As this is written Australia has begun a postal plebiscite to gauge the opinions of all adult Australians on whether the definition of marriage should be changed to include same sex relationships.
The stakes are surprisingly high: free speech, freedom of religion, gender fluidity indoctrination in schools, children denied access to either a biological father or a biological mother and the truth.
'God created man in the image of Himself, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife and they become one body.' Genesis 1:27, 2:24
The truth is something you can only accept or reject. The truth is something that cannot be changed.
If these passages from Genesis are true, then marriage and family is God's idea and God's plan for human happiness and the well-being of each person. If these passages are true, then what we are seeing today is the final battle of our era forcing each person to choose whether to live in a God designed world or to live in a world in total rebellion against God.
It is a final battle in a war that began a bit over 100 years ago.
Most of the preceding battles were lost, and you can only truly understand this war if you grasp how badly the enemy wants to completely undo all of God's handiwork. Let's take a walk through history….
We start with the forces of nationalism which didn't want to see a humanity united under Christendom anymore. Nationalism was a significant contributing factor to World War 1. Many of those who came back from the war questioned God's existence in the face of so much human misery. While the troops were away, women needed to take on roles to keep things going back home. They found that they could do the same jobs.
Equal pay for equal work became the slogan. It won, but something of great importance was lost. The reason men had higher rates of pay was so that their pay could support a family, a single woman didn't have a family to support. Today we see that by and large both fathers and mothers have to work to earn enough to support a family, and the children have lost a full time parent.
It was a surprise to learn that a hundred years ago there were separate areas for women and men to swim. As that changed the bathing costumes did too, from outfits that covered most of the body to outfits that cover little of the body. Outings that used to be fun of innocent fun to the beach or to the baths now began to be unscripted beauty pageants and dangerous for those who wanted to remain chaste in body, mind and spirit.
For women skirts became shorter, necklines began plunging, and sleeves began their disappearing act. When the skirts could become no shorter they transformed into shorts, trousers, jodhpurs, and leggings. As modesty moved out, so did the kind of femininity that inspired chivalry in men. Now women rarely wear clothing different from men, making us often resort to checking out hands and cheeks to determine who is who. Sadly we don't hear 'Vive la difference!' much anymore.
Back a hundred years ago, marriage and motherhood and courtship were honoured. To file for divorce you had to go through a public court case and prove that you had grounds for your case. The difficulty and cost were a useful deterrent and many couples got through the bad patches with the help of family and friends and found they had a better marriage when the bad patch lifted. Divorce used to be looked on as a public failure. Then came 'no fault' divorce and many salvageable marriages came to an end, many families were broken, many women became sole bread winners for their children and faced an endless struggle street, and the children internalised the conflict. 'Till death do us part' became in practice 'Till I get unhappy' or 'Till I find someone else'. A few learned that they would be less unhappy if they stayed together than if they remained separated and divorced, but most didn't.
The advent of the contraceptive pill began to split the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage apart. It was now possible to access the goods of marriage with none of the accompanying responsibilities, and if the contraceptive failed then pressure was applied to induce an abortion. This so called women's liberation reduced women from potential life-long partners to objects and one night stands and hardened the hearts of women with pain, loss, abandonment and guilt. Being a single mother lost its stigma, but none of its hardship.
The introduction of recreational drugs enabled people to get the highs without effort that people used to get (and can still get) from serving others, self-sacrifice for a worthy cause, work well done, and encounters with God in prayer.
The next battle was inclusive language. So that the perceived patriarchal bias would no longer offend anyone there was pressure to talk about humankind rather than mankind, and to remove as many references to 'he' and 'she', 'his' and 'hers' in as many documents, hymns and scripture translations as possible. Achieving this was another step in paving the path to introducing gender fluidity.
Another lost battle was the refusal to love ourselves as God had made us. What a list! Cosmetic surgery, hair dye, hair removal, HRT, metal body piercings, tattoos, implants etc. And when all this began to be considered normal, gender reassignment surgery became a logical progression.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980's focused worldwide attention on homosexual subculture. New levels of compassion and understanding came from this, but also greater levels of social and creative activism. Gradually almost every successful movie and television series had to portray someone in a same sex relationship.
To really win the battle to reject God's plan for male and female to reflect His image in marriage, it was necessary to undermine the credibility of the churches. The horrible crimes against children are not a clergy problem per se as much as a problem throughout society and families; clergy being members of society and family. There's no money and useful publicity in dragging a relative to court, but there's plenty to be had by taking clergy to court.
And so we come to the final battle between God's plan for humanity and the complete rejection of God's plan for humanity. Is it to be male, female and marriage between a man and a woman? Or is to be the multiplicity of gender identities; parent 1 and parent 2; and the legal unions between any 2 (or more) persons classified as marriage?
What will you choose? Which will you battle for? To live in a God designed world? Or to live in a world in total rebellion against God?
The stakes are surprisingly high: free speech, freedom of religion, gender fluidity indoctrination in schools, children denied access to either a biological father or a biological mother and the truth.
'God created man in the image of Himself, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife and they become one body.' Genesis 1:27, 2:24
The truth is something you can only accept or reject. The truth is something that cannot be changed.
If these passages from Genesis are true, then marriage and family is God's idea and God's plan for human happiness and the well-being of each person. If these passages are true, then what we are seeing today is the final battle of our era forcing each person to choose whether to live in a God designed world or to live in a world in total rebellion against God.
It is a final battle in a war that began a bit over 100 years ago.
Most of the preceding battles were lost, and you can only truly understand this war if you grasp how badly the enemy wants to completely undo all of God's handiwork. Let's take a walk through history….
We start with the forces of nationalism which didn't want to see a humanity united under Christendom anymore. Nationalism was a significant contributing factor to World War 1. Many of those who came back from the war questioned God's existence in the face of so much human misery. While the troops were away, women needed to take on roles to keep things going back home. They found that they could do the same jobs.
Equal pay for equal work became the slogan. It won, but something of great importance was lost. The reason men had higher rates of pay was so that their pay could support a family, a single woman didn't have a family to support. Today we see that by and large both fathers and mothers have to work to earn enough to support a family, and the children have lost a full time parent.
It was a surprise to learn that a hundred years ago there were separate areas for women and men to swim. As that changed the bathing costumes did too, from outfits that covered most of the body to outfits that cover little of the body. Outings that used to be fun of innocent fun to the beach or to the baths now began to be unscripted beauty pageants and dangerous for those who wanted to remain chaste in body, mind and spirit.
For women skirts became shorter, necklines began plunging, and sleeves began their disappearing act. When the skirts could become no shorter they transformed into shorts, trousers, jodhpurs, and leggings. As modesty moved out, so did the kind of femininity that inspired chivalry in men. Now women rarely wear clothing different from men, making us often resort to checking out hands and cheeks to determine who is who. Sadly we don't hear 'Vive la difference!' much anymore.
Back a hundred years ago, marriage and motherhood and courtship were honoured. To file for divorce you had to go through a public court case and prove that you had grounds for your case. The difficulty and cost were a useful deterrent and many couples got through the bad patches with the help of family and friends and found they had a better marriage when the bad patch lifted. Divorce used to be looked on as a public failure. Then came 'no fault' divorce and many salvageable marriages came to an end, many families were broken, many women became sole bread winners for their children and faced an endless struggle street, and the children internalised the conflict. 'Till death do us part' became in practice 'Till I get unhappy' or 'Till I find someone else'. A few learned that they would be less unhappy if they stayed together than if they remained separated and divorced, but most didn't.
The advent of the contraceptive pill began to split the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage apart. It was now possible to access the goods of marriage with none of the accompanying responsibilities, and if the contraceptive failed then pressure was applied to induce an abortion. This so called women's liberation reduced women from potential life-long partners to objects and one night stands and hardened the hearts of women with pain, loss, abandonment and guilt. Being a single mother lost its stigma, but none of its hardship.
The introduction of recreational drugs enabled people to get the highs without effort that people used to get (and can still get) from serving others, self-sacrifice for a worthy cause, work well done, and encounters with God in prayer.
The next battle was inclusive language. So that the perceived patriarchal bias would no longer offend anyone there was pressure to talk about humankind rather than mankind, and to remove as many references to 'he' and 'she', 'his' and 'hers' in as many documents, hymns and scripture translations as possible. Achieving this was another step in paving the path to introducing gender fluidity.
Another lost battle was the refusal to love ourselves as God had made us. What a list! Cosmetic surgery, hair dye, hair removal, HRT, metal body piercings, tattoos, implants etc. And when all this began to be considered normal, gender reassignment surgery became a logical progression.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980's focused worldwide attention on homosexual subculture. New levels of compassion and understanding came from this, but also greater levels of social and creative activism. Gradually almost every successful movie and television series had to portray someone in a same sex relationship.
To really win the battle to reject God's plan for male and female to reflect His image in marriage, it was necessary to undermine the credibility of the churches. The horrible crimes against children are not a clergy problem per se as much as a problem throughout society and families; clergy being members of society and family. There's no money and useful publicity in dragging a relative to court, but there's plenty to be had by taking clergy to court.
And so we come to the final battle between God's plan for humanity and the complete rejection of God's plan for humanity. Is it to be male, female and marriage between a man and a woman? Or is to be the multiplicity of gender identities; parent 1 and parent 2; and the legal unions between any 2 (or more) persons classified as marriage?
What will you choose? Which will you battle for? To live in a God designed world? Or to live in a world in total rebellion against God?