Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Same sex marriage? Impossible!

TThe brew-ha-ha over the Miss USA pageant contestant possibly losing the crown and money over her response to a question about "gay marriage" provoked me to post.


First of all, I have a problem with professing Christian girls parading their nearly naked bodies in a worldly exhibition that triumphs the carnal sexual lusts and superficial "virtues" of an evil society. It's getting harder and harder to tell Christians apart from the unregenerate walking dead who are enslaved to sin and Satan. This ought not to be! If this is not patently obvious to any professing Christian, they should seriously examine themselves to see whether they be in the faith.

1John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world--the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions--is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.


That being said, the question was loaded and far beyond the scope of a beauty pageant. I have far too little knowledge of the law of this land to speak intelligently on whether states should have the right to decide on same sex marriage or whether a federal law protecting homosexual marriages would be constitutional. As far as I know, either thing may be a perfectly legitimate course of action as concerns our nation's constitution. It seems to me that our founder's had in mind a system of government ruled by consensus view, with some individual rights written in to protect minority groups.


There may be coming a day (and probably sooner than later) when the majority view in the United States is that gays have the right to marry. I'm sure that our founders would never have envisioned such a thing, but as they have written our nation's constitution with a purpose of protecting the people from the tyranny of state churches, there is no clause that such matters must be settled biblically.


Those Christians who protest that biblical language was used in our founding documents, that the founders were largely Christians etc. seem to largely ignore this point. The founders did not omit the bible as a legal guide in the constitution out of ignorance; they knew that such language would require that the government have an agency to interpret the bible on legal matters and that requires a state church.


But the point I want to make is this; it makes no difference whether states or the federal government or the world government or the popular view says gays can marry- it is impossible for two people of the same sex to get married. Because marriage is not a human institution but divine. It was instituted by God and God decides the parameters of marriage. And those parameters are clearly defined in the scriptures. God does not recognize same sex unions as marriage but rather an abomination and grievous sin. It is rebellion and hatred for God to despise his parameters concerning marriage and sexual relationships.


Moreover, marriage is a covenant pact that is witnessed by God and joined by God. A piece of paper or a state or federal bureaucrat or a judge or liberal "minister" does not join people in marriage, only God does or can.


And what God hath not joined, let no man bind together. There will never be any two people of the same sex married. No matter what they believe or our culture stipulates. Same sex marriage is impossible.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Website Update

It has been a while since I posted to the blog, so I figure an update is in order. I've been busily wrestling with the html of the website and I am happy to report I have a design that I believe will be very functional and visually appealing. Multiple level and redundant linking should make navigating the site easy and intuitive for a variety of users. Like the old website, there will be a section specific site search that allows you to search the site by section. The look will be gray scale, three column. I've worked to ensure that the site will work with the most popular browsers and a variety of screen resolutions. Ref-tagger will be employed to maximum effectiveness, making all scripture references immediately available by simply hovering the mouse cursor over the reference, with a box available to change the bible version if you want to (the default will be the ESV).

The part that's supposed to be easy is over, and now the hard part will be filling with enough content to make it ready for reveal. I've been thinking about how to get the word out, advertising here, emailing prominent internet ministries and bloggers, submitting to search engines, etc.

I pray that God use this according to his purpose, by his grace and for his glory.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Get ready for my new website

This week I've begun construction of a new site to replace my old site. The main reason is that I want to use a domain name and a different name (the new site will be "A Confessional Baptist" like this blog), and since I don't use any dynamic server side software this would mean going through the pages of my old site and changing hundreds of links by hand, something I'm not willing to devote the time to.

Other reasons are the archaic look and rather clunky HTML. My HTML skills are far from mad, but hopefully the new site will be slicker, cleaner, more modern looking, and easier for me to keep updated. I hope that it will be more cross-browser functional, as the non-IE browsers are gaining in popularity.

As far as content changes, the new site will be more focused on Reformed Baptist resources. There are a lot of Reformed resource sites on the internet, but very few that focus and give preference to Reformed Baptist resources. The Reformed Reader is still online and the best site I've found for Reformed Baptist info but it is no longer being updated. As far as generally Reformed resource sites, nobody can beat Monergism.com and they have that well covered. No need to re-invent the wheel.

The content will be mostly categorized off-site links, but I will have some confessional Baptist documents on site and original articles. My plan is to have an introductory page for each category with links to on-site and off-site resources that are category specific. Preference will be given to Reformed Baptist resources in every category.

Lord willing I will have the site up and running in the next couple of months. I'll keep you posted. If there is anything you would like to see on a website let me know in the comments to this post and I will consider it.