The Supreme Court and Gay Marriage

By David Hobbs

I felt I needed to make some points about the recent Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, so I wrote the following letter to our newspaper editor which was published 7/8/15:

Dear Editor,

Two years ago to the day I wrote another letter-to-the-editor about the Supreme Court and Prop 8 (concerning gay marriage) in which I warned that God Himself would have the final say on the issue. Yet many in our society today are ecstatic, believing the Supreme Court has now given the final word on gay marriage. But nothing has changed. God Himself still presides over the Highest Court that will truly have the final say.

Rebellion against God is not new. It’s been tried many times throughout human history by people who thought they knew better than God and could improve on His laws. The results have always been the same. The Bible quotes one such occasion in Psalm 2: “Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying ‘Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.’”

They didn’t want to live according to God’s laws. They felt His laws were too restrictive, referring to them as “bands” and “cords” which they wanted to break off and cast away so they could live like they wanted.

The Bible goes on to tell of God’s response, “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.” After having a good laugh at their foolishness and presumption, “Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.”

I heard one commentator remark that “the Supreme Court said an ‘in-your-face’ to the Christians” by its ruling. But more importantly, it said an “in-your-face” to God as well, since it’s His law they are casting off.  God does not take such challenges lightly. He always responds, in a time and manner of His choosing.

And marriage? It’s like a rubber band, which you can stretch, twist and turn every which way, yet at some point it always snaps back to its original shape, which, like marriage, was written into its very creation, The court of heaven shall rule, God’s law shall prevail, and God will demonstrate once more that He’s God and we’re not!

Unbeknownst to me, our local homosexual activist had also written a letter to the editor on the subject. He was obviously pleased with the ruling. Our letters were published on the same day. His letter is as follows:

Dear Editor,

Having started the first LGBT group in Yuba-Sutter back in 2003, I am thrilled to see marriage equality now be law of the land across the USA. Until enough Rand Paul types can get government out of marriage, marriage equality for us gays was the right thing to do

I am thankful to all LGBT people and heterosexual allies who have done their part to promote acceptance and also do the political things that had to be done to get to this point. Onward we go until definite equality is achieved regarding adoption and non-discrimination policies. There’s also much to do to create a safer world for transgender people. And LGBTs who are financially secure need to help lift up LGBTs in poverty. Plus we must engage in the online conversations to promote acceptance in regions of the world where religious wannabe supremacists continue to oppress us.

With marriage equality a reality and marriage legalization catching momentum, how about we also move past the failed two-party system?

Jeff G. 

I put my letter in this post first as a lead in, but the newspaper put his letter first, then mine. Notice that if you read it that way--first his, then mine--my letter negates everything he says. This only stands to reason, because they mischaracterize the issue, putting it in terms of "equality" and "fairness," words they think the average person will agree with. But whether it looks "fair" or "equal" to the average human is beside the point. The real issue is, "How does it look to God? Why does He say about it?"

We are never going to convince God that we are right and He’s wrong. We can either accept what He has to say, whether we understand or even agree with it, or we cam fight against it and try to impose our collective human will contrary to God’s, upon society. Like I said in my letter, such a strategy has been tried often before in human history and always ends the same way:  Prov. 21:30  plainly says,” There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord.” Though they may look like they are succeeding for a time, ultimately their efforts are doomed to failure. Does history tell of any human society where homosexuality became the norm for any length of time? I don’t know of any. Shouldn’t that tell us something?

            Also note that to the activist Jeff, this is by no means the end of the story. This is merely a milestone and the beginning of more activism. Next are the transgender people who are becoming the rising cause. A couple of years ago they weren’t even on the radar. Now they’re becoming the new cause celebre. Like a conquering army, one victory advances them to the next target. This is a point most Americans seem to miss. Our idea is, “If we just give them what they say they want, they will go away and leave us alone.” It’s called “appeasement” and it never works. We’re trying it with the Islamists too and it’s not working there either. Like the beer drinking, TV watching husband with the nagging wife. “What will it take to get you off my back?” But there is nothing we can give them that will make them go away, because what they’re really after is the total transformation of society. Jeff admits it:  “Onward we go….” and while we’re at it, “let’s do away with the failed two-party system.” What? Where did that come from?

            So where does “Joe 6-pak” weighs in on the controversy? Consider this comment on our letters that came into the newspaper’s online comment forum yesterday:

Ray M.: On the day the Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage came out, I said, “Fine. Now we can all go back to talking about sports and the weather.” As I listened to talk radio during the day it became clear this would not be the case. One “talking head” said “What next… Polygamy?”… Good grief! I can barely afford the wife I have now. I think this same sex ruling will likely go the way of Roe v. Wade. Every election cycle we will have to endure the constant chatter (ad nauseam) from the media about how candidates feel about the issue. I am not looking forward to it.

The weather today is lovely. Hey! We won the world cup and Buster Posey is starting in the all-star game. …

So there you have it. The gay activists are setting their sights on their next goals—transgender equality and adoption rights—while the average American wishes everybody would shut up and go away so he can watch the all star game in peace. Is it any wonder we have gotten to where we are today?

"Short-timer" Attitude in the Church

By David Hobbs

Most of us have run into “short-timers”: that employee counting the days till his retirement, or the military man about to be discharged. For seniors in May it’s called “senioritis,” but it’s all the same: someone who is so distracted anticipating what’s about to happen that they are no longer focused on what they should be doing.

I’m afraid we have many in the church afflicted with the same short-timer mentality anticipating the rapture: kicking back, singing songs, almost a party mentality thinking they’ll soon be walking those streets of gold and nothing down here will matter any more: “Let the Anti-Christ have it, who cares? I’m out of here.”

Yet Jesus told us to occupy until He comes, and He’s not here yet. It would be bad enough if we knew for a certainty that the rapture would happen this month, say. But in truth nobody knows when it will occur, and in the meantime people are dying every day without Christ, our  culture is in moral free-fall, we are in the midst of an abortion holocaust, we urgently need a fresh move of God to sweep souls into the Kingdom, and we desperately need a corporate cry from the Body of Christ along the lines of 2 Chron. 7:14--for God to hold off judgment and reverse our slide into destruction. It’s perhaps the most critical time in the church’s 2000 year history, where we need every hand on deck giving it their all; and yet we’ve got this crowd hanging out waiting for the rapture, accomplishing nothing and demoralizing the rest.

If the rapture did occur today, would they even be taken? And what would their reception be in heaven, this Laodicean crowd who are “rich and in need of nothing,” yet are spiritually blind to the day in which they are living? Jerusalem was destroyed because she didn’t discern the time in which she was living, and missed the “day of her visitation.” She wasn’t welcomed triumphantly into heaven like many today expect to be.

This has gripped me so much that I wrote the following letter to the editor of my local newspaper, which is my forum for addressing affairs of the church and of the culture.

Dear Editor,

Jesus dictated letters to seven different churches in the Book of Revelation. Many commentators believe each church represents an age in church history. The last church was at Laodicea, which Jesus condemned as lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. He said He would rather they were cold (living like heathen) than lukewarm, and threatened to vomit them out of His mouth because He so loathed their lukewarmness. Yet the commentators call our day the Laodicean Age of the American church..

It was under the watch of the modern church that prayer was removed from the schools and over 55 million babies were aborted. It was under our watch that the moral underpinnings of this nation collapsed leaving our culture in its present frightening state of free-fall. Where is the preaching from the pulpits against sin? The divorce rate of church members is about the same as that of the unchurched, though Jesus plainly forbids it. Ditto out-of-wedlock births, living together unmarried, and many other areas where the church has copied the world instead of influencing it for the better.

Has God changed? But the church has abandoned many of its bedrock doctrines such as the holiness of God and His abhorrence of sin.

Sadly many parishioners attend church in the midst of a world that is going to hell without lifting a finger to stop them, with the ghostly cries of millions of aborted babies echoing in their deafened ears, while they sing songs, hear an uplifting sermon, then go to Dennys to eat pie and talk about being raptured to heaven before the judgment hits. What if the next event on God’s prophetic timetable, instead of the Rapture of the Church, is spewing them from His mouth?

 That was kind of a harsh note to end on, and I know there are many Christians in our local area who are deeply committed, working among the poor and needy, evangelizing the lost. etc. And I hate to risk demoralizing them by painting with a broad brush. Yet we must keep the big picture in mind. There has got to be accountability at some point for what has happened on our watch. When I see from where the church has fallen since I got saved in 1974--it’s stunning.  But who is talking about it? Who is repenting? Who is praying? Yet we think we will be whisked away to heaven in triumph while the unsaved world faces the consequences for what we have allowed to happen! We have accommodated the world and its sin instead of rebuking it. We have played church instead of being The Church. John the Baptist rebuked Herod for his adultery and was beheaded for it; our “Christian” nation reelected Bill Clinton after his escapades and we merely grumbled about it.

The church needs the equivalent of a glass of ice water thrown in its face.