I have a confession to make: It is my fault that “same-sex marriage” passed a couple weeks ago. I share this blame with millions and millions of other Christians who failed to hold the same stringent convictions about marriage with themselves as they do with homosexuals. We can sit here and bemoan the decision of the SCOTUS, but that solves nothing. As Christians, we need to hold a mirror in front of our own faces to see the planks in our eyes before pointing out the slivers in theirs. We failed to uphold marriage as blessed, beautiful, and sacred. Through my participation in pre-marital sex, I failed to stand firm in my conviction that marriage is a sacred union between man and woman. I failed to say that the ONLY place for sex is within the bonds of a marriage where two become one for the purpose of creating life. I cannot sit here and neither can you, Christian, and say that homosexual acts are a sin, if I am unwilling to give the same condemnation to no-fault divorce, contraception, abortion, infidelity, fornication, and pornography. No wonder the gay community has swatted us away like pesky flies. I wouldn’t listen to us either. We cannot expect anyone to listen when the only acts that we condemn are the homosexual ones and give all the others a pass. Many Christian churches have followed modern culture by accepting these sexual sins. How can a church call itself “the true church” if it follows popular culture instead of leading to truth?
You can sit there and say, “Well, homosexual acts are the only sin that people are trying to say is not sin.” To which I say, “Really?” I don’t think so. Our window of tolerance has moved inches and inches over the decades, mostly being fueled by the sexual revolution of the 60’s. We are not as passionate about teaching our children that sex should be saved for marriage because it is a physical, emotional, and spiritual connection that needs to be guarded with great care. We are not as passionate about showing this world that you don’t give up on a marriage just because it becomes stale, routine, or hard. In fact, I was once told by a Christian woman that “divorce is just something you do once your kids are out of the house.” Say what?! Is that the excuse she gave her children? We are not as passionate about speaking out about the use of pornography and instead just deem it as something that a person does in the privacy of their own home. “How does it hurt us?” we say as we turn the other cheek. We forgot how it objectifies a human being and removes all sacredness from the sexual act. We lost the marriage battle because we failed at being amazing, strong, examples of married couples.
We believe what the Bible says on sexual matters and point out the wrongness of homosexual acts. But meanwhile, we only sorta, kinda acknowledge the other sins listed—but not completely. Why? Because these are the sins that the rest of us straight Christians participate in. Before I started writing this, I had an “aha!” moment. I have toiled in my mind, trying to understand how so many Christians could condone gay marriage and then I got it. We do not want to judge homosexual acts for fear of being judged for our own sinful pleasures. We don’t want to stop having pre-martial sex, we want the option of divorce, we want to consume pornography without feeling bad about it. The truth of the matter is: I don’t want to judge your actions, because I don’t want you judging mine. And here we are.
I recently heard an interview with a woman named, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, of the Ruth Institute. She was talking about the recent SCOTUS ruling and she mentioned that there isn’t a single person out there that hasn’t been hurt by the sexual revolution. She said that we were told that all these things—contraception, abortion, divorce, pre-martial sex, pornography—were going to make us more free and liberate us from the prudish ways of the past. But, this has been a lie. While we may have the freedom to do these things, they don’t make us free. I thought about this in my life and it is true: Every person I know has been hurt or scarred by some sexual sin. The list in my life is long. But, why are these things wrong?
Contraception: Did you know that all Christian churches were against contraception until the 1930s? Jason Evert, a Catholic chastity speaker, says that contraception severs the two purposes of sex, which are bonding and creating life. It removes the consequence of the martial act, making sex strictly about pleasure. This is a dangerous thing for men and women: Men come to see women as nothing more than an object for pleasure. In addition, usually you take medicine to help your body return to normal functioning; contraception is taken to stop the body from functioning naturally.
Abortion: Again, trying to remove the consequences of the martial act by killing a human life.
Fornication: Sex is bonding. It is not hard to understand that bonding over and over with many different people in a temporary relationship eventually leads to emotional scars and, also, physical ones in the form of sexual transmitted diseases.
Adultery: Most often a family is torn apart. Trust is lost and foundations crumble.
Divorce: Again, families are torn apart. Kids are forced to be without one parent most of the time.
And all of these things in the name of “love.” This isn’t real love. This is selfish greed that we dress up as a mask of pleasurable freedom and false empowerment. Love is never selfish. It never seeks pleasure at the expense of another. It never uses another for pleasure or to escape from pain or suffering. I participated in pre-martial sex and contraception and I was wrong. I followed the culture and did not lead my life. I can see now that all these sexual sins are the easy road. Deep down, we all know that the intrinsically, inherently good things are always the harder way. We’ve lowered our standards because we want the easy road. I don’t want a life of low standards. I want to challenge myself to be better, to fight through difficulties, to not accept the ever-tempting spoonful of earthly pleasures, sure to leave me in a wake of regret.
The only thing I can do now is try to be a better example, through my marriage, as to why it is so incredibly important for us to lovingly, yet firmly uphold the sacredness of marriage. You may disagree and that is fine. I must ask you, though, what is marriage? What is the purpose of marriage? If we are ever going to have a real, honest discussion about marriage, than we need to make sure we understand what it is and it’s purpose. If the only view of marriage you have is of a childish, Disney romance, than you have missed the point of it completely.
Historically, for almost 2,000 years, Christians viewed love as something much more full than the romantically view of it we have today. Jesus refers to the Church in the Bible as His bride and He the bridegroom. Look at what he did for His bride—he gave all. He gave His life in total sacrificial love for all of us. We are called to give all as married people to our spouses and children. True love gives life, instead of killing an unwanted child. True love is to save yourself for marriage, so as to give yourself completely and totally to your spouse with no baggage. True love is to treat all people with dignity and respect and not view them through pornography as objects for pleasure. True love stands by a spouse even through trials, sufferings, and hardships. True love always seeks for the good of other over our own wants. Chastity is about true love. Fornication is about selfish desires. There are not equal. They can’t be, for they have opposite meanings, therefore making it impossible for them to be equally virtuous. One is good, one is not. I challenge anyone to explain to me how fornication is more virtuous and honorable than chastity. The only argument I ever see is someone arguing that they should be free to do what they want. True, you are free to do what you want, but you haven’t shown, with good reason, why as a society we should embrace and uphold fornication above chastity. It is the same with the other acts I mentioned. Divorce is obviously not equal with marriage. We do not look at divorced people and stand in awe of what they have done. However, we do with married couples who have been married for 60+ years through all the trials of life. We stand in awe of people that commit to life-long monogamous marriages, because deep down we understand the dedication, the hard work, and the perseverance required.
How to right this? We lead. We lead by example. We take our Christian marriages and we make them shine with the fullness of love that God intended. We commit ourselves to our spouses and our children. We crawl up out of this hole we’ve dug by climbing towards the light. We look at ourselves and ask, “How have I added to this destruction of marriage?” When we uncover our own planks, we work to remove them. We stop pointing fingers at everyone around us and work towards fixing ourselves. For the love of God, be better than this culture. I’m not okay with this and you shouldn’t be either. We were made for more, we were made for greatest. These sexual sins rob us of greatest. They hold us back from who God made us to be. I have called out my own acts and behaviors and told you they were wrong. I failed to live up to what the Bible teaches, but I can do something—we can do something. Christians, we must now show what marriage is: The only place for the loving, sacred bond of sex where man and woman unite in an act of love where the gift of life is created. There is nothing that equals this relationship and we should have done a better job of witnessing to its strength and specialness. We can defend it all day with words, but in the end, we failed to defend with actions. If you really want to defend marriage, defend it with your own marriage. When people look at your marriage let there be no mistake that this is what marriage is and should be; let the truth speak through your marriage.
