We were gay soldiers

"For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish."
Isaiah 60:12

Admiral Mullen

Admiral Mike Mullen and Senator John McCain went nose-to-nose in the Senate Armed Services Committee meeting on Thursday over whether homosexuals should be able to serve openly in the military. 

A post-modern Chief of Staff and a former POW turned career senator.  The one welcomes, "Swing open the door!" while the other cautions, "Not so fast with Pandora's box."

On Friday, the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Chief of Staff of the Army sided with the Senator.  "Not so fast, please."

Here's the sober truth.  Apart from a people who strive to live their lives in honor of the God who created them and thereby in accordance with his word, homosexuality and every imaginable sexual knotting will become accepted.  Without an objective source of truth to which we can appeal, all bets are off.  If homosexuality is now okey-dokey, why is polygamy frowned upon?  Why do the NAMBLA folks get such a bad rap?  Who's to say when the age of consent should be?  Try running openly homosexuals by Curtis LeMay or George Patton.  But Mike Mullen's just ducky with it.

Senator McCain



Who's to say, apart from an objective determinant for right and wrong?

Well, Christian, get over it.  In case you've been napping the past thirty years, America civically, culturally, academically, and spiritually has dismissed the God of the Bible (who happens to be the God of our heritage).  I challenge you to find a commandment (of the Big Ten) that most Americans still accept as valid.

American Christians have never known persecution, but the lions are roaring.  Consider what's happening in the military:

• A military friend noted today that he can't talk too openly about his relationship with Jesus Christ and what that means, but he could chat openly about his homosexual relationship (if he had one).
• Chaplains will either stop preaching the Bible or they will be speaking openly against a policy endorsed by the Department of Defense and their Commander in Chief.  Most chaplains don't preach the Bible anymore anyway, but those that do will now face military discipline for disobeying a superior's directives.

So what's a Bible-believing Christian to do?  Some thoughts.

First, we are sojourners.  While I passionately love the United States of America, her vistas, her cities, and her heritage, this is not my home.  Should she decide to turn her back on the living God, I will weep and grieve for the death of such an ideal and for her people, but I will not follow.  That said, I will continue to be the very best citizen that I can be until that conflicts with the word of God.

Consider Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael (aka, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego).  Those gents lived in about as pagan a land as you could hope to live.  We refer to moral trash heaps as Babylon for a very good reason, and that was the land where they were dragged and made to serve within the government.  They did very well, thank you, and did not compromise despite high-temperature quarters and gruff and growly roommates.  They served and served with distinction in a land hostile to their convictions.

I alluded to it above, but the second point is the most important; a Christian cannot compromise when the world (or his country or his commander) demands him to do so.  Daniel, when told not to pray, continued his habit of thrice-daily prayer with windows wide opened.  The three amigos, when told to bow, stood tall in a sea of genuflecting moral mice.  How's that for standing out in a crowd.  Both instances would have brought certain death but for the amazing intervention of God.

But as the three declared, it didn't matter whether God delivered them from the furnace or not.  They knew he would deliver them--ultimately.  Peter and John faced the same issue.  Either buckle under the Sanhedrin's threats and omit the politically incorrect name of Jesus Christ in their preaching or face cultural alienation and disciplinary beatings.  Their response?  "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard...We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 4:19-20, 5:29).  Jesus' disciples took a beating for that, happy that they were "counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name" (5:41).

Cutting to the chase, the Christian soldier, like Daniel and his three friends, should still be able to serve and honor God.  Crossroads may loom.  Chaplains, too, can still serve, but they know that they will be required to stand before the military Sanhedrin and declare their higher allegiance to God.  The only way the military will be able to handle that pile of goo is by either dissolving the chaplaincy in its entirety (for the first time in our nation's history) or only enlist a chaplain corps that holds to a neutered version of the Bible.

Consider it pure joy, brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials...

The trouble with Adam

Let's start with full disclosure.

I've never seen Adam Lambert perform (for that matter, I've never seen American Idol).  I've read much about him, about his extraordinary voice toward his androgynous dress toward his weather-vaned sexual appetites.  From what I have read in the past, I did not jaw-drop when I read what went down at the American Music Awards.

After Madonna and Brittany Spears mid-performance tonsilectomy illicited little more than a nation-wideee yawn, it became clear that someone had dismantled Pandora's box and burned it on the pire of responsibility and discretion.  Why should anyone be shocked (shocked!) when Mr. (and I use that term biologically) Lambert kisses a man amidst pelvic thrusts into the faces of female dancers during his performance at the aforementioned event?

"I admit I did get carried away, but I don't see anything wrong with it."  Ah, thanks "Mr." Lambert.  He further states his goal was to promote "expression and artistic freedom."  Isn't that just like an artist?  Sounds pretty planned from that statement, but then comes ""Adrenaline is a crazy, crazy, crazy feeling. Some of the things I love most about performing is when you're up there and all of the sudden you just have these feelings, this rush that comes over you."  So which is it?  Planned "art" or heat of the moment (apologies to Asia)?

He does bring up an interesting point.  In his interview on CBS' Early Show, he noted the double-standard in the media.  Janet Jackson does similar things at the same event and she gets no press.  I guess there were no wardrobe malfunctions that day.

Had "Mr." Lambert shut his cake-hole at that point, I would have sighed in disappointment and gone about my day, but he just kept talking.

"I'm not a babysitter.  I'm a performer."

He flipped my switch. 

Not a babysitter?!?  Let me translate.  "I can do what I please.  No one has a moral ground from which they can say what I have done is "wrong."  I have no responsibility for what I do.  The fact that I have decreed what I do 'art' trumps an indictment that my be cast against me.  If your kids saw my performance and you happen to find it troublesome, that's your problem.  I am an aritist."

What a load of farm fertilizer!  Utter autonomy.  Answerable to none.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is not America.  At least it's not the America envisioned at its inception.

Such fatuous statements as "Mr." Lambert's have littered the media with regularity in the past decade.  "I'm not a role model.  I'm an athlete."  Ah, got it.  "I am not a role model.  I'm a president.  I did not have sex with that woman in the Oval Office.  I--um--was briefing--er--um--debriefing..."

Here's the rub.  You are a role model.  You are an example to everyone you meet every day.  If God gives you the opportunity to have an extraordinary stage upon which to play, then your responsibility to your fellow man increases manifold.  You have responsibilities to your coworkers and your bosses.  You have responsibility to the staff that supports you.  If you are a celebrity (athletic, "arts," politics), you have a responsibility to those who appreciate your work.  And what about the responsibility to the God who created you?

When you have national (international?) viewership, adrenaline does not excuse eye-gouging, a double-bird flip-off, or behavior that flies in the face of the mores of the lion's share of the viewership.  Adam Lambert disavows his responsibility to anyone but the muse of Art. 

And that is the problem.
-------------------------------------

(image Copyright from Robert Sebree, Billboard Magazine)

Rick Warren: The bullseye du jour

Look up lightning rod on Wikipedia (what's an encyclopedia?), and you'll see Rick Warren's picture.

That role has been magnified with Barack Obama's selection of the Saddleback pastor as his inaugural invocator. The bolts are a-flying from the right and the left.

Some on the right see him as the great compromiser, and with regard to the Gospel, that's not a good thing. They see Warren's willingness to pray on behalf of the left-of-liberal president-elect as turning a blind eye or even a condoning of Obama's unbiblical positions on most issues. Betrayal. Compromiser!

The left's none to happy either. Homosexuals and others in favor of sexual aberrance cry out like the Wicked Witch of the West freshly splashed with water. Pro-aborts? No happier. How could the One choose a hate-monger and a bigot, one opposed to women's rights, to ask God's blessing next month at so momentous an occasion? (I hope the lunacy of such a question makes your brain loop-the-loop, too).

My take on the situation? Obama continues to show his political savvy. Within the political process, what's an invocation? What harm will it do? The serpent has pitched a bone to the Religious Right. It affects no law, promises no policy. Count on this: after this momentary appeasement to biblical conservatives, policies and laws that mirror what Obama has favored his entire political life will follow quickly. The morally bankrupt feathers are temporarily ruffled. Soon they'll be turning cartwheels.

Rick Warren? He's never equivocated on positions moral. Pro-life. Pro-marriage. Abortion and sexual misconduct are both sin. He's never wavered on grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone. So what gives? By giving Obama an AIDS platform, the body heard first hand the not-quite-right rhetoric of a man pleaser. By offering his church for a political debate, he let the world see that the church has a place in the political arena, and he again, exposed the fact that moral questions were above the future president's paygrade. By praying for the president, he does what we are all called to do (1 Timothy 2:1-3). I don't know that I'd have had the grace to say yes to such an invitation.

Let me back up to his indictment as a bigot, as one who equates incest with homosexuality (here ... this is one of many columns skewering Warren; perhaps the most polite). Last night on the O'Reilly Factor, Juan Williams subbed for Mr. O. Juan Williams sits some where to the left of O'Reilly on the political bench. He was grilling Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of 1st Baptist Church, Dallas about how Warren can state that he loves homosexuals and wants what's best for them when he stands opposed homosexual marriage, homosexual adoption, etc.

Jeffress handled himself reasonably well, but a light came on in my mind. On the left, identity is defined by how you have sex. Therefore, if you define a sexual practice as deviant, aberrant or (gasp) sinful, the left believes you have so identified the person as a deviant, aberrant, or (gasp) a sinner.

Well, the Bible agrees with that assessment (here) ...but the Bible does not stop there. All humanity bears the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27, 9:6), something inherent within the man making him of infinite worth. It doesn't depend upon his sexual preference nor upon whether one likes anchovies on one's pizza. Saint and sinner, young and old, NBA or NHL, red-state/blue-state, Jew and Gentile, all are created in the image of God.

That's why Rick Warren can love those who are homosexual. That's why Rick Warren is not a bigot. He indicts an act of sin. He indicts acting upon sinful lust. And yes, it ought to be equated with incest and even worse. And sadly, those who practice such, those who unrepentantly live the lifestyle, shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

A human being is not defined by what he does in bed. It goes so much deeper.

Praise God for the courage of Rick Warren...on a number of fronts. Let's hope he prays in Jesus' name and that his doctrine doesn't turn to much.

(A couple of other articles on Warren and the Inauguration here and here).

QotD: Newsweek's heresy continued

"No matter what one thinks about gay rights—for, against or somewhere in between —this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism... to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt—it is unserious, and unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition."

Jon Meachem, editor of Newsweek magazine, commenting (here) on the heretical article that was their cover story (blogged upon here). The rest of his commentary is equally repugnant.

And right before Sunday. During advent. I think I need a shower.

Dudes: I gotta be me!

For those of you who are married, you have, because of your situation, been called by God to marital fidelity.

For those of you who are not married, you have, because of your situation, been called by God to marital fidelity. You see, Hebrews 13:4 is no respecter of persons.

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

Seems pretty cut and dried.

Things begin to happen to our reason and to our defenses when our minds and eyes wander (Proverbs 5:7-14, Job 31:1), when we fail to remember our first love and to love our bride as Christ loves the church (Ephesians 5:25-28).

It matters not the object of this new and hostile affection. For Christian singer Ray Bolz ("Thank you, for giving to the Lord"), that object was another man. The escape clause for homosexual adultery is the "sudden realization" for the man or woman that they'd always been "gay." No, the truth is that you have always been a sinner; you are now just acting upon the lusts of the flesh.

Pastors and secretaries. Wives and co-workers. Older and younger. And you can sprinkle in the deviance of your choice (the Bible touches on most of them). Bottom line: It's sin, rebellion against God. Tony Woodlief, in World on the Web, pulls no punches as he speaks about the darkness of the heart that wanders. His agonized column was spawned by Bolz's betrayal of his wife of 30-plus years, but it focuses not on homosexual adultery but on marital infidelity in any hue.

Gents (and ladies), I encourage you to take the time to meditate upon Woodlief's confrontation (here). Cling to the Vine and shore up your defenses.

Dudes: Shmuley

Yeah, it's spelled right. And it's pronounced like it looks. It's a name. A first name. The last name I can pronounce only because I heard it spoken on the radio (Boteach...not bo-teech but bo-tay'-achk...with a Germanic sound at the end). At the time, I thought him an abrasive man as he discussed current events with Michael Medved with a passion I have come to understand as his norm.

He pens with greater subtlety, but his points drive into the belly.

While I labeled this post as for "Dudes" it is for "dudettes," too. His column today confronts our conduct and character, items lacking but ached for in our fleshly focused land. Like Edmund ravenous obsession for Turkish Delight, we lust for and connive to get that which leaves us empty and troubled.

A few quotes:

As women confront the vulgar reality of how men treat them, they discover that becoming masturbatory material to men is not particularly liberating.

Ouch. Is this what women's libber signed up for? The J. Geils Band put it to music in the '80's with "My Angel is a Centerfold." Shmuley rips into such shallow pursuits. He continues:

(T)he only way to truly affair-proof one's marriage is to decide that the pleasure of righteous action and moral heroism by far outstrips anything that can be experienced in illicit sex.

That, ladies and gentlemen, cannot be topped. Read the entirety of his article, please, right here.

Around the horn

Trolling the news web-sites today provided a heaping helping of discouragement. I'll not go into detail, but a great deal of stuff on prominent news web-sites exposed the gruesome debauchery that has become commonplace in our land and in the world.

And yet, despite the 104-degree temperatures, the beauty of the day could not be masked.

Here are a couple intriguing tidbits, stuff to get you considering the God who's not yielded His sovereignty:

• Who'd have thought that Chuck Norris could script some of the best what's-good-about-America commentary going? Here's a quote from today's column:

  When will we learn that just because we can say something doesn't mean that we should? Once again, we're confusing liberty for licentiousness. It is a classic example of what happens when a society leaves its moral absolutes: Everything becomes culturally relative, with each deciding what's right in his own eyes. Language is one more infected arena in America's societal degradation.

• Jay Nordlinger of National Review jots about random items in his semi-weekly "Impromptus" column. Today he included a bumper sticker seen by a subscriber. Yikes:

  "Faith...hope...Obama."
  

• These two articles were no kidding posted one after the other on Pravda's news site (and I quote):

"Moscow to turn into Europe's gay capital for Eurovision 2009"

"Islam to become Russia's predominant religion by 2050?" (If that's the case, I think Eurovision 2050 might a wee bit less tolerant.)

• The last item deflated my sails most of all. The US military is reviewing the "Don't ask/Don't tell" policy regarding homosexual conduct and military service. Considering what's been happening on the coasts, I don't suspect it's being reviewed to further tighten the current guidance.

Let's step out of this with a bit of hope:

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God...Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?...For the foolishness of God is wiser than men...

1 Corinthians 1: 18, 20d, 25a

Photo from Botany.com

Oops! Did he say that?!?

On Father's Day, Barack Obama gave a commendable (and articulate as always) speech on the gargantuan need for men to stand up in the black community and be husbands and dads.

Within the heart of the speech he said:

"We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception."

When I first heard the speech commented upon, this nugget escaped every commentator. Okay, almost every commentator. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council picked up on the contradiction (again) between what the man says and what the man does. Mr. Perkins queried:

"I would like to ask Senator Obama: if my responsibility as a father began at conception, isn't that when the lives of my children began?"

That would be like John McCain speaking about the blessed unions going on in San Francisco starting this last week. Perkins further pointed the spotlight at Senator Obama's very abortion-friendly voting record:

"He is the co-sponsor of the Federal Freedom of Choice Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that will legalize partial-birth abortion and overturn virtually all federal and state limitations on abortion," he says. "Senator Obama understands that a father's responsibility does not end at conception, but does he understand that it begins there as well?"

I guess he should sleep on his speeches before hitting "send" with his mouth.

Just another day? June 5th

More tornadoes across the plain today. I know, old hat.

China's got more aftershocks. Only 5-point-something.

Then there's the big to-do in Seattle about lesbians kissing during a Mariners' game, but the to-do is over the "up tight" heteros who felt it necessary to complain to a ballpark employee. Yikes.

Then there was this little gem this afternoon. CNN's website ran this headline:

Video shows man hit by car, no one helping

The catch ran as follows. For those familiar with Francis Schaeffer's indictment of our era as one with only two values, personal peace and affluence, factor that in as you read what took place and note especially the police chief's blistering explanation:

A 78-year-old man is tossed like a rag doll by a hit-and-run driver and lies motionless on a busy city street as car after car goes by. Pedestrians gawk but do nothing. One driver stops briefly but then pulls back into traffic. The chilling scene -- captured by a surveillance camera -- prompted a police chief to lament: "We no longer have a moral compass."

I'm not surprised that I came across this declaration the day before yesterday...

You have wearied the LORD with your words;
Yet you say,

" In what way have we wearied Him?"
In that you say,

" Everyone who does evil
Is good in the sight of the LORD,
And He delights in them,"
Or, "Where is the God of justice?"

Malachi 2:17

Muzzling the freedom of speech

Six miles south of McConnell AFB, just southeast of Wichita, Kansas, sits Mulvane, population 5,155. It seems Mulvane, in keeping up with the Joneses, is looking to erect a casino in or near their township.

As would seem prudent, the town's leadership called a townhall meeting about the proposal. Problem was, citizens weren't allowed to voice concerns. They could only ask questions about the proposal. Seems the deal was already done.

Check out what went down from this Alliance Defense Fund article:

When Jacque Farnsworth, a resident of Mulvane, attempted to address the city council about her economic concerns about the casino’s impact on her town, she was told by the mayor that her question was out of order. When she inquired as to why she was out of order, the mayor ordered that she be escorted out of the meeting by two armed police officers. Later, when another resident tried to speak against the casino, she was silenced by the mayor as well. Residents in favor of the casino were allowed to present their viewpoints without interruption.

Seems like a bit of syndicate strong-arm in middle America. Who says casinos aren't good for the community???

By the way, the proposal was put on by Harrah's and MGM, to of the establishments that light up the Vegas strip and various other increasingly (sadly) similar locales throughout our nation.