As I sat thinking over the headlines that I read, I wondered about the societal penchant for celebrating sin as if it was a new invention that required attention and headlines.
While I was on the Exercycle warming up for my excursion with the Assassin, the thought came to me that we have "pride parades" for a particular sin that is currently seeking legislative approbation and legal standing.
Why a parade? If we make sin seem 'festive' and 'fun' by serving cotton candy and popcorn as we listen to the marching bands stroll by, it is much less threatening and masks the true nature of the menace that lies beneath the glamour and charm that Satan wants us to believe.
If we are to believe that sin is now acceptable, where are the pride parades for other sins, both public and private?
Would we feel comfortable having a 'Wife Beater Pride Parade'?
How about a parade in honor of 'Employee Theft'?
Would anyone consider attending a 'Murderer Pride Parade' or do we find that morally offensive?
Who would willingly admit their problem and proudly lead an 'Online Pornography Addiction Pride Parade' and who would attend?
Celebrating the deviant and immoral actions we mortals commit doesn't make them right. It only shares the filth to another generation who are frequently not sufficiently able to understand why the older generation believes there should be moral 'lines in the sand' which are not crossed. Too much has become 'subject to interpretation' and believed to be 'no big deal'.
Being popular has never been about being correct in righteous principles. Choosing the do the right thing for the right reason quite often runs afoul of common wisdom and political correctness.
God isn't concerned about our being politically correct, but in our choosing to do what is right --- even when it isn't winning votes, garnering acclaim or being celebrated in film and song.
It isn't bigoted to say that a sin is a sin. It isn't phobic to tell people that doing something that is sinful shouldn't be covered by law. And it doesn't make someone backwards in their thinking to believe that God's laws are plenty good enough without the intrusion of the flavor of the month political statement to alter them in committee.
Living in a small town in the Bible Belt has it's advantages. There are still sufficient conservative minded religiously directed people who believe unashamedly in God and Jesus Christ who are willing to 'just say no' to a lot of things that are accepted as the norm in areas that are more liberal in their thinking, attitudes and behaviors.
I believe in live and let live -- to a point. Unless what you are doing is against the law and you are keeping your business behind closed doors, it is truly between you and God.
But, when your personal desire to crusade for a pet sin means that you are literally shoving that sin into my face demanding that I not only accept it but also like it enough to give you some kind of free pass to display your problems, your desires and your personal peccadilloes in my living room or down Main Street, U.S.A., the reality is that being in a free society now runs BOTH ways.
While you are free to abuse the moral agency you have been granted by God, you don't have the right to compel me to abuse mine to convenience your conscience. That is where the line in the sand really is drawn.
Forcing people to bow down to the idols of popular culture and individual sins is not anything new. Cultures and nations have been crumbled by it before, and will be again.
Whether the idol is a literal symbol, as the wood, stone and metal statuary used in the scriptural sense, or an idea which is 'worshipped' by the maddening throng, the result is the same. It is adultery. And it is idolatry.
It is adultery because people have cast the affections of their heart on something other than upon the true and living God and His Christ. It is adultery because we have broken faith with Him to whom we owe our all. It is adultery because we have welcomed another into the place of honor that should have been reserved for our only hope of Salvation. But like the Jews of old times, we have our Barabbas.
We sacrifice the purity and decency of what is right for the idol worship of what is convenient, politically popular or culturally exciting.
Idol worship, by its very nature, is supplanting true worship with something that cannot ever hope to satisfy. It is accepting a mouthful of sawdust in place of a banquet and, with a lying tongue, proclaiming that the sawdust is delicious to the taste and desirable.
People will believe whatever their moral compass will allow them to believe. We are all in that same leaky little boat of conscience and either sabotaging our own ship by our choices, or bailing out the water madly in an effort to repent and be made whole.
Where is the pride parade that shares the virtues of our Judeo-Christian heritage that celebrates the God of Israel? Where is the parade that displays our love and fealty to Him whose right it is to rule and reign over our very heart, mind and soul?
This parade doesn't happen with a marching band, but is accompanied by hymns of gratitude in houses of worship that dot the land. These parades are located where faithful, God-loving people try to reconcile their faith and hope with the realities of the mortal sojourn we are all called upon to endure in varying measure.
The solitude of the personal parade of joy while reading and finally coming to understand a verse of scripture cannot be equalled. There is no band capable of measuring up to the feelings of the Spirit.
We must stand our ground against that which is wrong at all costs. Even if it means our very life. For without a firm foundation upon which to build and live, the shifting sands of ever-changing opinion based solely upon what "feels good right now" will surely bring our house to ruin.
It isn't easy to do the right thing in the face of loud voices shouting that might makes right and that you are being intolerant for not accepting them and their sin.
But Christ promised that he could save us FROM our sins. He cannot save us IN our sins. To do so would destroy all that God is and has promised to us. Heaven is not some debauched bacchanalian event filled with the perversion of mortality.
It is pure and undefiled.
It is free from the stains of earth life.
And I know that there will be rejoicing there for the parade of one time sinners who have repented and come home clean.
We can't be saved in our sins, but we can be FREED from them. But it is truly up to us to decide how we use our precious moral agency. If we do not desire to be free, it is our choice.
But don't expect to find happiness in it. Eternity is an awfully long time to realize that you have been wrong and that you have willingly traded everything for nothing.
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