistry. These are repeatable (i.e., the same inputs always produce the same results) and purposeless (i.e., the same inputs produce the same results, no matter who gets hurt). Their repeatability makes science effective. But physical laws are not capable of acting with intent, which limits their creative capabilities.
Operating within the physical laws are random events that can change the information payload of life in various ways. But these are constrained by the same physical laws, so are similarly incapable of acting with intent. Random events cannot create complex information, except in two circumstances: (a) there is some predefined notion of a desirable outcome, and (b) any “positive gains” toward that outcome are protected from random degradation through some external mechanism. Both of these special circumstances require intention, which the physical laws cannot offer.
Second, there are intelligent causes, which are purposeful and therefore not generally repeatable. The creation of complex programming requires non-repeatability. While intelligent causes are capable of generating the right kind of information, it’s difficult to pin down when and how their actions occurred, or what their intent might have been. All sciences that deal with intelligent causes (e.g., archaeology) are made more difficult by non-repeatability.
An Impending Worldview Crisis
The search for a purposeful cause that predates biology as we know it inevitably drives the conversation to metaphysics. And this places evolution (and biology) at the center of a conflict between worldviews.
For materialists, the first class of causal force is insufficient and the second is unacceptable. Materialist biologists are thus pressed to find a third class of causal force — one that works without purpose (required to adhere to materialist philosophy), yet produces purposeful outcomes (required to adhere to the observed world). As yet no reasonable candidate forces have been proposed.
So materialists face growing dissonance between their philosophical commitment and biology’s complex programming. As the quality and quantity of the discovered interdependent programs and processing machinery increases, the plausibility of material causation gets weaker. So the materialist position is weak, and going in the wrong direction (from their perspective).
On the other hand, for anyone not fully committed to materialist philosophy the options are much more interesting. For those willing to consider the second class of causal force, things begin to fall into place and the dissonance dissipates.
For theists, the second class of causal force is not only acceptable but expected. Further, theists are unsurprised to learn that the causal forces in class #1 are finely tuned to enable life, and they have no problem with the notion that random events are more likely to destroy information than create it (e.g., there are far more possible non-functioning programs than functioning programs).
Ongoing discoveries about the nature of the information at the core of life present a growing hurdle for the materialist worldview but are increasingly friendly to any worldview that’s open to a pre-biological intelligence with some means to assemble the programs and machinery minimally required for first life.
And this sets up a worldview collision.
Evolution’s Grand Challenge
Molecular biology is characterized by growing questions and shrinking answers.
It’s like the guy who, after untying his boat, finds himself with one foot on the dock and one foot in the boat. As the gap grows, it becomes increasingly hard to ignore. And uncomfortable. And temporary.
And this is evolution’s grand challenge: The complex programs and amazing molecular machines at the heart of life simply cannot be explained by any current or proposed theory of evolution, nor by any other completely material cause. Apologists for materialism cannot hide this fact much longer. Neither the volume of their arguments nor any level of vitriol can change the fact that the data is skewing against them.
Rarely has any field of science had to deal with questions so difficult, or that cut so deeply into the worldviews, minds, and hearts, of thoughtful men and women.
Evolution sits at the center of a front-and-center debate — with too much to explain, in too little time, with insufficient causal power, and with so many watching and so much at stake.
That, I would say, is what makes evolution different.

ARE ATHEISTS INTENTIONALLY IGNORANT?

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To ask ‘are [all] atheists intentionally ignorant’ is not intended as an insult, rather, is it not a realistic statement of fact?  The reality is all atheists are ignorant of the existence of God. How could it be otherwise?  They openly promote this ignorance but would rather convey their message to their audience as denial.
Atheists must live with the dilemma that they are always having to ‘prove a negative’ even if they would deny that they have to actually prove anything.  The paradigm that divides non-believers and believers is that a non-believer must convince him or her self that God does not exist, while for those who seek God it is God who does the convincing.
Evolution is atheism’s single crutch and, simultaneously, its most effective weapon.  As with attacks on traditional marriage, euthanasia, pro-life proponents, religious conscience, etc., it is those who tend to ‘shout the loudest’ would seem to prevail – regardless of any factual evidence to the contrary.  
In Wm. Paul Young’s latest book Eve, Younge wrote, “Lilly, words like ‘God’ and ‘believe’ are often meaningless. I don’t believe God. I know God! Once you know someone, believing is no longer a concern.” 
Because I know God, it is a lot easier for me to place my faith in God’s description of Creation than in a manmade theory that requires one to stretch one’s faith to the infinite degree and still come up short on answers.  Every atheist must continually ponder the question: who or what is the uncaused cause of the universe and everything in it?  If there ever was a Big Bang who or what triggered it?  Apart from God, it is an unanswerable question.
Which requires the greater faith: believing a knowable, omnipotent, omniscient God who describes how He created all living things (plants and creatures) after their own kind and reveals Himself to those who choose Him, or a process spontaneously coming into existence, to create all matter and life which has unprovable theories as its very foundation?
That which physically exists (all living things, fossils, and geologic matter) is the physical evidence both Creationists and evolutionists are constrained and upon which they must base and argue their apologetics.  
Creationists do not discount natural selection and accept physical ‘evidence’ as it presents itself without having to apply theories of an evolutionary process to bring it about.  Conversely, evolutionists must prove two distinct processes: natural selection and evolution – the former in no way proving nor supporting the latter.
All scientific revelations only further persuade me of a Magnificent Creator, rather than the mind-bendingly complex processes theorized to argue how life might have come about.  
I have read arguments such as chimpanzees and humans having 90+% of their DNA in common – as if to prove that humans and chimpanzees have a common ancestry.  Such ‘evidence’ proves nothing.  It is equally reasonable to argue that the Magnificent Creator would share elements of His incredibly complex and intricate design throughout much of that which He created.
Just as troubling are commentaries that use a lack of evidence to support a thesis.  It is common sense that a lack of evidence cannot possibly prove anything.  Missing evidence can only mean one of three things: the evidence has been destroyed [erased], transformed, or has yet to be uncovered.  Science requires that evidence must be in evidence.
Both the Creation paradigm and evolutionary theory use the same fossil record to demonstrate their beliefs.  The Creationist can demonstrate that worldwide sedimentary deposits along with the fossil record exactly match the Biblical account of the flood, while the evolutionist will argue that the fossil record documents the sequence in which creatures ‘evolved’.  Further, the evolutionary expositor depends on ‘dating methods’ that are mostly theoretical in nature. 
The chasm an atheist must cross is as wide as his or her pride.  Jesus implied that it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a proud person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven; in short, impossible.  A proud person will seek any excuse (including arguing the theory of evolution) to avoid coming face-to-face with God.  Conversely, any person who recognizes his or her wretched condition is welcome to sit at the feet of God and receive unimaginable blessings as a consequence.
 

 

SIX DAYS FROM TODAY THE 70TH YEAR OF JUBILEE WILL START! WATCH FOR AMAZING THINGS TO HAPPEN ON THE WORLD STAGE.

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Biblically, the Year of Jubilee occurs once at the end of every 49-year cycle. Each ‘cycle’ is made up of 7 years, the last year of the seven being the Sabbath year, or Shemitah.  At the end of a seven-Shemitah cycle (49 years), the next year, the fiftieth year (which is also the first year of the next 7-year cycle), is the Year of Jubilee.
Joshua crossed the Jordan and led the Hebrew nation into what is now Israel, in 1406 BC.  The first Year of Jubilee was celebrated in 1357 BC.  I am presently writing this blog on 24th of Elul, 5775 on the Hebrew calendar, or September 8th on the Gregorian calendar, or 5,775 years since the Year of Creation. 
Why should I, or anyone else, be paying attention to these facts?  Is something special going to happen soon? Let’s look back on recent history:

During what would have been the 68th Year of Jubilee, General Sir Edmund Allenby (above), commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, entered Jerusalem on foot, out of respect for the Holy City, on December 11, 1917, displacing the Turkish Ottoman invaders.  

Fifty years later Jerusalem, in the 69th Year of Jubilee, Jerusalem once again changed hands during the 1967 Six Day War (above) and the Israelites took control of the City of David for the first time since 586 BC (2,600 years).  

Six days from now the 70th Year of Jubilee will start on 1st of Tishrei, 5776, that is 6 days from now, Monday, September 14, 2015.  How do we know this? Simple calculation: 1407 years + 2016 years divided by 49 = 70.
 
This coming Year of Jubilee will also be the 40th since Christ’s death.
 
If such significant events happened in Jerusalem in 1917 and 1967 what does the 70th Year of Jubilee hold?  What do you think?  Leave your comments below.

Thoughts on Leviticus 18:22, Part 6: Origins.

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There is no convincing evidence on why some people consider themselves to have same-sex attraction.  I have scoured the internet and found nothing conclusive.  There are the following observations:
  • Homosexuality is exclusive to the human race.
  • Homosexuality runs counter to evolutionary theory and is an evolutionary dead end.
  • There has been nothing discovered in human DNA thus far to indicate anything hereditary.
  • God says that homosexual acts are an abomination (His words).
  • Many people who identify themselves as gay were sexually abused as children and is a probable contributing factor. In Canada approximately 1 in 100 identify themselves as homosexual. 


    If we are to believe God’s opinion of two men lying together as denoted in Leviticus 18:22, then it seems to be a reasonable assumption that its origins were in The Fall, one of the many consequences of original sin.

    Therefore the only ‘origin’ I can reasonably offer is what I wrote in Section 3: 

    In Matthew 15:19 Jesus directly refers to sexual immorality, “For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander.”  Seeing as the pre-incarnate Jesus wrote and instituted Levitical Laws in the first place, including what we now identify as Chapter 18, it is irrational to suppose that He has now somehow forgotten what He wrote and is now invalidating these laws by not regurgitating each one word-for-word.  To the contrary, not only is He validating these laws, Jesus identifies the source of our desire to break these laws.  Our corruption of God’s law originates in the heart.

    Regardless of origin, fundamentally, homosexual acts are a rebellion against God, see Romans 1:26-32.

© David Harrison 2015

Thoughts on Leviticus 18:22, Part 7: Consequences.

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As we move through the Book of Leviticus, towards its conclusion, we find in Chapter 26 two sections of text described in my NLT Bible as Blessings for Obedience and Punishments for Disobedience.
Before I get into the issues surrounding the blessings and punishments I want to again address those who would say that the texts I am going to refer to were for another era, for another people.  I believe this has proven to be a perilous error. The Israelites, God’s chosen people, were to be a living testimony of God’s goodness and faithfulness to the nations around them, to draw others towards them.  Foreigners who wished to follow Jehovah God were welcomed into this family.  In becoming part of His family they understood that all the laws, regulations and blessings were now theirs.  Today we are invited to become part of God’s family by accepting the atoning death and Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Nowhere in Scripture does it say that we will no longer receive God’s blessings for obedience and God’s discipline for disobedience.  My own life experiences bear this out.
Blessings for Obedience.  “If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you the seasonal rains.  The land will then yield its crops… You will eat your fill and live securely in your own land.  I will give you peace in the land, and you will be able to sleep with no cause for fear… I will look favorably upon you, making you fertile and multiplying your people.  And I will fulfill my covenant with you.  You will have such a surplus of crops you will need to clear out the old grain to make room for the new harvest!” Leviticus 26:1-13.  And on He goes naming one blessing after another.
If you visit the Mennonite areas of Philadelphia, where they still farm the land according to Levitical law, you will find the most fertile land in all of North America!  In the Book of Malachi God teaches about the principle of tithing, giving back a portion to God as an expression of gratitude.  My own experience in this regard is that it is completely impossible to out-give God. As the Hymn goes, “Blessings all mine with ten-thousand besides…”  Quite simply, the blessings for obedience to God are unlimited.  We choose to obey God because we love God.
And then there is the flip-side which we seem all too quick to ignore and all too quick to complain when it comes about.
Punishments for Disobedience. “However, if you do not listen to me or obey all these commands, and if you break my covenant by rejecting my decrees, treating my regulations with contempt, and refusing to obey my commands, I will punish you.  I will bring sudden terrors upon you – wasting diseases and burning fevers that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away….” Leviticus 26:14-16.
As we read, “I will bring sudden terrors upon you – wasting diseases and burning fevers that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away.” Is it fair to draw a parallel between Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 26:14?  I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.  As for me I can only look at the evidence, with millions of people dead (more than 25-million by 2008) for failing to live their lives the way God called them to.  And yes, there are many innocent victims as a consequence of other’s [selfish] actions.  We still live in a fallen world.

Many will quote the oft used platitude, ‘Hate the sin and love the sinner.’  Jesus loved sinners by directing them away from their sin.  Having dealt with the bigoted hypocrites who accused her, Jesus ended His conversation with the woman caught in adultery by saying, “Go and sin no more.”  It is impossible to agape love those who find themselves in sin by not doing likewise.

Jesus also provides a stern warning to those who condone, or even promote behaviour that is contrary to God’s teaching.  Given that the context of his warning is towards those within the church/family of God (that is those who will be “in the Kingdom of Heaven”), Jesus is very explicit in his condemnation of those who belittle God’s laws by insinuating that when it comes to sex outside of a heterosexual marriage – anything goes – no harm done – show a little tolerance, etc.  At the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven.”  Matthew 5:19

Thoughts on Leviticus 18:22, Part 8: Why the focus?

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Why do Christians expend so much energy and attention on the issue of homosexuality and Leviticus 18:22?  Why ignore all the other ‘sins’ listed in Leviticus 18? Why not jump on these?
I would argue that it is the homosexual community that has made 18:22 an issue.  These are the same individuals who would try and persuade us that this way of life is normal and acceptable.  Not only do they seek to have everyone accept/condone this lifestyle, but they also promote and celebrate it, often belittling and attacking those who would seek to honour God’s commands.  Conversely, the other ‘sins’ listed are for the most part still frowned upon – we do not promote and celebrate incest or bestiality.  But who knows… even adultery is being promoted on websites and in the media as socially acceptable these days.
Once again, seeking to examine the issue in context, we read God’s viewpoint: “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel.  I am the LORD your God.  So do not act like the people in Egypt, where you used to live, or like the people of Canaan, where I am taking you.  You must not imitate their way of life….”Leviticus 18:1-3. And then at the end of the chapter, God says, “So obey my instructions, and do not defile yourselves by committing any of these detestable practices that were committed by the people who lived in the land before you.  I am the LORD your God.”  Yes, these commandments are given specifically to the Israelites (God’s people), but God also notes that these acts are detestable even when practiced by others.  In God’s eyes, His principles hold true for all of humanity.

As Kevin deYoung noted, “It cannot be overstated how seriously the Bible treats the sin of sexual immorality. Sexual sin is never considered adiaphora, a matter of indifference, an agree-to-disagree issue like food laws or holy days (Rom. 14:1–15:7). To the contrary, sexual immorality is precisely the sort of sin that characterizes those who will not enter the kingdom of heaven. There are at least eight vice lists in the New Testament (Mark 7:21–22; Rom. 1:24–31; 13:13; 1 Cor. 6:9–10; Gal. 5:19–21; Col. 3:5–9; 1 Tim. 1:9–10; Rev. 21:8), and sexual immorality is included in every one of these. In fact, in seven of the eight lists, there are multiple references to sexual immorality (e.g., impurity, sensuality, orgies, men who practice homosexuality), and in most of the passages some kind of sexual immorality heads the lists. You would be hard-pressed to find a sin more frequently, more uniformly, and more seriously condemned in the New Testament than sexual sin.”

Thoughts on Leviticus 18:22, Part 9: Justification and Resistance

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We read at the introduction to the parable of the Good Samaritan of the ‘teacher of the Law’ questioning Jesus.  After having acknowledged that he had at least a head-knowledge of the Law we read, “But he wanted to justify himself…” Luke 10:29.  This is the attitude of those who know the Law but want to wiggle their way around it, posing the same question as Satan, “Did God really say…?”  Did God really say, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.”?  Once again in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus brings us back to the very core of the situation, it is an issue [attitude] of the heart.
Once we’ve justified something to ourselves our hearts are hardened further and our attitudes become more entrenched.  The next logical step is physical rebellion and outright resistance to God’s laws.  Society has reached the point where, in many jurisdictions, it is even against the [man’s] law to provide counselling to those who wish to abandon the gay lifestyle and seek reparative and/or conversion therapy. In my research, I have not been able to find legal bans on any other kind of therapy for an identifiable state of being or ailment.
German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “For faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.”

 

© David Harrison 2015

Thoughts on Leviticus 18:22, Part 2: God’s unambiguous statement.

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“If God is not sovereign over the land and its people, then the land and its people become cut off from the Creator.  A God-centred worldview is replaced by a man-centred and self-centred worldview.  So the people of Israel drove God out of their lives to become their own gods, masters of the land, their world, and their destiny.  They could now rewrite the law and redefine what was right and wrong, moral and immoral.” From the Mystery of the Shemitah by Jonathan Cahn.

Following the many conversations that have arisen since the US Supreme Court’s decision concerning same-sex marriage in June 2015, I notice a consistency in the way individuals, including what seems a very large number of professing Christians, twist the words of God, of Christ, to somehow place God’s love above God’s justice.  This is heresy!  In Psalm 89:13 we read, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; mercy and truth go before Your face.”  As soon as we start messing around with the nature and attributes of God He ceases to be God.“
It is this light that Leviticus 18:22 becomes an immovable object in any discussion concerning same-sex relationships.  Leviticus 18:22 is as unambiguous as it is possible to be. Unlike some other Scriptures Leviticus 18:22 is not susceptible to misinterpretation; you don’t need to compare it to other Scriptures, you don’t have to interpret it the context of other Scriptures or historic times, it’s meaning is not diluted in differing translations.  It is not contradictory to any other Law or Scripture.  There is no subtlety of ambiguity in what God says.  God simply says that sex between two men is an abomination [dictionary definition: detestation, loathing, hatred, aversion, antipathy, revulsion, repugnance, abhorrence, odium, execration, disgust, horror, hostility].
Perhaps things are different in this regard now that we live in an ‘age of grace’?  No, not so.  In Numbers 23:19 God speaks through Balek, “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” Jesus went on to say, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” Matthew 5:18. In Luke 16:17 He says, “… that doesn’t mean that the law has lost its force. It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the smallest point of God’s law to be overturned.” and Jesus went on to say, “If you love me, keep my commands.” John 14:15.  Humans distort God’s Word at their peril and offend God when they do so.
Some have asked why do those who stand in opposition to same-sex marriage place such a strong emphasis on Leviticus 18:22?  I believe the answer is simple – because it is so clear and explicit.  This is the opposite tack those who support same-sex marriage take – quoting verses and passages of Scripture out of context in efforts to make their case, appealing exclusively to the love attribute of God. No, no, no!
Culture in and of itself is not necessarily bad, it is when we give culture pre-eminence over Scripture that we have a problem.  We are very good at manipulating Scripture to fit our culture. This culture can pull us away from the truth. According to 1 Corinthians 2:14 those that manipulate Scripture live in cultural delusion, “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”

 

© David Harrison 2015