If the time should come...

News from Canada where the Province of Saskatchewan is using its authority via Canada's infamous "Human Rights Tribunals" to purge those who disagree with same sex marriage from their positions as marriage commisioners (civil servants who perform marriages). Here is a link to a story describing the British government's proposed new rules for adoption agencies which will require all agencies, even those with religious backgrounds, to offer adoption to same sex couples (a policy position already in place in Massachuesetts).

In Western cultures, and places where these cultures have significant influence, the force of law is rapidly being used by homosexual activisits and their secular sympathizers as a tool to marginalize and discriminate against religious believers of all types and Christians in particular. Those we are able to read the times and seasons have argued for years that these various "hate crimes" and "discrimination" laws had a larger agenda then merely protecting people from violence and allow equal access to government services and were, in fact, permeated with a larger desire to use the force of law to coerce a new kind of secular morality and penalize those who dissent.

And there is a possibility that it could get worse.

We in the Church have either compromised ourselves by bending with every cultural wind, given ourselves over to shrill voices, or simply put our head in the sand and failed to make a case for our vision. The result has been two fold. First people are sick and dying because they have believed and acted on the big lie that underlies the secular understanding of morality; the idea that all urges (consumer, sexual, and personal) are normal and beneficial to human happiness and thus should be acted on and protected as rights by the larger society. Second the church has often become irrelevant to the greater culture because it provides no meaningful counter culture, and hence no hope for something better to those millions who are suffering emotionally and physically and seek answers.

So the time may come when our clergy are harrassed through legal proceedings and the faithful subject to public and social ridicule by a culture bent on mindless suicide by ignoring the wisdom of the past, an asylum where the inmates rule and the sane are considered to be mad. The truth will emerge of course, it always does, but the cost will be high in pain and lives and struggle.

But hope is not lost, not by a long shot.

First Christians need to take what happens in the larger culture very seriously and stop passively accepting the darkening night as normal. And we need to see how in ways small and large we ourselves have bought into its lies. Then Christians need to pray, faithfully, vigourously, and passionately about the state of the world. We need to be like the woman with the issue of blood who pushed her way through the crowd to touch Jesus and would not be deterred by the masses or Jacob who grabbed hold of the angel and would not let go until he was blessed even if he walked with a limp for the rest of his life because of it. Finally we need to know and practice our faith on an ever deepening level. Christians who are actually living this life shine in a way that even our enemies have to admire and they make the salvation of those around them possible through their example.

Finally our Lord promised us that in the world we would have many troubles but that we were not to fear because He had overcome the world. Whatever happens in the years to come or in the short time of our lives that promise is sure. We may have to walk through fire to know it, but it is also the hope and the promise that keeps our lamps lit, gives confidence to our shaking voices, and keeps on the journey one step at a time.