As a WND report describes:
While interviewing California pastor Rick Warren on CNN Monday night [--> i.e. Christmas Eve, cf Charisma magazine's comment], Morgan called for a same-sex marriage “amendment” to the Bible.
“Both the Bible and the Constitution were well intentioned but they are basically, inherently flawed. Hence, the need to amend it,” Morgan claimed. My point to you about gay rights, for example, it’s time for an amendment to the Bible.”
[U/D, Dec 29th: Apparently, someone has issued just such an "amended" Bible -- the so-called "Queen James"Bible, which objectively distorts the Hebrew and Greek at crucial points in eight key passages. For example 1 Cor 6:9 - 11 is "amended" to speak of the “morally weak, nor promiscuous . . . ” where in fact the actual raw Greek words mean -- forgive the distasteful specificity -- participators in passive and active male homosexual unnatural acts of sodomy. And so forth. Michael Brown of Charisma therefore aptly concludes: "to sum things up, we can say that the Queen James Bible accomplishes the exact opposite of what it sets out to do: It provides eloquent testimony that the Bible and homosexual practice are incompatible." (HT: A certain reader.)]
Warren, a strong opponent of same-sex marriage replied: “Not a chance. What I believe is flawed is human opinion, because it constantly changes. …We need to ask a pointed question (one I wish Mr Warren had asked): so what is Mr Morgan going to do with the thousands of years of manuscripts and printed copies of the Bible that would give the lie to such a censored and falsified Bible?
“I willingly admit that I base my worldview on the Bible, which I believe is true. My definition of truth is: If it’s new, it’s not true. If it was true 1,000 years ago, it will be true 1,000 years from today. Opinion changes, but truth doesn’t.”
“We’re going to agree to disagree on that,” said Morgan.
Burn them? (By whose "authority" and power?)
Gaol -- starting with slandering as "bigoted" and hate-driven -- those who in defense of conscience, right to worship God and freedom to stand up for what is right by conscience, scripture and reason?
Does he really want to go down that road? (As in: P-E-R-S-E-C-U-T-I-O-N . . . )
Sad to say, we must ask this, for we are now plainly at a terrible threshold.
However, having called for censorship of core Christian morality and foundational documents, Mr Morgan then went on to say: “The debate should always be respectful. It applies to politics, too. The moment it becomes disrespectful and discourteous and then rude and then poisonous, you never achieve anything.”
Evidently, Mr Morgan was utterly unconscious of the irony in his behaviour, especially given how he has been treating other guests at CNN recently.
But the matter is not just one man in isolation spouting from the top of his head.
For, it is obvious that Mr Morgan would never have suggested on international television something like that the Bible is "well intentioned but . . . basically, inherently flawed" nor would he have demanded censorship of the foundational scripture and moral teachings of the Christian faith if he was not confident that he would be backed up by CNN's power brokers if it came to a controversy.
Not only so, but he would have to have been confident that the underlying attitude would find significant support in his social-cultural circles.
Such behaviour therefore speaks telling volumes about the balance of power among the secularist elites in our civilisation, and about their onward intent towards those who take the Christian Scriptures seriously, the Scriptures themselves, and the churches that stand by these Scriptures.
In short, we face a deeply rooted, influential and fundamentally dismissive hostility that is brazenly confident not only that the Scriptures can be dismissed as of no merit -- indeed they intend here to sit in judgement on the Word of God and the God who backs them up [who they probably think is imaginary] -- but, they also think that they can now successfully impose their agenda on the civilisation.
Moreover, given the twist-about remarks on civility in the context of an utterly uncivil suggestion of censorship, anyone who stands up firmly and speaks out uncompromisingly in objection to the agenda will be dismissed as angry, hateful and poisonous. (In short the closing sting in the tail talking point was meant to intimidate those who would object.)
All of this goes to what Christian Concern and the Christian legal Centre in Britain -- where Mr Morgan hails from -- has been warning in the aftermath of the Bull and Johns cases there:
It also obviously goes to the credibility of the foundations of the Christian faith such as we have heard dismissed over and over again in recent days, especially around Christmas time and Easter. Specifically and especially, it concerns the resurrection of Jesus.
Such men therefore need to be reminded of Paul's words before the Areopagus Council in Athens in AD 50, as were recorded by Luke in Acts 17. For, this passage records what Paul had to say to the Athenians, who were just as eager for the latest news and ideas as we are today:
Ac 17:19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription,
‘To the unknown god.’
What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
29 Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” [ESV.]Of course, had Paul been allowed to continue, he would doubtless have pointed out that this was vouchsafed as on the ground factual truth by over five hundred witnesses, most of whom were then alive, and by the live transforming miracle working power brought to bear by that same risen Christ.
A power that -- if we are but willing to search, look, listen and treat the evidence reasonably -- is still evident today, in literally millions of lives.
So, fundamentally, we need to face the force of the gospel and the credibility and integrity of the Scriptures that record and report it, having been passed down to us at fearful sacrifice by men and women who would not surrender the truth in the face of intimidation, threats, torture, fire and sword.
And in so doing, we need to always pay attention to the counsel, correction -- and, not least, genuine hope for rescue and transformation -- that Mr Morgan would dismiss in his haste to censor the Word of God that he so evidently despises:
1 Cor 6: 9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. [ESV. NB the significance of the twelve step type programme of addiction/life dominating sin recovery pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous.]As we saw from just one example, the scriptures -- in many places -- are quite clear that homosexual behaviour is sinful, wrongful, destructive and against the creation order for marriage and sexuality. Indeed, Jesus is quite clear about the proper order for marriage from creation that must not be trifled with as Mr Morgan and his ilk would (which order is actually obvious from the complementarity of man and woman in procreation and nurture of the next generation).
Let us hear our long since risen and exalted Lord:
Matt 19: 1 Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. 2 And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.The creation order mandate could not be more explicit, and if divorce was questionable, how much moreso is the perversion of that order through clever slogans that would pervert marriage through homosexual agendas?
3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?”
4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” [ESV]
But also, we see just how deeply destructive the "marriage equality" agenda recently endorsed by the US President Obama is, for the plain intent here is to violate freedom of conscience, freedom of worship, freedom of expression and freedom to stand up for such rights, once they cut across the homosexualist agenda.
All that is bound up in the declared intent to censor the Christian scriptures and faith.
Where also, in case you have been led to imagine that this is backed up by "science," you may find the reading here a good place to begin clarification. For as Neil and Briar Whitehead advise:
The West has been subject to such a campaign of misinformation and disinformation in the last 20-30 years that its public institutions, from legislatures and judiciaries to the church and mental health professions widely believe that the homosexual orientation is innate—in the sense of biologically imprinted—and therefore unchangeable.
The implications of this are that anyone who makes the scientifically true statements below is considered the one who is misinformed.
• sexual orientation is not inborn but develops over some years in response to an individual’s response to life events— as many human predicaments doThe West has lost its way on this issue, and today we are seeing the outcome . . .
• homosexual orientation can change, i.e half the homosexual population naturally moves towards heterosexuality over time (without any therapeutic interventions), and further and
faster with counselling and support
• The same-sex attracted are not 10% of the population but (including bisexuals) much closer to 2.5%
Those are quite strong words, but they are backed up. Clipping the summary from Ch 1 in the 2010 online downloadable version (and of course, there is much more, with a lot of details; especially note the rebuttals to common myths):
No mainstream geneticist is happy with the idea that genes dictate behaviour, particularly homosexual behaviour.In short the homosexualist agenda is questionable both morally and scientifically, but is seeking to seize the political agenda and have itself given false colours of legitimacy under law to the point where freedom of conscience, religious freedom and freedom of expression are beginning to be trampled. Now, to the point where Mr Morgan of CNN feels safe in openly dismissing the gospel and its call for penitence from sin, indeed he is outright calling for censorship of the Bible.
• Genetically dictated behaviour is something that has so far been discovered only in very simple organisms.
• From an understanding of gene structure and function there are no plausible means by which genes could inescapably force SSA or other behaviours on a person. Genes create proteins not preferences.
• No genetically determined human behaviour has yet been found. The most closely genetically-related behaviour yet discovered (aggression in Dutch males) has shown itself remarkably responsive to counselling.
• If SSA were genetically dictated, it would have bred itself out of the population in only several generations, and wouldn’t be around today.
• Generally, geneticists settle for some genetic influence of rather undefined degree, most agreeing that many genes (from at least five or six to many hundreds) contribute to any particular human behaviour.
• A genetically dominated SSA caused by such a cluster of genes could not suddenly appear and disappear in families the way it does. It would stay around for many generations. So SSA is not produced by many genes.
• The occurrence of SSA in the population is too frequent to be caused by a chance mutation in a single gene. So a single gene is not responsible for SSA. Nor would many genes all mutate at once.
• SSA occurs too frequently to be caused by a faulty pre-natal developmental process, so it is not innate in that sense either.
• The widespread age-range of first homosexual attraction is very unlike the narrow time-spread of genetically driven phases of human life, e.g gestation time, puberty, menopause, making homosexuality very unlikely to be genetically driven. The histone system which controls genetic expression is strongly affected by the environment, e.g nurturing, making searches for individual genes responsible for certain behaviours, mostly pointless.
• Same-sex attraction could be about 10% genetically influenced and opposite sex attraction about 15%. But this is weak and indirect, e.g genes making a man tall don’t also produce basketball players.
• SSA falls more naturally into the category of a psychological trait
Well, it has been said that a lion does not need to be defended, just to be let loose.
So, let us now conclude with a word from the prince of prophets, and with a second word from the Apostle Peter as he faced martyrdom for the same gospel we proclaim today:
Isa 5: 18 Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood,
who draw sin as with cart ropes,
19 who say: “Let him be quick,
let him speed his work
that we may see it;
let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near,
and let it come, that we may know it!”
20 Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!
21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
and shrewd in their own sight! [ESV]
And:
2 Peter 1: 16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty . . . .
. 19 And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.
21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. [ESV]
We can hardly say that we have not been counselled in good time, in those very same Scriptures that Mr Morgan would now censor to his convenience.
Let us trust that Mr Morgan will pause, reflect and heed the counsel to repent and turn from the wrong tot he right, in light of that set day of Judgement, of which we have proof by the resurrection from the dead. END
