“Thursday’s passage of the misnamed “Respect for Marriage Act” in the House of Representatives represents a tipping point in the American story, and a grave turn that should concern all those who cherish and value religious freedom.
“Enshrining into law a destructive definition of marriage that undermines and expresses hostility towards God’s sacred design of a multi-millennia old institution invites the inevitability of unintended consequences. It also threatens to criminalize people of faith and jeopardize organizations that have done so much good for so long.
“History has demonstrated that empires end when attributes like virtue, honor and honesty are no longer valued. When we fail to raise children who know the difference between right and wrong, why are we surprised when the world behaves badly? As C.S. Lewis rightly and presciently observed, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
“We grieve the demise of a cultural consensus on the sacredness and exclusivity of one-man, one-woman marriage, but as Christians, we bear some responsibility for this shift and collapse, too. When believers fail to keep their own marital commitments, they undermine and weaken that which they claim to revere. Hypocrisy is an awful witness. We must confess and repent of our own sin.
“Scripture makes clear difficult times are coming, but we must recognize much of it is of our own making. It was the apostle Paul who said the future will be full of people who “will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:1-5). Sound familiar? Paul was looking down through the corridor of time.
“As Christians, it is our responsibility and privilege to bring Jesus’ help and hope to this hurting world. It is not an easy assignment, but it’s a critically important one.
“President Biden is expected to soon sign this bill, but our work advocating for proven policies that strengthen the family and nation will continue in earnest. Now is not the time to retreat – it’s a time to bring clarity to the confusion and light to an increasingly dark world.”
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