Unfortunately, the media\u2019s full court press on this issue has left Christians being pilloried as being \u201cagainst\u201d something that\u00a0is now seen as wonderful. \u00a0I will sidestep the temptation to speak of what we at this site may or may not be against<\/em>, in order to affirm instead what we are for<\/em>.<\/p>\n 1. We are for love. \u00a0Love between people is a reflection of God\u2019s love for us. \u00a0\u201cGod is Love\u201d declared St. John the disciple. Love\u00a0is a gift, and a very great one. \u00a0Love is about something deeper than romance and genitals, as I have written elsewhere. \u00a0Love at its best is \u201cother elevating\u201d rather than \u201cself gratifying\u201d. \u00a0It sacrifices all for its beloved.<\/p>\n 2. We are for gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgendered persons, as well as those who have other kinds of sexual appetites. \u00a0We love you\u00a0as we would any other brother or sister. \u00a0Love means, however, that we cannot offer you a poisoned gospel. \u00a0Blessing and absolving anything that God has not condoned is an act not of true love, but of\u00a0love\u2019s opposite, and it does you no favors in eternity.<\/p>\n 3. We are for sexuality, which is a gift from God. \u00a0It\u00a0is a garden of delights. \u00a0However it is clear from sacred scripture, which we recognize as God\u2019s revelation, that for our own good, and for that of our children who need stable families, God has put a wall around that garden. We recognize that we are not above our Creator, and therefore we respect that wall. We respect it even to our personal detriment. We respect it even in the face of\u00a0a potential loss of fellowship with those who now find such a stance to be outrageous. Obeying God has never been without cost. We have always been asked to \u201csurrender all\u201d for the cause of Christ. \u00a0Again, that is the result of our love for God\u2013we honor\u00a0our Beloved.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0We are for marriage. \u00a0We believe, with scripture, that marriage is sacred and holy, instituted by God. \u00a0We believe that it is a pillar\u00a0of civilization. \u00a0We mess with it at our own peril. Marriage has been understood for millennia as the union of man and woman. Let me be clear on one point\u2013it is heterosexuals, and not homosexuals, who have done the most damage to marriage. \u00a0And the church, the institutionalized body of Christ, has also let the world down on this one. \u00a0We have\u00a0contributed to the confusion about the definition of marriage. We should repent of the bigger\u00a0sins that we have allowed to slip by us in the 20th century, and\u00a0put the \u201choly\u201d back into \u201choly matrimony.\u201d<\/p>\n We already have allowed society to redefine this institution from a lifelong stable union into an intellectual fig leaf for transient sexual gratification between consenting adults. It is a short step to either lose the fig leaf and just fornicate, or to extend it to other kinds of relationships. Both of these have happened, and often the church has been complicit.<\/p>\n 5. We are for children. \u00a0We believe, as is also demonstrated in numerous studies, that they thrive best and prosper most when raised in a stable two parent family with a mother and father who love them. \u00a0I would go further and say that they should be in a loving Christian<\/em> family.<\/p>\n 6. We are for the U.S. government. \u00a0As people who love God, we would hope that our nation would seek after Divine blessing rather than curse. \u00a0Still, we know that we enjoy the fruits of liberty and have lived under a more benign government than most in history have known. \u00a0Christians in Ancient Rome were under a hostile regime, yet sought to be best citizens they could be, except where conscience forbade it (such as in the worship of Caesar as a god). \u00a0We also aim to be our nation\u2019s best citizens. \u00a0We will continue to pray for the U.S and its leaders. \u00a0We can and should pray for revival. We should always ask that the holy Spirit of God would blow through our land, to refresh the churches and to bend the hearts of the people back toward their God.<\/p>\n 7. We are for truth. \u00a0We must not give up on speaking the truth for the sake of popularity or other personal gain. The civil definition of \u201cmarriage\u201d has changed, but God\u2019s definition of \u201choly matrimony\u201d has not. The corollary of \u201cwhat God has joined together let no man tear asunder\u201d is \u201cwhat God has not joined together, let no man try to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n 8. Most of all we are for God, the maker of all things, to whom we owe our very existence. \u00a0God didn\u2019t merely flick us into existence and go away, but has loved us and offered us a relationship. \u00a0We have been invited to enter the divine dance. \u00a0We are still to be witnesses to God\u2019s love in a hostile world. We must \u201cwalk in love as Christ loved us\u201d. \u00a0We must stand fast to our calling to share the good news. That hasn\u2019t changed.<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The recent Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, has for now closed (perhaps we should say foreclosed now) the debate on marriage that has been raging in the secular world, and has\u00a0legally redefined marriage to include relationships other than heterosexual couples. \u00a0In light of this landmark ruling, some are jubilant, others dismayed. \u00a0The temptation for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[182,77,180,181,183],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-same-sex-marriage","tag-homosexual-marriage","tag-love","tag-obergefell-v-hodges","tag-supreme-court","tag-truth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions\/314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n