You’re free to practice your religion…as long as you don’t bring God into it.
That’s the message we Christians have been getting lately. Our First Amendment guarantee of “free exercise” is conditional on submission to government-sanctioned ideology…not God. If in obeying him we end up offending someone, then our exercise is no longer free but costly and restrictive instead. “Let’s just keep God out of this, shall we?” Such is the unspoken sentiment.
So that a Colorado baker who declined to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding citing God and his law as his authority is charged and convicted of discrimination. But another Colorado baker is given approval for declining to bake cakes expressing that law. The determining factor was not whether the government has a compelling interesting in restricting this religious expression but instead whether it is in opposition to the prevailing secular humanism by which our laws are now interpreted.
WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!
Sorry…I just sensed some of you about to click out.
Honestly, though…there does seem to be a certain somnambulation at work here. Or perhaps more a disinterest or disregard for the spiritual heritage that forms the foundation of our country. Because there is a growing current of discrimination that needs to be identified, and it’s not against homosexuals.
It’s against me.
It’s against each of us with the integrity of our faith that motivates taking a stand…speaking out…daring to live according to what we profess…and believing God to be real, and sovereign. It takes some courage…and I fear more will be required in the future…to say along with the apostle Peter, “We must obey God rather than men.”1
I wrote previously about my personal stake in this issue. And though after much struggle I came to a socially acceptable conclusion, I’m still not quite sure it’s the right one. And my contribution to a same-sex wedding would be much less personal than the artistic contributions of a florist, photographer, or baker. They…we…must be protected from being forced to deny, offend, or oppose our own consciences.
It’s the law, and last I checked…Christians were not excluded from its guarantees.
