I have had a knee jerk reaction that doesn’t like the idea of God using tragedy that affects the innocent and guilty alike to judge sin. And it feels very presumptuous to ascribe natural disasters to that motive in God.
A few years ago I had to really wrestle through the problem of pain and suffering and even the existence of Hell if God is a good God. Of course that’s a huge theological/philosophical question, but in a nutshell I came to the belief that: Yes, God is ultimately sovereign and good, but there are other forces acting on this earth, ie: Satan, and sin in us. God takes the things are wrong, like natural disasters and sickness and suffering, and uses them for good for those who love Him. Remember that “good” doesn’t mean our definition of a happy American life. It means stripping us of the lies we believe, and breaking our false foundations so that He can give us truth and reality and a foundation built on Him. Those who love Him are willing to submit to His reality, and that ultimately is the thing that keeps us out of Hell. I really believe that God gives each and every person ever born an opportunity to choose between reality/truth or self-created delusion that enables pride to be what drives a life. God knows what that dividing line and choice look like in each heart.
OK, so that could be a huge blog in itself.
Both Ezekial 16:49-50 and Romans 1 are dealing with the fruit of what happens when people don’t surrender their will to God. Like Jazzgeek and Jeff pointed out, there are a lot of sins that exemplify that state. And since we all have areas that are not surrendered, we all engage in sins of various sorts. Therefore we can’t throw the first stone.
I feel, however, that there is something that makes the Southern Decadence Festival and even the flow of homosexuality different. It has to do with the way it wants to be received.
The Romans 1: 29-31 passage says: They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
When I look at this list, I feel like there is a norm in our culture today which says “these things aren’t OK,” for the most part. There are actual laws against murder and slander, and there is a cultural understanding that these other things are “bad” or undesirable. Gossip and arrogance aren’t things that people want in their friends—it causes relational problems. I do think that the things on this list are engaged in on a daily basis, but I don’t think people are doing them for their own sake.
The thing that makes the homosexual issue different is that there is an active plan to make it a lifestyle norm for our culture. The people who believe that homosexuality is “bad” or undesirable are considered bigoted and narrow minded. The idea that God would choose to judge a festival celebrating homosexual behavior feels unkind. But if you do a little more research into what they were doing at the SDF, I think it crosses the line between deluded and flagrant. You don’t see festivals celebrating murderers or child molesters, or sexually active teens. There is a cultural resistance to those things that is being purposefully assaulted by the homosexual movement.
And, as we think about God as Judge, the truth is that He is actively judging deception in us all the time. Those things that happen that show up our lies are our own personal Hurricane Katrina. We have to leave that place of comfort where we’ve been living in deception, and move somewhere else and set up a new foundation based on humility and surrender to God. I’ve experienced enough shaking in my own foundation to see that things that look bad in my life are probably the best thing that could happen to me from a spiritual/truth issues place. It is the mercy of God to allow me to lose the foundational lies now, before I build a bigger house on top of them.
2 comments:
Heidi. I love you truth-based thinking! A culture that rejects Truth, ie God's revealed truth found in Scripture is headed for destruction. History proves this time and again. The sins we see in our culture on a sexual level in movies, the internet, books, magazines, etc. are leading each generation that embraces them into decline and eventual ruin. I don't think America is as far gone as Europe. But the whirlwind will be reaped at some point unless America repents. So I see my job and each persons job as being the responsibility to choose righteousness on every level. Work, recreation, leisure time, ministry, etc I have to look at myself first. Look at the log. Then i can see the spec in my culture. The homosexual agenda is a huge problem. The media is in league with the Devil on this one. But Truth will prevail. In Christ we have already overcome the world. So I am encouraged. See 1 John 5. What a victory Christ has already won for us! Love, Dad
Amen and amen. You have done an excellent job communicating some essential truth. God is good, and in His goodness He even uses the evil that comes from Satan, our sinful desires and from living in a broken, fallen world, for our good, if we will let Him. I Had not really thought about the list from Romans in the way you describe and I think you are really right!
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