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[Ed Hurst]

Jon Glass wrote:

> I think the problem we face in the Christian community, is that we
> tend to want to blame exclusively the sinner for his sin, so we tend
> to ignore and downplay the macrocosmic factors.

If I may, I would suggest this overlaps heavily the question of cultural 
influence. In my mind, one of our biggest mistakes is thinking secular 
law can work the righteousness of God. We want to enforce our views on a 
world which neither knows nor cares about God. I would counter 
government and law have no business in licensing marriage in the first 
place. I assert there is a significant difference between social issues 
and law issues. We have enough cultural rot to let law swallow social 
issues. This is not the biblical way of doing things.

Indeed, there are a whole slew of confusions between grace and law, and 
their proper spheres of application. Some of this question confuses 
secular law, social stability and faith -- these are different things. 
Faith should affect the other two, but not in the way commonly believed 
by far too many American Christians.

I don't like a government that allows or promotes homosexual unions on a 
par with heterosexual unions, but I have come to expect it from our 
nation as we decline into God's wrath reserved for nations which don't 
obey His outline for how secular governments are to behave. Secular law 
here is vastly different from what God expects. In the broad view of 
history, our government is hardly unique among others. So I am not 
really interested in the legal question. I worry about the social 
implications, but I have serious doubts there is room left to resolve 
that problem before God's wrath falls.

What's left is my faith declaration, which should not be subject to the 
other two areas. As others have said, you and I sin every day. Sin is 
awful and we struggle against it until the day He calls us home. How we 
struggle against it makes a huge difference.

Rick Warren's own writing makes it clear there is no spirit realm, no 
such thing as genuine spiritual union with Christ. He pays lip service 
to them, but makes his entire religion ordinary human social conduct 
completely within reach of those spiritual dead. He paints Bible verses 
on top of self-help psychology. His brand of conversion is mere 
psychology, bereft of the miracle of God's grace. Yet he sometimes 
manages to say things I agree with, but that could be said of some truly 
awful figures in history.

-- 
Ed Hurst
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