Things are pretty grim in Canada. Those who are up for a little appalling reading, and who still need to be convinced of my thesis statement, are encouraged to check it out here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. HT: The Pearcey Report
One case involves a Pastor Boissoin, who wrote a letter to the editor opposing the homo-agenda. That hurt someone’s feelings, and so a complaint was filed with the Alberta Human Rights Commission. Orwell, call your office — outrages on human rights are being perpetrated by human rights commissions, and right on schedule too. Boissoin was fined 5,000 dollars, given a gag order on all topics related to homosexuality for the rest of his life, and ordered to apologize in writing. In Canada.
One always hesitates to give free advice to Christians in other countries who are dealing with complicated situations that outsiders cannot fully understand. That said, and because my mom is Canadian, and because this insanity is headed our way, just like a Canadian weather pattern off the Artic, I will venture one bit of advice. It would be wonderful if every believing pastor in Canada made a special point of reading Boissoin’s letter aloud from the pulpit next Sunday, following it up by mailing a copy of the printed order of worship (with the phrase “Boissoin letter” printed on it, and marked) to the appropriate human rights commission.
The great cultural battleground in our generation is sex, sexual identity, sexual roles, sexual perversion, and sexual orthodoxy. All our great cultural diseases come back to this, and are intimately related to this. James tells us that the law of God is a like a plate glass window — to break it in any place is to break the whole thing. It is not like a collection of French pane windows, where you might bust this one here and not that one there. And a Christian worldview is all of a piece, just like the law of God. You cannot allow it to be broken at one place, pretending that the rest of the window is somehow unaffected.
The peculiar heresies of our generation are sexual heresies, and the Church has been slow to catch on. Thus it is that we take heart (pathetically) when some Christian leaders support women’s ordination, but still oppose homosexual marriage. Or they are silent on the abomination of sending women into combat, but can be pestered into registering their disapproval of a different abomination. But here it is — women’s ordination, women in combat, the breakdown of sexual standards for the unmarried, polygamy, pederasty, lesbian marriages, homosexual male marriages, bestiality, robo-sex, and virtual sex are all the same issue at the root.
And that root is this — will Christians submit to the authority of God in defining our sexual identity, roles, and lives? Or not? And will they grant that this sexual authority of God can only be honored in public ways? Private agreement will not cut it. Those Christians who respond affirmatively need to be preparing themselves for a full-scale collision with homo pervens. For those who prefer to waffle, the time will come when they are either swept away completely, or find themselvs sitting like Lot on the edge of the fountain in the city square of Sodom, saying, “Oh, dear,” but being very careful to say “Oh, dear” under their breath. They will either capitulate completely, unable with any consistency to draw a line somewhere, or they will draw an arbitrary (private) line that will give them something to wring their hands over. Or they will repent, across the board, and return to a sexual orthodoxy, prepared to affirm that orthodoxy in public.
Sexual orthodoxy prohibits ordination to women. It prohibits civil unions between homosexuals. It prohibits marriages between homosexuals. It recoils from the idea of sending women into combat. It does so because all the Bible is authoritative for all Christians throughout the course of all their lives. To do anything less is to capitulate completely. It does no good to preserve the integrity of 90% of the dam. To go soft on any of these issues is to go soft on all of them — whether that was intended or not. In the great battle between Arius and Athanasius, involving another homo/homoi issue, what would we have said about someone who stood with Athanasius five days out of the week? Tuesdays and Thursdays were, he maintained, when Jesus was of a similar substance with the Father.