Writing about sexual morality in
the mid-twentieth century, C.S. Lewis concluded that the world’s “great
relaxation and simplifying” of the rules of modesty, or standards of propriety,
while not necessarily a bad thing, presents this “inconvenience.” He wrote:
“People of different ages and different types do not all acknowledge the same
standard, and [thus] we hardly know where we are.”
Lewis goes on to point out:
There is no getting away from
it: the old Christian rule is, “Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to
your partner, or else total abstinence.”
Now this is so difficult and so
contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our
sexual instinct, as it now is [remember, “now” was the mid-twentieth century],
has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is
the instinct which has gone wrong.
Of course, Lewis was—and
is—right. Note that our sexual instinct has gone so wrong that Lewis’s clear
declaration of Christian sexual morality—published in one of the greatest works
of modern apologetics, Mere Christianity—is now, in the early
twenty-first century, somewhat insufficient. This is because the God-haters,
and those otherwise devoted to a “theology
of self,” have now perverted the oldest
institution in the history of humanity—marriage.
In other words, we are today so far removed from the “same
standard” when it comes to matters in the sexual realm that many in the world
today have little to no idea “where we are” on marriage. If he were writing or
speaking today, Lewis would need to clarify that, by “marriage,” he means the
biblical definition of marriage. Tragically, this would be the case even if his
audience were church-going Americans.
No other issue today has so
divided Christendom than matters concerning homosexuality. Even the Roe
v. Wade decision—which, in 1973, legalized abortion throughout all
nine months of pregnancy—did not so quickly or so decidedly corrupt Christians,
Christianity, and the church as has the evil LGBT agenda.
As recently as just over a
decade ago—2009—U.S. states were 31
for 31 in their rejection of same-sex “marriage.” Whenever an
electorate was given a choice, by an average rate of more than two to one—67.5%
to 32.5%—American voters said no to same-sex “marriage” and yes to marriage as
defined in Scripture.
As I noted at the time, the
rejection of gay marriage occurred not only in conservative states, but in some
very liberal ones as well, such as Maine, California, Oregon,
and Hawaii. Purple states such as Ohio, Colorado, and Nevada have
also soundly rejected gay marriage. Barely over a decade ago, across
the U.S., from the Deep South to the Northeast to the Midwest to
the West Coast, Americans united behind biblical marriage.
According
to Pew Research Center, in 2004, Americans opposed same-sex “marriage”
by a margin of 60% to 31%. By 2019, those numbers had been almost exactly
reversed. According to Pew, Americans now support same-sex “marriage” by a
margin of 61% to 31%. Gallup polling shows similar
trends on same-sex “marriage.” According to Gallup, in 1996 Americans
opposed the legalization of same-sex “marriage” 68% to 27%. By 2019, Gallup
showed Americans supporting same-sex “marriage” 63% to 36%.
How did this happen? How was
there such a vast reversal on homosexuality and marriage in such a short period
of time? Several things were at work in order to get millions of Americans to
abandon long-held views on marriage: an organized and determined LGBT agenda, a
vast and like-minded media, like-minded federal judges, the Democratic Party,
and most tragically, churches unwilling or unequipped to fight for the truth on
these grave issues.
It is a common misperception that churches—and Christians
in general—spend a lot of time talking about sex. Last year, Decision magazine—a
publication of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association—reported
that,
The
Bible is very clear in its teaching about two of the most controversial issues
we face today—homosexuality and abortion. According to researcher George Barna,
90 percent of pastors recognize that the Bible speaks to these issues. But
fewer than 10 percent are actually teaching what the Bible says about
them!
Given
the rampant sexual sin in our culture—much of it leading to death (abortion,
disease, and the like)—and the significance of marriage—the lifetime union of
one man and one woman—one would think that pastors, Sunday school teachers,
church youth leaders, evangelists, Christian media, Christian politicians,
Christian celebrities, Christian parents, and the like, would give great time
and effort to telling the truth on what are undoubtedly some of the most
important moral issues of our time. Sadly, I believe this has not been the
case, and it’s time for this to change.
Now, perhaps more than at any
other moment in history, it’s time for Christians to be explicitly—even
graphically—clear that the only rightful place for sex is
within marriage. This is especially the case when it comes to
our young people. Christians must be explicitly clear that marriage is only the
lifelong union of one man and one woman (as
revealed “in the beginning!”). Christians must be explicitly clear
that any deviation from these truths—whether homosexuality,
“shacking up,” fornication, pornography, etc. is sin.
These truths must be loudly and plainly proclaimed in
pulpits, classrooms, living rooms, board rooms, legislative houses, and the
like. Decades of shying
away from telling such truths is one of the biggest reasons why we are where we
are on sexual matters in our culture. It’s not just the media, the courts,
corporations, and much of our government who have become agents of the enemy in
this fight. Even the church itself has fallen to corruption as the result of
sexual sin.
The Methodist Church sits
on the verge of a massive split because so many Methodists are
completely lost when it comes to sexual sin. Many other denominations and
individual congregations have recently seen similar splits over sexual sin. As
C.S. Lewis’s fictional
demon Screwtape taught us, this is what results when fewer and fewer
Americans are willing “to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite,
fully recognized, sin.”
When the church becomes so corrupted, there’s no doubt that
even further corruption awaits the culture. Not long after many so-called
Christians embraced same-sex “marriage,” America soon descended even further
into the pit of sexual sin. Along with debating what is marriage, truth-loving
Americans now have to debate and defend the truth on who is a male and who is a
female!
As a result of the evil
“transgender” agenda, in a matter of only a handful of years we have seen
males take
trophies from females, men
and boys invadewomen’s and girl’s bathrooms and locker rooms, people facing
prison, fines, or job loss because of the supposed misuse of
pronouns, government schoolsembracing “transgenderism,”
government libraries hosting “Drag
Queen Story Hour,” corporations
promoting “transgender” lies, the demand
for tampons in men’s rooms, state taxpayers forced
to pay for “transgender” surgeries (dozens of democrat-led
states now
force this ignorant evil on taxpayers), and so on (for a comprehensive
list of such evil, see
here).
Again, where is the
church on this grave matter? I’m sure that most Christians never imagined that
they would have to defend the truth about something a child can be made to
understand, but this is where the world is, and we must meet it there, with the
truth. To my fellow believers, I say, properly equip yourselves, and get in
this battle!
Trevor Grant Thomas: At the
Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason. Trevor is the author of
the The
Miracle and Magnificence of America