|
COLLECTIVE GUILT:
BEWARE THE POOFTER AMONG YE
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, struck down the
nation's remaining sodomy laws on the books in 13 states, including
Texas, ruling on a Houston case that homosexual couples have the
right to engage in consensual sex in the privacy of their homes. –
New York Times News Service report, June 26, 2003.
Once again, current
fashionable thinking expresses itself – well, in a manner of
speaking. The popular “mind” as well as government and the media
all bray loudly that individual sins are the individual’s
business. After all, what I do in the privacy of our own homes
concerns only me, and not the community. Keep your nose out of
my business, you hypocritical, do-gooding meddler!
Since the Nutty Nine on
High have now weighed into this controversy wielding Samson’s weapon
of choice, I, too, will risk the people’s ire by holding up this
notion to two mirrors.
CAN ADULTS CONSENT?
The Nifty Nine have
adopted the libertarian theory that freedom consists in doing
whatever I want as long as it hurts no one else – the so-called
consenting adult doctrine. This sounds very smart and very clever
until we look closer.
Let us ride this
doctrine to its silly extreme. You are an adult. I am an adult.
Having read too much H. P. Lovecraft & Dostoyevsky, having supped
too deep with Baron von Masoch and the Marquis de Sade, we decide
that we want to experience personally the dark side of human
nature in murder. So I consent for you to strangle me to death.
Wait, wait,
you say, you can’t give consent to somebody to murder you!
But why not, I ask? If
“consent” is the standard by which we judge right and wrong, and
“consent” absolves the evil in sodomy, then why can’t consent to
absolve the evil in murder?
Right.
Because murder is still murder. Because consent can never absolve
breaking the law. Because what makes murder murder is, is,
is . . . gee, what does make it murder?
A CASE OF UNCERTAIN
MURDER
Murder so violently
disorders the cosmic moral order that mute creation finds a voice,
and the outraged earth itself calls out to heaven for justice.
Murdered blood pollutes the very ground itself, and only the blood
of the murderer can cover that innocent blood. (Numbers 35:33, 34)
In turn, the community must respond by attempting to bring
the perpetrator to justice. To fail in this duty is to leave the
guilt on the community.
But what happens in a
case of uncertain murder? The community must clean its hands
somehow, but the murderer has left no trail. To the Hebrew nation
God prescribed a particular ritual for cases of uncertain murder.
When the body was found, the elders of the nearest town were to take
a young cow that had never ploughed and walk her to a valley with
running water, a valley never planted. There they had to break the
heifer’s neck, and wash their hands over her, proclaiming their
innocence and asking forgiveness for the bloodguilt. (Deuteronomy
21:1-9).
From this two principles
of divine law emerge. First, the community has a positive duty to
enforce the law. Second, sin pollutes not just the sinner, but also
the land. Third, a polluted land pollutes the people of the land.
Other sins that pollute the whole land are idolatry and the
associated child sacrifice (Ps. 106:38; Jeremiah 2:23; Ezekiel
23:30; 36:18), adultery (Jeremiah 3:1), fornication (Jeremiah 3:2),
and other sexual sins (Leviticus 18:28& 20:22), among them
specifically homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13; 1 Cor.
6:9-10). These sins, in fact, promise to make the land “spew out”
her inhabitants.
WHO IS THE VICTIM?
The notion that creation
itself becomes animated enough to react against sin shocks our
modern minds. Before shock passes to disbelief, however, we first
ought to ask a question. Who exactly is offended when a sin or
crime is committed? Our minds dart immediately to the victim, the
family, society, even the self, but these are only offended
secondarily. Sin primarily offends God himself, and
violates his created order. Sin, then has nothing to do with
consenting adults acting in private – nothing remains “private’ or
“secret” from God.
Consider David the
king. David first committed adultery with Bathsheba, then
aggravated the sin by using guile and trickery to murder his
subordinate Uriah. When he comes to repent he specifically
confesses, “Against thee, and thee only, have I sinned.”
(Psalm 51)
What in the world does
David mean? We want to ask, “What about Bathsheba? What about
Uriah? What about the kingdom?” But David knows that the magnitude
of the offense against God makes all these others pale into
insignificance. David’s adultery and murder so viciously offended
God that in comparison he had not even sinned against any other.
That primary
offense makes the crime. Murder is murder – and sin is sin –
because God the Creator defines it as sin. If God does not exist,
then no law and no morality is possible. Men would not need the
moral, only the useful.
Even though the Supreme
Court long ago abandoned any sense of enforcing Biblical law, still
from a biblical standpoint all law is based on a divine warrant from
God and his character.
The most common
objection to laws against sodomy, adultery, prostitution, pedophilia,
etc., indeed, the objection the supreme court has accepted,
is that these are all so-called “victimless” crimes. “Nobody else
is hurt, so there is no victim.”
The logic of consenting
adults acting in private gets things all wrong. It contends that
the crime has no “victim” because (1) both parties consented, and
(a) since the essence of crime/sin is that it is done without one
party’s consent, as in rape or robbery, (b) then no crime occurs if
both parties consent, and (2) they act not in public but in private,
where none may offended because none can see.
The answer is, God is
offended. Paul warns adulterers that the avenger in these
matters is not the husband, as you’d think, but God himself. (I
Thess. 4:6). And guilt attaches to the nation which fails to punish
these sins, or, worse yet, actively promotes them as the United
States does.
THAT’S JUST YOUR OPINION
Those who proudly bear
the high banner of autonomous immorality will say, “That’s just your
opinion” or “That’s just your interpretation.”
Sorry, it’s not my
opinion, it’s what the Word of God plainly declares – and the Word
itself only allows you to take it or leave it. It is either the
binding Word of God, or it is worthless.
It makes no difference
whether you agree with my argument or not, sin still primarily
offends God, and, as the saying goes, “If Mama’s not happy, nobody
is.” That applies to nations in spades: “If God’s not happy,
nobody is.” Count on it.
Judgement doesn’t
require us to do anything – march, protest, etc.
although there’s nothing wrong with that – since it doesn’t depend
on us. God has been angered; God will repay. He is longsuffering
and may patiently withhold complete destruction for a long time,
waiting for repentance (Jonah 4:1-2). Still, in another sense
punishment comes directly with the sin. The first taste of sin
emboldens to the next, and progressively hardens the conscience, so
that sinners spirals down from worse to worse and receive “in their
own persons the due penalty of their error. ” (Romans 1:1:27, 28)
PUNISH THE INNOCENT WITH
THE GUILTY?
But what has this to do
with the nation? Surely because of a few stupid judges and a
handful of sodomites God will not punish the innocent, those who
refrain from sodomy and condemn it?
When the prophet
Habakkuk looks around the Hebrew nation, he sees nothing but
wickedness everywhere. Do something, Lord! He cries.
And God answers, but the
answer was far, far from what Habakkuk expected. The Chaldeans, God
says, I will send the Chaldeans, and they will kill them all, the
innocent with the guilty, and those they do not kill they will haul
away into captivity.
But God! Habakkuk
answers, ‘Thou are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not
look on iniquity.” Will you suffer the more wicked to punish the
less wicked, and put also the innocent under their hand?
Setting aside the
greater question of theodicy )the justification of God’s ways
to man), God’s conversation with Habakkuk plainly proves that
nations are judged just as individuals are. Worse yet, when God
sends judgement, the innocent are likely to suffer with the guilty.
They suffer punishment not as evil individuals, but as covenant
members of an evil nation. Whether we like it or not, nature binds
us together as covenant members of a nation.
Did the Nazi leaders of
Germany sin against God? Did punishment rain down on the nation, on
the innocent and the guilty? Exactly how does the United States
differ?
RIGHTEOUSNESS EXALTS A
NATION
Here we begin to
understand the depth of “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a
reproach to any people.” That is, God judges men and nations.
Where does that leave
us? Plainly, it is a lie to say that “what I do in the privacy of
my own home doesn’t’ affect anyone else.”
When the nation lives by
lies, when the nation institutionalises fraud and oppression (as we
have through our financial system and through usury), when a nation
worships idols (as we worship Mammon and Liberty and Self), when a
nation violently wounds and murders its own and strangers, when a
nation endures and even promotes adultery and sodomy and every
impurity, when a nation murders its own children and sacrifices them
to the idol of Self and Ambition and Convenience, will God not judge
that nation?
… BUT SIN IS A REPROACH
We all know he will. We
wince, and hunch our shoulders against that chill wind. This latest
supreme court decision -- like the train of evil decisions before
it, like the supremacy of the wicked men who rule our lives, like
the crowd of oppressions we daily suffer – is only the first breath
of judgement. God has given us over to evil. We look over our
shoulders furtively, and see Habakkuk, and try to blot out the
memory – but the wind only blows stronger, and more chill.
What sodomites do in the
privacy of their own homes, and behold, even in the midst of
the streets, what abortionists do in the privacy of their own
clinics, where the blood drips discretely down the sewage pipes,
what bankers and corporate executives and accountants do to practice
fraud in the privacy of their own offices, what lawyers and judges
do to justify fraud in the privacy of their own courtrooms, what
adulterers do in the privacy of their own lusts and in their own
bodies, what lascivious America does before the sweaty privacy of
its own TV sets, all these are charged to America’s account. All
these will we pay, sweat for sweat, pain for pain, blood for blood.
NOBODY’S PERFECT
But you may object, “No
nation is perfect.” Indeed, that’s true, but with full mercy God
offers us a way out. Remember the uncertain murder? Symbolically &
ceremonially the heifer’s innocent blood rather than the
perpetrator’s guilty blood covers the innocent blood crying from the
ground. A satisfactory substitute is made. God honours the
helpless efforts of the people toward righteousness by himself
offering a means of restoration.
Smaller and greater, the
heifer ritual teaches us two things. First, enforcing the law is
not the exclusive job of law enforcement. Rather, to insist that
the law be obeyed, to intervene in person if no other means avails,
to create all the institutions and laws necessary to build and keep
a righteous society, this is the duty of every citizen without
exception. We can delegate the performance of this duty, but we
cannot evade its responsibility. Where the members of a nation
refuse to perform this duty, God will judge the nation.
The heifer also shows us
a greater thing – our utter inability, nationally and personally, to
cover our own sins. Without God’s pitying help, the blood keeps on
crying out from the dust for vengeance, and all our feckless efforts
cannot stop that terrible mouth. God himself must cover our sins,
and this holds true for nations no less than men. Ultimately the
blood of innocent will be covered only in one of two ways: either
by the blood of the guilty, or by the blood of the Substitute.
Either we will all pay for the sins of the nation, or the blood of
Christ will cover and forgive us.
A CHRISTIAN NATION
This is what it means to
be a “Christian” nation. Not that we have laws requiring every
citizen to join the Baptist church, or the Methodist church, but
that the only hope of the nation is fixed on Christ, and on no
other. Not that we have laws peering into every man’s conscience,
but that every man’s conscience is purified because the nation
exalts and worships the Triune God, however they may differ in their
individual understanding. Not that petty, meddling laws penetrate
every bedroom to prescribe how you kiss your wife goodnight, but
that hope fixed on Christ works itself out, building forms of
government and law that cultivate righteousness and equity and peace
among men.
The Supreme Court, in
its former incarnation as the land’s high court of justice,
described a Christian nation this way:
If we pass beyond these matters to a view of
American life, as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs,
and its society, we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same
truth. Among other matters note the following: The form of oath
universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty;
the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most
conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, "In the
name of God, amen;" the laws respecting the observance of the
Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the
closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies
on that day; the churches and church organisations which abound in
every city, town, and hamlet; the multitude of charitable
organisations existing everywhere under Christian auspices; the
gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming
to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe. These
and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of
unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that
this is a Christian nation.
(Holy Trinity Church v. U.S. 143 US 457, 12 S.Ct. 511, 36
L.Ed. 226, 2/29/1892)..
FREE TO DO WHAT?
Freedom, it turns out,
is not doing whatever we want as long as it hurts no one else. The
standard of morality is not consent, or being hidden away
from the public’s eyes. In private or in public, we are only free
to do what we have a moral right to do. And certainly we are not
free to engage in sin that brings down God’s judgement on the whole
nation, or to condone it.
Victimless crimes do
have a victim: all of us.
God has cursed us with a
spirit of blindness and self-deceit. We have fooled ourselves into
thinking that the way of death is the way of prosperity.
-- F. Sanders
Back to the previous
page
|
