Now Will We Repent?

Last fall I participated in a public discussion about gay marriage legislation, and the interviewer asked me a pointed question, “How has there been such a major shift in opinion about marriage in such a short period of time?”

My answer had nothing to do with the aggressive agendas and strategies of the LGBT movement; nor did I mention Hollywood’s covert worldview embedded within our entertainment; nor did I blame the mainstream media’s bias and influence. Instead I proposed that this momentous cultural shift is the final culmination of preceding cultural shifts that God’s people have at best ignored and at worst embraced.

President Obama could not have been elected to his first term if he supported gay marriage. Now I wonder if it is possible to be elected without supporting gay marriage. This is an unprecedented social development that on the surface seems impossible. Until you see it for what it is—the outcome of many redefinitions rather than the beginning of redefinition.

This is the aftermath of the Church’s failure to continually sanctify marriage in our own lives and in the public life of society. We have not held marriage with honor and dignity. We have allowed a sacred institution to be cheapened into a meaningless construct. I hear the outcry from Christians, but I’m sorry, the cry is far too late.

Where was the outcry when men began prioritizing career and money over wife and family?

Where was the outcry when divorce became a convenient option?

Where was the outcry when sex outside the sure and safe confines of marriage vows became normative?

Where was the outcry when sex within marriage was redefined by the Protestant Church as merely a pleasure to be enjoyed apart from its highest end of procreation? (Seriously Protestants, if sex is only about pleasure, and procreation is merely a “take it or leave it” consequence, do you see why this opens the door to the legitimacy of same sex?)

Where was the outcry when the profound beauty and mystery of gender expressed through complementarianism was replaced by the shallow neutrality of gender expressed through egalitarianism?

Where was the outcry when Internet pornography consumed our homes?

Where was the outcry when Millennials started turning a transcendent and holy covenantal ceremony into a narcissistic parade for social media?

Our cry is too late.

After decades of our own compromises and redefinitions, are we really surprised when a world that cares nothing for our God or His design fights for their own redefinition?

What’s done is done. The highest court has spoken. Gay marriage is legal and soon shall be normative. The time for outcry has passed us by… but the time for repentance is at hand.

Where have you compromised God’s design for marriage? Where are you redefining marriage for your own convenience and pleasure? Where is your marriage failing?

Are you choosing career or hobby over spouse? Are you abusing your spouse? Are you in an affair or dreaming of an affair? Are you staying up at night looking at porn? Are you giving up and resigning your marriage to co-habitation? Are you unwilling to seek counseling? Are you pursuing divorce?

Whatever it is for you, it is time to start hating it as much as you hate the Supreme Court’s verdict. May this historical moment in our culture bring about historical repentance in our churches. Repent because it glorifies God, repent because it is good for your soul, repent because it will heal your marriage, but also repent because our culture needs your repentance.

Our world is suffering the consequences of forsaking God’s design, and now the suffering will only be compounded. Perhaps now we can be what God has called us to be all along—witnesses to a better world. Perhaps now we can turn our attention to embodying God’s perfect vision for marriage. In a world of failed marriages and redefined marriages, do you know how beautifully compelling a community of people devoted to recapturing God’s design for marriage will be? All we have now is is the witness of our virtue, but virtue has and always will be the loudest of protests.

Indeed, the moral majority is officially dead. But a repentant minority is far more powerful than a moral majority.