Aug
10
2012
Yet they stood their ground
Fifty years ago courageous men and women, including Christians acting out of biblical conviction, took risks to do the right thing. I only wish more Christians had been involved. Too many lost their historic opportunity.
Today I read an historical marker in downtown Birmingham with this inscription:
“On Mother’s Day, May 14, 1961, a group of black and white CORE youth on a ‘Freedom Ride’ from Washington D.C. to New Orleans arrived by bus at the Birmingham Greyhound terminal. They were riding through the deep south to test a court case, Boynton vs. Virginia, declaring segregation in bus terminals unconstitutional. Here they were met and attacked by a mob of Klansmen. The riders were severely assaulted while the police watched, yet the youth stood their ground.”
These obviously desperate criminals continued their rides, and they continued to be opposed, as evidenced by the mugshots above.
In every generation we who confess the Lord Jesus are confronted with well-established offenses against him, testing our courage. If we man up, some people will inevitably say we are moving too quickly and causing unnecessary provocation. That might be true. The moral nobility of a cause elevates no one above self-judgment, and crusaders can be the most self-righteous of all. But the lordship of Christ judges everything, including both the offenses he calls us to challenge and our own excuses for not doing so.
“We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29) stands with authority over everyone until the end of time. Every generation of Christians can expect to be tested. May we discern and accept our historic opportunity, each one of us, and stand our ground.
15 Comments
Proud of you, my boy!
Mama
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God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins. He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross. In this way, God disarmed the evil rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross of Christ” (Colossians 2:13–15 NLT
God made them “alive” and eventually shamed and disarmed the “evil” rulers.
Would love to hear what others think the ‘opportunity ‘is that presents itself to our generation. Abortion? Government corruption? Income disparity? Defense of traditional marriage? I think wisdom and strength lie in discerning the issue that actually grieves our heavenly Father versus those that we just don’t like, find inconvenient, threatening or personally expensive.
The defense of “traditional marriage”?
The Bible offers little or no support for the evangelical defense of “traditional marriage”; the Bible approves many versions of marriage, most of which are culturally repugnant to us: a man and his wives, marriage to a brother-in-law after your husband dies, marriage to a woman and her female slaves, marriage between soldiers and female prisoners of war (as long as they’re virginal).
The civil rights battle for Christians today is to support the single most persecuted group in the country: gay men and women, who are relentlessly denied their civil right to hold a job (they may be fired for their sexual preference in many states), or to marry the people they love.
Remember the Southern Baptist Convention was formed to support slavery, and justified their position Biblically. Christians who “defend traditional marriage” are equally on the wrong side of history now.
Slavery was also very common in biblical times, but it was and still is wrong. Genesis sets the tone for traditional marriage, one man one woman. Just because many chose then and choose now to ignore that doesn’t make it right.
We can agree slavery is wrong; we can also probably agree the Old Testament and New Testament speak approvingly of it.
If the Bible speaks approvingly of something we agree is wrong, why would a non-specific, general verse in Genesis be sufficient to convince us other citizens deserve lesser rights than ourselves? Especially when the Bible speaks approvingly of so many other forms of marriage?
Thanks, Keith.
“The Bible approves many versions of marriage.” That is a weak argument. The Bible defines the norm for marriage in Genesis 2:24. That is the whole point there. Then Jesus reinforces its message and authority in Matthew 19:3-8. If Jesus allowed for “many versions of marriage,” he missed a golden opportunity to say so.
God created and defined marriage. We are the ones who invented slavery. There is no comparison.
I don’t agree it’s a weak argument, of course.
I agree that Genesis 2:24 is relatively compelling: it’s strong and on point, but that verse does not disallow other forms of marriage. It may establish a norm, but doesn’t disallow other forms.
And the rest of the Old Testament includes description, without any condemnation, of many other forms of marriage.
Matthew 19:3-8 is entirely in the context of a discussion of divorce; there’s no reason for Jesus to bring up other forms of marriage in the context. To bring up other forms of marriage in Matthew 19 would have made little sense.
I find Matthew 25 (Jesus’ parable of the ten virgins and their bridegroom) equally compelling: if Jesus didn’t approve of polygyny, why would he use polygyny in a parable, where the bridegroom takes 5 women to the “wedding banquet” with him? Obviously Jesus and his listeners found polygyny sufficiently normal that it evoked no negative responses.
I’d like to briefly focus on your phrasing, “the norm for marriage”. For the sake of the discussion, let’s agree that one man, one women is the Biblical norm for marriage. The “norm” only states what is the usual, there’s no requirement to disallow the unusual.
To summarize, the Bible never says “you can’t do this”. At most, it guides in a direction, it establishes a norm, but there is simply no on-point verse that reads “Thou shalt not”, and considerable evidence that other forms of marriage are acceptable to God.
Denying other human beings the same rights we have should require more than such an uncertain exegesis.
Thanks, Keith. A comment thread is an inadequate format for a significant discussion like this. I can say that when I use the word “norm” I mean more than “what is the usual.” I mean the authoritative standard by which individual cases are judged.
But I cannot address here what I believe are the fallacies in your comment. I can recommend a book I have written that draws out the most important point of all, which you have not mentioned, viz., that marriage is about the gospel. Until you take that into account, you cannot understand the biblical view of marriage. Here is book:
http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Unfaithful-Wife-Biblical-Spiritual/dp/0830826149/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344823971&sr=1-1&keywords=god%27s+unfaithful+wife
I wish you well. Thanks for checking out the blog. Thanks for your thoughtful interaction.
Thank you for the reference, I’ll get a copy. It would be great if you could talk your publisher into making your books available on Amazon’s Kindle (or other e-book formats)?
I think your email does, in one way, reinforce my point: a topic not easily debated in a comment thread, can’t be all that absolute and clear, can it?
We are all convinced of the rightness of our own exegesis, but we have to acknowledge that thoughtful, prayerful exegesis has lead others to contrary views, including on gay marriage.
We need to be less confident in our reading of scripture, not more.
He’s doing you a favor by not making you look like a fool.
That would certainly be kind of him, if true. But I would prefer to be demonstrated a fool any number of times than to never learn anything new.
Don’t be afraid of being wrong, Tony: what little I’ve learned about caution and humility has mostly come from the many times I’ve been just completely wrong about something!
[...] Interest Yet They Stood Their Ground–A wonderful remembrance of the Freedom Riders and the challenge they present to the church to [...]
Tony, your comment borders on the insulting. It is not enough to be “right.” One must also be gracious. I don’t want to trigger yet a further comment thread about this matter. I hope it will suffice for me to say just this. Thanks.