Should I Attend My Friend's Same-Sex Wedding?

by Sam Parkison \ June 17, 2015

With the ever-shifting tides of social norms in America, Christian Millennials will need to answer questions that haven’t really been asked in previous eras. This, of course, is not unique to Millennials; each generation faces its own sets of advantages and challenges. One of the unique questions that Millennials will need to answer is, “Will you be attending (insert gay friend or family member’s name here) ‘wedding’?” Obviously, every age group will have some proximity to this question, but the Millennials are the ones who are living in the midst of this cultural change. It’s our friends who are getting “married.” We’re the ones being asked to be best men and maids of honor. Our generation is the first “same-sex marriage” generation.

Given that this glaring reality is staring Millennials in the face, I think it’s appropriate for Christian Millennials to think carefully through this issue, and the implications of our various responses. Clearly this is a hot-button issue, and experience has already shown me that saying anything about this subject is bound to start a firestorm of controversy. But I believe that, when Christians are asked to attend a same-sex “wedding,” their response should be to humbly, lovingly, decline.

Why not go?

The most fundamental reason is that such a “wedding” is no wedding at all. As Christians, the Bible is our final authority for faith and practice, especially with regard to topics that it itself explicitly addresses; and the Bible pretty explicitly addresses marriage. It is the covenant union between one man and one woman, joined together by God himself (Genesis 2:18-25, Matthew 19:3-9, Ephesians 5:22-33). The legal union between two people of the same sex may be something, but it will never be marriage. Marriage is something that has been established by God into the very fabric of reality itself; and legislation can’t possibly touch it.

Now, at this point some might be tempted to bring up Romans 13. Aren’t we supposed to be subject to our governing authorities? My answer is yes, but only within the sphere that our governing authority has sovereignty over. If I turn on the television to discover that congress has passed a bill to annul the law of gravity, I’m not going to celebrate by walking off the building. Why? Because congress has no authority over the law of gravity. That law is outside of congress’ jurisdiction.The same is true with regard to marriage; it’s an untouchable reality. No sooner could congress establish a law that triangles have four angles. So (as R.C. Sproul Jr. has so helpfully pointed out) to attend such an event is to encourage the delusion of those involved.

But what’s even worse, to attend a same-sex “wedding” is to celebrate sin.

Let’s use another example; imagine for a moment that our culture was to descend into such depravity that people start throwing “Porn-subscription Parties.” Imagine you get an invitation in the mail that reads, “John Doe would like to cordially invite you to celebrate his subscription to Extra-X Porn company: the party will be held at…” Now, even if there’s no porn being watched at this imaginary party, I should like to think that Christians would know to decline such an invitation. Why? Because the invitation is to “celebrate his subscription” to sin. “I don’t want to celebrate that!” ought to be our response. Or worse yet, imagine it’s a wedding between a 40-year-old man and 9-year-old girl. With both of these situations, the answer is (I think) clear; we don’t want to celebrate sin.

Yet celebration is exactly what we do when we attend weddings. We are there to solemnize and affirm the union; it’s a joyous occasion. That’s why traditional weddings has that part in there that says, “If anyone has any objections to this union, speak now or forever hold your peace;” the silence that follows is the affirmation of the union. However, if the Bible is right about sin, the “wedding” of a same-sex couple is not a joyous occasion. It’s a tragedy! What is the Christian attendee supposed to do when the official says, “I now pronounce you husband and husband”? Is he to clap? Is he to weep? As a Christian, I don’t believe there’s any way to reconcile the inconsistency of his disapproval of what’s happening and his presence there as an attendee. The purpose of the event is to fundamentally celebrate sin, and Christians simply can’t do that.

Can’t we use it for evangelism?

This is the million-dollar question, isn’t it? What if I go there to show the love of Jesus; to show some grace? I can certainly empathize with this impulse. After all, didn’t Jesus hang out with sinners? Didn’t Paul say that it’s not the sexually immoral of this world that we’re to distance ourselves from; insinuating that we should associate with them? Not only that, but Paul even says, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” (1 Corinthians 9:22).

However, I think we might be hasty to assume that these examples give us license to attend a celebration of sin. First of all, there’s no reason to believe that Jesus was in any way overlooking or affirming the sins of the sinners he was hanging around. In fact, his habit was to tell them to stop sinning.

Additionally, there is a huge difference between associating with sinners and affirming their sins. If a non-believing gay friend asks you to attend his birthday party, you should most definitely go! Why? Because the birthday party is not intrinsically a celebration of sin, but his “wedding” is. We should remember that the Paul who instructs us to associate with sexually immoral of this world--who became “all things to all people, that by all means [he] might save some--is the same Paul who strictly forbade Roman Christians to join in the pagan drinking parties (which would turn into orgies) which were prevalent in their particular culture (Romans 13:13-14). Why? Because becoming all things to all people does not involve the celebration of all peoples’ sin.

But even more fundamentally, a Christian’s presence at a same-sex “wedding” is actually not helping his witness; it’s hurting it. A Christian who attends a same-sex “wedding” may think he’s bringing the gospel, but he’s actually undermining it. How is this? Well, let’s just define our terms for a moment. The gospel is the good news of what Jesus has accomplished with his life, death, and resurrection. What makes the Gospel good news is the bad news of sin; that our sin brings upon us the rightful wrath of God. The good news is the free grace of God, righteously satisfing his wrath for our sin by nailing it to the cross in Jesus Christ. It’s the forgiveness which was purchased by the blood of Jesus, which is rendered to those who are reconciled to Christ by faith and repentance.

In other words, the Gospel is only sweet to those who consider the taste of sin to be bitter. Jesus says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:31-32) A sinner will never repent if he sees no sin to repent of. A sick man will never seek a physician if he thinks himself to be healthy. Paul says, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” (2 Corinthians 5:20) When we beg people to be reconciled to God, we are presupposing that reconciliation is necessary.

So when we refuse to identify sin--with our words or with our actions--we’re not actually being “gospel-centered.” No, we’re actually robbing the gospel of its potency. The crucifixion was not God’s way of ignoring sin. The very worst thing that could possibly be said about our sin was said there, “Your sin is so heinous,” the blood of Jesus cries out, “that the only thing that can atone for it is divine blood.” The notion that Jesus ignored the sin of those he interacted with, in the name of love, goes against the foundational Christian concept of the atonement. Love was demonstrated by not ignoring sin.

Grace is only for sinners. It’s actually quite unloving to encourage people in the very activity that will send them to hell, when we in fact herald the only message that can save them; a message that needs both halves (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

The problem with cool-shaming

Now, all of this sounds difficult because what we want is to develop significant relationships with our non-believing friends, and we know that all of this would not go over well in a coffee-conversation with them. However, that’s not the determining factor for whether or not we are being effective witnesses to our gay friends. So often, we think that having a great witness is to be well thought of by non-believers; and in fact, that is something we should strive for, insofar as we are able. However, often I think that us Millennials justify our incredible lust for the approval of our non-believing peers by calling it “striving for a good witness.” Our worst nightmare is to be called an intolerant bigot; we’re terrified of being labeled a fundamentalist.

But listen, that’s where our strength is found. I’m not saying our strength is found in being a bigot; I’m saying that it’s found in saying the sort of thing that actually offends people. This is the beauty of God’s ironic process; he ordains to save sinners in the most counter-intuitive way: offending them. It pleased God through “the folly of what we preach to save sinners” (1 Corinthians 1:18-31).

We need to reconcile with the fact, right now, that we will never be “cool” in the eyes of this world. For Christian Millennials, this pill can be too hard to swallow; we want to have our cake and eat it too. But 2 Corinthians 2:14-17 makes it pretty clear that this will never happen. The fragrance we give off as Christians will always smell sweet to some, and horrible to others. The Holy Spirit is the only one who can possibly convict sinners of sin, and turn the repulsive, foolish message we preach into good news for them. But our job is simple; we are heralds. We are impartial. We proclaim that sinners need salvation from their sin, and that God has provided it in the person and work of His Son. We give off the aroma of Christ, and we let the chips fall where they may.

We will never experience the delight of being the sweet aroma of life to those who are being saved until we’re willing to be the stench of death to those who are perishing.

So please, don’t undermine the gospel you bring to your gay friends by being inconsistent with it. Lovingly decline, and may it serve as an opportunity to share with them the same good news that brought you from death to life.

Sam Parkison

Samuel G. Parkison is the author of Revelation and Response: The Why and How of Leading Corporate Worship through Song. He is also a Regular Contributor to For The Church and is a Ph.D. student at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Samuel lives in Kansas City with his wife (Shannon) and their two sons (Jonah and Henry), where Samuel serves as a Pastor of Teaching and Liturgy at Emmaus Church.

Source: https://ftc.co/resource-library/blog-entries/should-i-attend-my-friends-same-sex-wedding

Memorial Day 2019 – What We Remember About the Greatest Generation

The article below is by Retired Rear Admiral John Kirby. 
May 25, 2019

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       The heavenly virtue of humility seems vastly foreign to modernity.  I value this article by retired Rear Admiral John Kirby for the detail and reckoning of upheld values realized across a generation of men and women who lived through some of the most indelible periods of history.  A major takeaway for me is the conclusion he gathers from Veteran Charlie Nease: 

“Perhaps we ought not to strive for lives of success, but rather lives of value. And it has to start with what you actually do value. The old man valued love and loyalty and duty. He didn't say that to me, of course.” 

       As a believer, this is a major theme in life to take note of.  Of all people, the disciples of Jesus Christ must be men and women of value.  Something else that strikes a chord in my own heart about men and women of Nease’s generation is their humility.  Events surrounding World War 2 were so much bigger than the United States itself and it was considered an accomplishment just to survive or come out alive from any combat theater.  I know what that’s like.  Combat experiences do not exactly evoke bravado, because it is likely that those who brag about combat or war have maybe actually never been in war.  War breaks the mind and can crush the soul.  For those who live through combat, the mental scars are worse than physical scars. 

       I am thankful we serve Jehovah who is constantly victorious.  It is no wonder He is not as concerned with earthly affairs as He is intensely concerned for our eternal estate.  If war does something, it makes us profoundly more aware of both our mortality and immortality.  The saying goes, “There are no atheists in foxholes.”  It is true – the fact that there MUST be life after this temporary hell, and it only takes a piece of flying metal to snuff out my physical being. 

The old man said he didn't do anything. I only half believed him. 

       People of his generation say that all the time, especially when they talk about their service. 

That's one of the reasons we call them the "Greatest Generation." It's not just because they won World War II. It's because even in that most ultimate of victories, they remained humble. 

       Anyway, the old man kept saying it over and over. "I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything." 

And then he wept ... openly, valiantly. And then he said it again. And I stood over him, all decked out in my dress blue uniform, ashamed for the first time to be wearing it. I'd been invited back to my hometown of St. Petersburg, Fla. in the spring of 2013 to give a speech, and I wanted to stop by the local veterans' hospital to pay my respects. But who in the hell was I to be in his presence? What could I possibly say to such a man? 

       Here he was, at the end of his life, dying -- and ready to go, I might add -- a hero, a man who landed at Anzio with the 179th regiment of the 45th Army Division. A man who by his own account spent 91 consecutive days in combat. A man who, along with his unit, pushed on past that deadly beachhead at Anzio in the winter of 1944 and eventually took Rome back from the Germans. A man who proudly -- no, reverently -- showed me the picture of a beautiful young woman he knew he would marry before he even knew her name. And she was a beauty, too, let me tell you. Her name was Shirley, and she was a nurse. 

       I joked a little, asking how in the world a homely guy like him could score such a babe. The truth is, he was still a fine and handsome man, even as he lay in that hospital bed. The years had furrowed lines across his cheeks, but they hadn't dimmed those blue eyes. They hadn't stolen his charm. He reminded me a little of screen legend Richard Widmark. A movie critic once called Widmark a man of "unconventional good looks," who "boasted a chiseled face, all angles and shadows." 

That was the old man, too. The blond hair had grayed, but he still had a chiseled face. 

       There wasn't any doubt in my mind how he won Shirley's heart. He must have bowled her over. 

Anyway, the old man shrugged and giggled and said as honestly as I think anyone could say that he had no idea how he won Shirley's heart. He just knew she was the one. And he handed that little metal picture frame to me like it was gold ... like it was her. 

       Here he was, a man -- a dying man -- whose proudest achievement in life, he told me, was the life he and that gorgeous young nurse gave their kids. He had helped set Italy free, helped free the world of Nazi tyranny, but the biggest legacy he believed he was leaving behind was his children. There's a lesson there, I reckon. Perhaps we ought not to strive for lives of success, but rather lives of value. And it has to start with what you actually do value. The old man valued love and loyalty and duty. He didn't say that to me, of course. He wouldn't stoop to say such a thing, not someone of his generation. Those things were simply expected. They were the norm. They were the things that got you through the sheer terror that was combat. 

Anzio 

"I didn't do anything." 

       Well, he survived Anzio, and that was surely something. If you haven't read up on Anzio, you should. The battle was a bloodbath, "hell itself" according to one soldier in the old man's regiment. 

       The whole idea was to conduct an amphibious landing on the Italian western shore, outflank German forces there and then attack Rome. The success of a landing at that location, in a basin that was basically reclaimed marshland and surrounded by mountains, depended on the element of surprise. Any delay at all would result in German occupation of the mountains and Allied entrapment down below. 

And that's exactly what happened. 

       Week after bloody week the German army pounded away at Allied troops stuck in the basin with nowhere to hide. The shelling and the bombing were relentless. It was said that any man who claimed he had been around Anzio two days without having a shell hit within 100 yards of him was just bragging. 

       "Sometimes you hear the shell whine after you've heard it explode; sometimes you hear it whine and it never explodes," wrote Ernie Pyle of the battle. "But I've found out one thing here that's just the same as anywhere else, and that's that old weakness in the joints when they get to landing close ... your elbows get flabby and you breathe in little short jerks, and your chest feels empty, and you're too excited to do anything but hope." 

       I'm certain there were many days and nights and in-betweens when Charles Nease, Private, U.S. Army, was too excited to do anything but hope. My guess is that he simply willed himself onward, driven not by some sort of superhuman courage but by the fear of letting down his buddies, of failing in his duty. I can't imagine that he ever did fail, though. 

A disappearing generation 

       Charlie Nease died a few days after I visited with him in the hospital back in 2013. He was 87 years old. His children were there to see him off before he met back up with Shirley, the only nurse he really wanted to see.  We're losing World War II veterans at a pretty fast clip these days. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, fewer than 500,000 of the 16 million Americans who served during the war were alive in 2018. 

       Next month sees us commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings. So, it's important for us to remember them and their stories. It's important for us to put a human face on history, to remember that once, a long time ago, they were young and scared and brave and in love. 

I know Memorial Day honors those who were killed on the battlefield. And Private Nease surely wasn't, though many of his friends surely were. And yet, right around this time of year, I can't help but think about him. The more I do, the more I think he was right after all. He didn't do anything. He did everything, everything a man could hope to do with his life and still call himself a man. 

       And we are all richer, whether we know it or not -- whether we choose to appreciate it or not -- for having had people like him walk the earth. That seems one hell of a memorial to me. 

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/24/opinions/world-war-two-veteran-said-he-didnt-do-anything-kirby/index.html  

Move Over, Sex and Drugs. Ease Is the New Vice.

by Jen Pollock Michel
January 31, 2019

       According to recent research, teens are starting their sex lives a lot later. Despite shifting cultural norms and new sexual freedoms, our youngest and most virile are apparently having less sex—at least for now. Sociologists and social commentators debate whether the trend is temporary and whether it marks a healthy or unhealthy societal shift. But it’s possible that the so-called sex recession offers evidence of a wide, disturbing trend that has nothing to do with sex—one that is particularly endemic to our cultural moment. The trend bears witness to the ways that we’re increasingly finding embodied life “tiresome.” (In Japan, that’s the word many younger Japanese people to describe intercourse: mendokusai.)

      Our apparent fatigue with bodily living extends to other areas, as well. Two years ago, in response to declining cereal sales, market researchers went looking for answers to why younger people were opting out of the convenience food that had fed their parents and grandparents. According to The New York Times, researchers found the reason: Breakfast cereal—with the whole bother of bowl and spoon—involved far too much work. “Almost 40 percent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it.”

The decline in sexual activity and cereal sales hardly seem correlated, but both seem to point to one of the most seductive promises of a technological age: that ours should be an unbothered life. As our lives (at least in the developed world) get easier, we are increasingly formed by the desire for ease. Of all the cautions we raise about technology—its distractions and temptations, its loneliness and superficiality—this promise of unencumbered living is perhaps the most insidious danger and also the one we talk the least about.

       As Christians, we are rightfully attuned to the hedonic temptations of material life: the sex, the drugs, the proverbial rock-and-roll. But reckless abandonment to the sensual pleasures of the body is not our only vice. So, too, is evasion of bodily life—which is, in one aspect, any attempt to squirm out of the tedium of being enfleshed, emplaced beings with obligations to love. It makes for a nagging question: Who do we become when we’re no longer willing to bother?

       The longing for ease is certainly not new, and we can trace the American home through the stages of swift industrialization. Between 1890 and 1920, the lives of American women (and men) changed dramatically with the introduction of electricity and running water. The promise of the new appliances they added to their homes, however, was not time-efficiency, as we might think. Instead, these appliances were called “labor-saving” devices, and they promised to spare the body of “bother.”
       Fast forward one hundred years to our current era of home automation: We have even greater capacities to spare ourselves bother, and efficiency and convenience are delivered with less and less effort. Alexa re-orders our toilet paper and turns on the music. From the comfort of my office cubicle, I control my sous vide, ensuring a precisely cooked roast upon my return home. If I’ve forgotten to turn down my home’s heat during my vacation, I connect to an app on my smartphone, ease delivered with a swipe of my thumb or the command of my voice. Let there be light. With the push of every button, my illusion grows—that exertion is the enemy of modern life.
       The modernizing of the American home seems innocuous enough and especially salutary when we consider the introduction of flushing toilets and refrigeration. But the late media theorist Marshall McLuhan, himself a Christian, would caution us against the uncritical embrace of technology, which acts like a prosthetic, removing the body from the labor equation. (According to The Atlantic, that seems to be exactly what we’ve done with sex, since many people now increasingly favor self-stimulation to intercourse.
       Here, then, is the quandary we’re left with: As we continue to reduce the physical burden it takes to move through the world, and the efforts of our lives are often only as effortful as staring our smartphones in the face (why bother with a home button?), how will we galvanize the real will for love of God and neighbor?
       I am increasingly conscious of the bother of physicality—increasingly conscious that there is no way to love others without it. My children have an unrelenting need for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I am, many days, irritated that I should have to feed them something other than Ramen, despite their happy clamor for it. At the end of a long day, my husband interrupts my well-laid plans for reading in bed with his puppy eyes of desire. Truth be told, marriage can find me tired and wishing to be left alone. My aging mother is growing forgetful, repeating tired stories over the phone when I’m under a deadline. She will expect we come again at Christmas. More recently, a member of the extended family has chosen to die, and attending the funeral—all seven of us—will cost us significantly in time and money. Secretly, I wish for a substitute to serve as our presence among the grieving.

     In theory, I want to love. In reality, I want it to tax me less. However, the arc of the Christian story tells me that these collective affronts are a betrayal, not just of neighbor but of God himself. God entered the bother of embodied life. As a boy, he was subject to the slow agony of growing up. As a man, he was harangued by crowds, touched by lepers, and kept awake on sleepless, hungry nights in prayer. On the night of his arrest, Jesus took up the bother of the basin and towel, washing the feet of his disciples, even those of his betrayer. He carried that bother all the way to his execution for the sake of love.

       As the Incarnation attests, the love of God, borne on his back as a weighty, wooden cross, was the corporal love of deed and truth (cf. 1 John 3:18, ESV). As Julie Canlis writes, “The Incarnation is the rule, not the exception. God enters into the world and engages with us on creation’s terms. He uses ordinary, created things to bless us, save us, minister to us. Our ordinary humanity is the place he has chosen to meet with us.”

       Following Christ, then, I am radically called to the bother of the material world with its attendant burdens and griefs. Love, in both its everyday gestures and grand flourishes, is the radical embrace of burden, not the rejection of it.

       I don’t know that I can fully recover from my entitlement to ease. I am not, after all, giving up my iPhone. But perhaps I can remember that love, patterned after God’s own self-giving, is bent on inconvenience and cost. Perhaps I can temper my expectations for the effortless life I think am owed. Perhaps I can remember when feeling especially put out by needing to show up in the world (and not by proxy), that I am supposed to love with my body.

As God did with his.

Jen Pollock Michel is the award-winning author of Teach Us to Want and Keeping Place. Her next book, Surprised By Paradox, is forthcoming this May. She lives with her husband and five children in Toronto. 

Source: https://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2019/january/technology-move-over-sex-drugs-ease-is-new-vice.html
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