Cameron Under Fire in The Lowest form of Public Discourse

It is difficult to avoid the hubbub over Kirk Cameron's latest comments if you read the internet or have even a tiny bit to do with the social networking world (either Twitter or Facebook). Apparently, calling something a sin today can get you tarred and feathered - and then bloodied and bruised. The story, over at the Huffington Post has actually generated over 18,000 comments - almost as many as our story about the death of B.B. Warfield.

Now, If you should be brave enough to start digging through this muck which represents the lowest form of public discourse imaginable (try reading the comments on Huffpo or ABC News' story) then you realize that the commenters are pretty evenly split. On the one hand, there are original gems like "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. I love your show on TBN!" and then on the opposite end you have people calling out everyone who believes in right or wrong.

In other words, this is the opposite of rational public discourse, from both sides. I wanted to share an interesting sampling of self-contradictory and illogical comments.

• "Kirk Cameron is an idiot. Homosexuality is most definitely natural as it has been around for thousands and probably millions of years."
• "Kirk Cameron has a right to believe as he does but he doesn't have the right to make absolute comments."
• "I think many people are upset because he said that he thinks everyone else 'should do the same' as what he believed in."
• "Judge NOT. God is in charge of judging and condemning, none of us mere mortals is capable of that kind of responsibility."
• "For you to believe that GOD has any reference to this is just your way of trying to power play your beliefs onto someone else..DO NOT USE GOD AS YOUR BULLY TECHNIQUES!!!"

Every single one of these comments is poorly composed, self-contradictory and can be turned back on itself with very little effort.

I'll save the most seriously cautionary comment for last: "In the past, the Bible was used to defend slavery, keeping blacks and whites seperate, women from voting and all kinds of other absurdities that we know now to be wrong. And anti-gay bigoty will likewise be relegated to the past." Note that all of this persons' examples of 'bigotry' involved the active oppression others, and that this oppression was eliminated by laws and by force, not by changing the public's mind through arguments and reason alone. Who knows what lies ahead for free speech for Christians if every view is tolerated except our own? We may become like our brothers and sisters in the rest of the world who live in danger for proclaiming Christ as Lord and God's Law as supreme. As Christians, we should be ready and willing - not to fight for our rights - but to suffer for the Gospel.

The Church as the Marriage Battleground

I am constantly dancing on the periphery of pop cultural knowledge. On the one hand, I can tell you every video game that is coming out in the next month and how the reviews for them are stacking up. On the other, I have no idea who the Kardashians are, or why they are famous (I am told nobody knows). Actually, I was just told - by someone who was quite shocked at the news - that one of the Kardashians is getting a divorce after only having been married for 72 days.

It took me a minute to process this, because our culture is not shocked at all by divorce. It is ubiquitous. It is all around us. It is like pornography - it infects everyone's home (or so it is assumed), and so everyone is afraid (including many pastors) to tell the truth about it. So what is so special about this Kardashian divorce? Nothing. It is an opportunity for a jaded society to pretend it still has some qualms when in reality it just wants an opportunity to judge a beauty queen who did what they always expected, only much quicker than they expected it.

Nobody whom I have spoken to or heard on the radio is shocked that she got divorced, but they are shocked at how quickly she got divorced. While society pretends to reel at this not-so-shocking news, they secretly must acknowledge her for her efficiency at ending the marriage before it had a chance to fall apart and end in misery. Marriages today are not expected to endure. They are assumed to eventually fall apart. At your average wedding, the jaded crowd listening to the vows is not in awe that two people are uniting for life, till death. If they are honest, they will admit that they wonder what will be the now-happy couple's undoing: an affair? an emotional breakdown? failure to launch on the man's part? The crowd searches its mind for a breakdown which seems most compatible with the couple in front of them.

For years, we have been told that gay 'marriage' and gay unions will undermine marriage (and I have no doubt that in some sense they do, though I'm not trying to be political here). Has anyone considered that most straight marriages today are doing more to undermine marriage than a whole San Francisco courthouse could ever seek to do? Kim Kardashian's pathetically surface-level miming of vows is the real future of marriage.

I said earlier that I wasn't trying to be political, but in a sense I am. If this is what marriage is in the North American context, then why would the Church care two winks whether its view of marriage is what the magistrate acknowledges? Real, true, lasting marriages rooted in Christ and His intercession will never be performed by a judge, a Unitarian minister, or a ship's captain anyway. God knows if a marriage is real. God has revealed to his bride what His view is in these matters, and let us just say a 72 day marriage or a marriage that ends in divorce after even 50 years is not His will. The Church is the guardian of these truths - not Clinton or Bush or Obama or a Supreme Court or a House of Representatives. The battle lines should be drawn in our churches. The Church is the only institution with the right to chastise their members for so blatantly flouting and mocking marriage as Ms. Kardashian has done. The Church is the last battleground of marriage, not the Congress.

The Orthdox Guy Says It Best

From an Associated Press story:

An Orthodox Church theologian who was invited to greet the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has criticized its approval of non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy.

The Reverend Siarhei Hardun of Belarus said that vote and efforts to approve gay marriage looked to him like an attempt to "invent a new religion -- a sort of modern paganism."

Hardun added, "When people say that they are led and guided by the Holy Spirit to do it, I wonder if it is the same Holy Spirit that inspired the Bible."

The Orthodox priest's remarks drew applause from conservative Presbyterians who made similar arguments at the gathering in Minneapolis.

Thanks, Siarhei. Our thoughts exactly.