I am a firm believer that the process of understanding what we “believe” is an ever evolving sort of thing. A building is raised up piece by piece: it takes months for a house to become a home—a place where people can live and raise a family.
It may seem off point, but I also believe that the art of diplomacy is nearly dead. The chances of two or more people in a group coming to some common conclusions about abortion, gun control or any of the other myriad problems facing society today is almost an impossibility.
That being said, the epiphany that I had today is that the conclusions we reach about what we believe fully depend on where we begin.
In the beginning God created, etc., etc. Male and female He created. The Bible doesn’t say that He created murderers, homosexuals, thieves, adulterers and so on and so forth.
If He didn’t create them, where did they come from: the sin nature within each of us as we are all partakers of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Cain inherited this pre-disposition from Adam and Eve’s actions. God even warned him that evil was lurking and to beware: in other words, he was alerted to the fact that he had a choice in the matter.
The other side of that coin is that people who don’t believe in the Genesis story, but believe in evolution (or something else) are going to come to drastically different conclusions.
Like I said in a previous blog, there is really no such thing as “gun violence” as opposed to just plain old sinful nature being given free reign sort of violence. The young man who took the lives of those kids in Newtown made a bad choice that day: a choice that I believe only became stronger and stronger the more he thought about it. Sin was crouching at his door and he became a slave to its desires. The devil’s job description is that he has come to steal, kill and destroy: to pit one brother against another.
Guns are legal to possess in America and he choose that weapon to fulfill his desire: most people who own guns, don’t kill innocent people. Abortions are “legal” in America as well. But just because they are legal doesn’t mean they are something that we should avail ourselves of. If you start from where I began, God created these lives and therefore when we end them we are in effect committing murder—whether or not the process is legal or not.
In the beginning we were given free-will by God: His desire was, I believe, that we use this will to choose Him—to walk with Him and talk with Him, in the garden and wherever else we might abide.
After much consideration I have concluded that same sex marriage does not threaten me or my belief in the meaning of marriage in the least. I can agree to uphold their “civil rights” while at the same time not condoning their behavior. Like the story about the wheat and the tares: they both grow up together and we are told not to disturb the one lest we uproot the other—God will take care of it.
We are faced with many choices everyday—some we make wisely and some we don’t. As Christians, we are sinners saved by grace. I can’t blame my poor choices on some kind of genetic marker if I truly have been “born again” and have become a new creation.
What we are faced with in America today is a very complex array of situations. The 3.2 percent of American’s who identify with the LGBT lifestyle have made it their agenda to have the rest of us think that this behavior, this choice, is just an another alternative life style—we just need to accept and recognize them. However, accepting their behavior is not the same as accepting that they too, indeed have civil rights as are given the rest of us by the laws of our land.
Having made that leap, let me also say that I don’t hold out a lot of hope that things are all going to get fixed in the next couple of years or even in my lifetime—or maybe ever. We are going to reap what we have sown long before any judgement comes our way.
We have already lost a couple of generations to abortion—how many more lives to we have to loose to this tendency towards progressive thought and action.
Maranatha
Looking For The Long Ride 
Re: “the conclusions we reach about what we believe fully depend on where we begin.”This is so true. Our God-initiated worldview qualitatively sets the basis for every decision we make, every cause we espouse. It is fundamentally a different vector from those whose direction and purpose is based upon, say, evolution, or sensuality.Although you are not an evolutionist, you acknowledge that your views are “evolving.” I like that. It is the sign of a wise man who is willing to listen, without forsaking his spiritual anchor point, which is Christ.Another aspect to consider, when we think of living and working with others who do not share our faith is: where are we headed? What is the end-point? This may be as important as the beginning point. For you and me, that endpoint is heaven, and the presence of Jesus. For others, it is something else.People have different goals, which are defined by their beginnings. But the endpoint, or goal, becomes just as important, I think, in determining how a person ends up as the origin of his/her worldview. Re:”I can’t blame my poor choices on some kind of genetic marker if I truly have been “born again” and have become a new creation.” I like this.Our relationship with the Creator determines so much more than the DNA code that he composed so that life could exist in an infinity of combinations.”Born again” means having the power to make decisions on God’s behalf, instead of every other entity or person that is making demands on our life.Thanks for sharin’.