Grey Marriage

My Pastor, Dan Perrin, cited some telling statistics in his sermon last Sunday. Here's the first: On May 5, Maine became the fifth state to legalize gay marriage declaring: "Two people have the right to decide for themselves how marriage should be constituted."

This statement reveals our heart problem. We think that we have the right to define marriage. We think that we can create this institution in our own image. We no longer believe that human nature is created and thus defined by God, even if we still pay lip service to that idea. If we believed that human nature was created by God, we could still accept the idea that there are some things that are bad for humans and there are other things that are good for humans. Because we no longer accept the idea of the fall, we think that the way that seems right to a person must be the right way. Thus we have a "right" to the right way and anyone that stands in our way is against freedom. Gay marriage becomes a civil rights issue as abortion became a women's rights issue.

We have little realization that this way of thinking was handed down to us from existential philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre. Sartre said "becoming precedes being." In other words, we are undefined at birth. Our being is not given by God but will be determined by ourselves. We are only a part of nature and not in anyway predetermined by nature, much less God. Don't let social conventions stand in the way of passion! If you've found your soulmate leave your wife or go ahead and shack up with your girlfriend to see if you're compatible. No two self-centered sinners will ever be "compatible." We've made eros the idol and were paying the consequences. 

Allan Carlson, author of Conjugal America: On the Public Purposes of Marriage (click on "Grey Marriage"), was recently interviewed on Mars Hill Audio and traced the history behind this. A little over 100 years ago there was still a social difference between children born in wedlock and children born out of wedlock. Then came the contraceptive revolution, which started among married people but was soon handed down to minors, and sex became a right. Then came no fault divorce. If you wanted a divorce you used to have to prove that your partner had violated the marriage vow. But that stood in the way of our freedom, so the solution of "no fault divorce" took away the binding character of marriage. Then came the idea of cohabitation before marriage or cohabitation as an alternative to marriage. Today you don't even need a marriage partner if you want a child. 

The second set of statistics was released by the US Center of Statics on May 18, 2009:

Of all births in 2007, 40% were out of wedlock.

Among women 20-24, 60% were out of wedlock compared to only 18% twenty years ago.

Marriage has become a hollow institution. Marriage no longer bestows legitimacy on children, it has lost its sole right over sex and procreation, its binding character is gone, and it is finally reduced to an option. From here it is only a short step to gay marriage. Isn't it true that grey marriage leads to gay marriage? Isn't this why it seems that the gay marriage movement has all the momentum? It almost feels like it's too late to say anything now. What's the church to do?

Truer Words

"No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond." 
— C.S. Lewis

Many Meetings, Many Logs

Thanks you for your prayers and encouragement during the trying time mentioned in the previous post. The buildings are patched up and in the dry at this point. 

After accompanying my dad at many meetings with insurance, cleanup crews, and the city, we saw the proverbial "light at the end of the tunnel." He has hired a professional crew to clear the course, and is determined to get it up and running in a few weeks. 

I must add that I was able to lend some muscle while I was there, and we made a dent by removing the massive oak tree from five green, which you see in the picture. It's amazing to see what wind can do and the human spirit when it's motivated to get up again.

House of Prayer

I will be going to my home town of Carterville, IL tomorrow. I was raised on our family golf course, and we also have a furniture store that has been open since 1877. Last Friday afternoon 100 mph winds and several tornados blew through. It is being called an inland hurricane, and FEMA has declared Carterville and Williamson County a disaster area.

When I was a kid a storm like this uprooted over 100 trees on the course. This one has knocked over 330 at last count. No one has seen any Ameren UE trucks in Carterville and estimates for restored power are at least a week. The clubhouse and the furniture store have both lost part of their roofs, as has my aunts garage and kitchen. One of the store windows also blew out, and everything has been covered in plastic. Please pray that rain will hold off until more permanent fixes. The local carpenter has told my uncle that their garage is 75th on his list.

Right now we are facing devastation and ruin in more ways than one. My dad doesn't know when or if the golf course will reopen. We need a professional crew to clear the course, insurance money, and help from FEMA. There are a lot of unknowns.

I praise the Lord that no one in our family was hurt and that everyone still has a roof over their heads and generators to keep food from spoiling. Some people have lost their homes and are hurting worse than my family. Pray for the area.

Pray that I will be able to help my father, and that the Lord will use this tragedy to bring him to grace. I told my dad that I could bring chain saws and gasoline, and he told me that he just needs me to help him make decisions. He has put his blood, sweat, and tears into the course, and he is exhausted. Unfortunately he has taken better care of the course than he has himself. He needs rest and the Lord. 

My aunt and uncle have invested themselves in my grandfather's furniture store since they've been married and quality furniture has not been in demand for a long time. They need your prayers for recovery.

Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. 

"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." Willy Wonka

What do you call someone who won't pass gas in public? A private tooter.

Why do gorillas have big nostrils? Because gorillas have big fingers.

What did the Egyptian say when he saw the zombie? I want my mummy!

Why didn't Lewis & Clark get hungry on their journey? They took snackajewa.

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The Abolition of Platonic Man

The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Abolition of Man is probably the most philosophical of Lewis' works and maybe the most relevant. He's absolutely prophetic of the our post-modern times.

In the classical view the head ruled over the passions through chest. The chest represents our heart or affections. The mind was to inform and direct the will toward the good and thus suppress the lower passions.

Today the direction of influence is reversed. Our hearts are no longer nourished by permanent truths. Relativism has ripped out the chest. The lower passions are released and corrupt the mind. Reason justifies sin and puts all hope in technological progress to save us from the consequences. There's no need to reform our behavior because we've got medical cures for everything from unwanted pregnancies to sadness.

Man has been abolished! While Lewis' classical understanding of man is biblically informed, I would say that reason is not necessarily the highest or ruling faculty in man. It is already as sinful and self-justifying as the passions. Sometimes we will what is right when our minds cannot grasp the truth and must bow to faith. "The heart has its reasons which reason knows not," said Pascal. Sometimes Lewis was too Platonic for his own good, but I fully agree with his thesis that the image of God is effaced more and more as we think we can define ourselves and create our own good.

View all my reviews.

Blessed Are the Limited

Chesterton on property:

Property is merely the art of the democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the image of Heaven. But because he is not God, but only a graven image of God, his self expression must deal with limits; properly with limits that are strict and even small. 

I am well aware that the word "property" has  been defiled in our time by the corrupton of the great capitalists. One would think, to hear people talk, that the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of property. But obvioulsy they are the enemies of property; because they are the enemies of their own limitations. They do not want their own land; but other people's. When they remove their neighbour's landmark, they also remove their own. A man who loves a little triangular filed ought to love it because it is triangular ; anyone who destroys the shape, by giving him more land, is a thief who has stolen a triangle. A man with the true poetry of possession wishes to see the wall where his garden meets Smith's garden; the hedge where his farm touches Brown's. He cannot see the shape of his own land unless he sees the edges of his neighbour's. It is the negation of property that the Duke of Sutherland should have all the farms in one estate; just as it would be the negation of marriage if he had all our wives in one harem (What's Wrong with the World).

The Way Things Could Be

The quote has been found! It is in Chesterton's What's Wrong with the World, which I am currently reading:

I have no notion at all of propounding a new ideal. There is no new ideal imaginable by the madness of modern sophists which will be anything like so startling as fulfilling any one of the old ones.... There is only one thing new that can be done under the sun; and that is to look at the sun. If you attempt it on a blue day in June, you will know why men do not look straight at their ideals. There is only one really startling thing to be done with the ideal, and that is to do it. It is to face the flaming logical fact, and its frightful consequences. Christ knew that it would be a more stunning thunderbolt to fulfil the law than to destroy it.

I have taught a book called Hope in Troubled Times to about 55 college juniors and seniors this year, and a great many of them are none to happy with the authors for pointing our how troubled our times are. There are not a few who think that the hope the authors speak of is unrealistic. They think it is unrealistic because they cannot do anything about it.

I have wallowed in this helplessness myself, but we need to remember that when you chart our position on the timeline of history it is a mere moment. It is also true that things did not have to be as they are now. Our moment could have been otherwise. There was no necessity in the nature of things that dictated our mistakes. We might have resisted our sins just as we may resist them now and turn. 

Things will be different in the future and we can have a say, if we will pursue our ideals now. Jesus did not believe in mediocrity. His contemporaries thought he had a wild demon and his disciples thought he was defeated. Chesterton reminds us that just because a thing has been defeated does not mean it has been disproved. If we throw our ideals into the world a ripple will reach into eternity.