Christendom committing Hara-Kiri over the Respect for Marriage Act is well deserved.

The culture war is reaching fever pitch! Even in secular outlets, there is heated discussion about masculinity, feminism, patriarchy, #redpill, #MGTOW, and a thousand related topics. Everyone agrees that something is radically wrong and if it isn’t fixed soon we are going to not just lose a generation or two, we will lose humanity!

Megan Basham, culture reporter for The Daily Wire and contributor to The Federalist, authored When Christian Leaders Capitulate On Marriage, Innocent Children Suffer. While she never really gets to the ‘innocent children suffer’ part, which is true, Ms. Basham displays in spades why Christian culture is in total collapse.

One of the earliest signs that the commitment to defend biblical marriage was weakening came from Christianity Today CEO Timothy Dalrymple. 

News flash! What Christians typically assume is ‘biblical’ concerning marriage is actually tradition! Or, in my family’s oft quoted wordmash from my eldest, ‘Tradishma!!’ Simply, what is usually termed ‘traditional marriage’ is entirely that: TRADITION.

‘Biblical marriage‘ is entirely different than what Ms. Basham thinks it is!

And, therein is the reason why God won’t help defend this particular doctrine. Several years ago, I wrote

On the surface, the very act of fencing, adding an additional layer to the commandment – presumably to protect the command from being broken, is sin because it is adding to the commandment. My question, however, is whether the act of fencing actually opens the door for the enemy by creating a standard that is not Yah’s standard and therefore one He does not need to provide protection from?

Does ‘fencing’ a commandment expose one to temptation?

By redefining marriage and adding to the commands that define it in Scripture, Christendom has now painted themselves into a position that God doesn’t hold and is in no way obligated to protect or judge. It is not HIS standard!

Basham acknowledges her challenge with

He likewise gives no hint that he recognizes any societal harm that might flow from subverting traditional marriage.

It is without question that societies collapse when the family collapses. One of the first stones removed from the foundation of the Roman Empire was defining marriage contrary to Scripture. Numa’s Law circa 685 BCE codified monogamy in Rome, a standard designed to serve the State. Divorce, extramarital sex, and homosexuality were allowed, but heritable offspring had to come from a State recognized monogamous union.

Later, added to monogamy-only, was no fault divorce, serial monogamy, and feminism. The result was hedonism and self gratification, not unlike what we are witnessing in Western Civilization, but I digress.

Basham continues,

In 2012, seven years before he (Dalrymple) took the helm of the publication founded by Billy Graham, he went on record arguing that it might be “time to stop opposing same-sex marriage as a matter of law.”

Christendom forfeited their strength nearly 1900 years ago by twisting Paul so that they could ignore swaths of the Torah, the very foundation that establishes homosexuality as an abomination. When Christians pick and choose which parts of the Law still apply they effectively allow any other proclivity to do the same.

As the question of attending same-sex wedding ceremonies and celebrations has become more pressing, many theologians have said that Christians actually discredit the faith by agreeing to participate.

Megan Basham

In fact, Christendom discredited itself and the faith long, long ago. It has just taken awhile for the leaven to work its way through the whole lump.

French’s religious view of matrimony as a covenant between a man and a woman has not changed, he says, but he adds, “Religious belief is not the same thing as declaring civil law … I don’t want the law to discriminate against those Americans who sincerely hold different views of sexual morality, sexuality, and marriage and organize their lives and their institutions accordingly.”

Megan Basham

A major error by Western Christianity, particularly in the US, was allowing civil law to be involved in marriage in the first place. Marriage licenses and the legal defining of marriage both undermine the Torah as the foundation of a God-given and God-defined institution. Christians simply codified their tradition of ‘one-man, one-woman’ into civil law thus making the very definition debatable and alterable.

As Mohler commented to me, “A Biblical understanding of harm does not limit itself to proximate harm. That means a Christian understanding of harm extends to the entire society. It’s very interesting that you have all the pathologies that have erupted not, first of all, because of same-sex marriage, but because of the decline of marriage itself. Further unraveling of marriage can only result in further pathologies.”

Megan Basham

We can expect ‘further pathologies’ as long as we refuse to define and implement marriage in the way God defines and implements it. God will not defend a standard that isn’t His!! If man chooses to create his own standard, then he is defenseless against the adversary who then uses that false standard against him.

What may appear as judgment on our culture may simply be the natural consequences of creating our own (indefensible) standards.

My gut tells me that by altering the commandment, whether it was she or Adam who did so, they were made vulnerable to temptation for which they had no defense.

If this is true, then how serious a matter is it to fence commands instead of taking them exactly as the Father has given them and adhering to their simplicity?

Does ‘fencing’ a commandment expose one to temptation?

The real path back to sanity is an increasingly hard one because Christendom (Christendumb?) has so vested itself in tradition and dogma that short of radical repentance and embracing of what Scripture actually says, there can be no gradual unwinding. The real solution involves not just a correct definition of marriage, but a Biblical implementation thereof. The whole enchilada! Headship, patriarchy, proper masculinity, proper femininity, biblical gender roles, polygyny, etc.

Oh, and the rest of the Torah regarding idols, days of worship, festivals, agriculture, etc applies as well!

Simply angling for a more conservative version of the crazy we have around us is insufficient and will only lead back to the collapse we are witnessing today.

Want to survive the current madness? Then seek truth in the Torah and pursue God’s ways, not man’s foolish substitutes.

Shalom!!