Wielding Godly Sword for Evil — California über Alles

By Peter Jones, reprinted by permission of CWIPP

Gov. Arnold Schwarzegger (R) chose to elevate political correctness over truth in responding to the California Supreme Court’s arrogant ruling for homosexual “marriage.”

The Dead Kennedys punk rock band prophetically sang in 1979:

Your kids will meditate in school!
Zen fascists will control you…
Now it is 1984
Knock-knock at your front door
It’s the suede/denim secret police
They have come for your uncool niece…California über Alles.

Whether people recognize it or not, we live not in a California-created world but in a divinely-created world, where government gets its binding authority (the sword) from God to promote good conduct and disallow bad. This is why the state governor is introduced as “his Excellency.”

We now observe a “brave new world” of radical, “cool” diversity, where the word “excellence” is politically incorrect. It’s everywhere. Last week, the British government okayed the creation of animal/human embryos, legalized, for the sake of lesbian maternal desires, the elimination of the father as an essential part of a family, and the European Court on Human Rights agreed to hear a case brought by a chimpanzee (actually its handlers). By increments, our modern world abandons all belief in human dignity as bearing the image of God. In the same week, not to be outdone, California legalized gay “marriage.”

Already “His Excellency,” the [California] Governator [Arnold Schwarzenegger], has:

• greeted this legal decision with enthusiasm;
• stated that personally he is against it;
• refused to back a future public referendum in favor of exclusive heterosexual marriage;
• salivated about the economic boom that such “weddings” will bring to California.

So much for moral excellence–or even rational coherence.

Four “California-dreaming” judges made legal what the Bible calls “unnatural,” using of the sword, not to restrain evil but to compel citizens to embrace it. Going beyond Massachussets, they granted “strict scrutiny” to “sexual orientation,” that is, the highest protection of law in all areas of society. Gay groups understand. “The suede/denim secret police,” the “gentle people,” already have plans to bring the full force of the “law” on those “uncool nieces” who oppose this half-baked legal ruling, including the removal of the right of ministers to perform heterosexual weddings, the end of tax-exempt status of their churches, and the risk of jail for refusing to homosexuals “equal treatment.” Already Gavin Newsome, mayor of San Francisco, announces that civil servants who have conscience problems should find another job!

A culture, founded on deeply considered religious principles, must now ditch two thousand years of Western civilization, and be forced to affirm the rightness of acts that have never been shown to be anything but behavioral choices. There is no scientific evidence of a “gay gene.” Who or what belongs in this non-defined category of “orientation”? What do we do with “ex-gays”? What is an “ex-black,” or someone with an Hispanic “orientation”? Can two gay brothers now marry?

Is this the point where God “gives over” a culture” to the implications of its immoral choices, cosmetically gussied up as “law,” and where Christians speak up and go to jail?

Certainly we must use the little swords we are given–the vote and other legal means–to counter the trend towards sexual license. We must uphold the law in order to bless all creatures and bring people to Christ. At the same time, we must realize that we are opposing the rising star of libertine neo-paganism, capturing the minds of our youth with the seductive message that everything, including sex, is evolving to new forms, and that God the Creator is a dispensable, even dangerous myth. Many are being seduced by ideas like “transhumanism” that sees the human species as only at beginning of its evolutionary progression, while “progressive Christian” liberals tell us that the “Christian tradition…must situate [itself]…within the evolutionary processes of the earth.”

For the first time in human history, homosexual “marriage” has been given a binding, legal status. It is therefore the watershed issue, the flashpoint of a deeper agenda. By judicial fiat, “hetero-cosmology,” the belief in difference–between male and female, right and wrong, and, by implication, between God and the creation–is declared illegal. Only “homo-cosmology,” the belief in sameness–of sexes, of religions and of divine and human, now enshrined in school text books and UN documents–will be tolerated. Those supporting it will eventually promote a polysexual and polytheistic society; those opposing it will affirm the male-female binary and the creator/creature distinction as the over-arching cultural norm. The choice is not new–its between Baal or Jahweh.

Right now, even many pastors fail to see these vast implications. Emergent (evangelical) pastor, Brian McLaren, refuses any judgment on “gay marriage”–to avoid offense! Emergent (evangelical) pastor, Doug Pagitt, openly affirms the compatibility between homosexuality and Christianity, having already openly denied the Creator/creature distinction! The Baptist minister of a large LA church, asked by the Los Angeles Times what he would do if requested to perform a gay “wedding,” incredibly replied: “I’d have to prayerfully think about it”! That confused cleric, alas, is prayerfully half way down the aisle, California über alles oblige.

“Gay marriage” causes us all to pray, not just for homosexuals and for our homophile culture, but also for the defense of Church and for the next generation of Christians against this great seduction!

Born in Liverpool, England, and a boyhood friend of John Lennon, Peter Jones (cwipp@cwipp.org) has a Th.M from Harvard and a Ph.D from Princeton. He taught New Testament in France for 18 years, and at Westminster in California for 12 years, where he is now scholar-in-residence and Adjunct Professor. Author of many books (see cwipp.org), he is Executive Director of truthXchange, a ministry devoted both to understanding the nature of the “new spirituality” and to formulating a Christian response. He can be reached through CWIPP at 760-480-8474.

Jones has a BA from the University of Wales, an M.Div from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and is currently an ordained minister with the Presbyterian Church in America. He is married to Rebecca and they have seven children.

If you have been helped by this newscwipp from Dr. Jones, and know a young person (or a pastor!) struggling with these issues, check out his book, The God of Sex, available for purchase on our website, www.cwipp.org. With a gift of $40.00 or more for our ministry, truthXchange, you will receive a complimentary copy for your own library.