The key event
of an annual festival showcasing aberrant sexual lifestyles was held yesterday
as members of the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender “community” took to
London’s streets with floats, rainbow flags, placards, and pink cowboy hats in
the LGBT + Community Pride Parade. Publicity for the popular event said the
theme for this year’s parade was “Love (and Marriage)”. Reality check. Love
isn’t about promiscuous pleasure, dangerous desires, deviant dalliances, or
sinful expressions of sexuality. Love is best summed up not in “getting for self” but rather in “giving up self.” It is also telling that
marriage is relegated to the status of a parenthetical afterthought on the
parade’s adverts. The fuss that has been made about legalizing same-sex
marriage isn’t really a campaign to “strengthen” (!?) a creation-old
institution. After all, how do you help something by opening it up to those for
whom it was never intended? No, love (and marriage) aren’t really the issues.
The overall name of the parade says what it is really all about: Pride.
God’s design
is that sexual behaviour take place in the marriage of a man and a woman (Gen.
2:24; quoted by Jesus in Matt. 19:5, and by Paul in Eph. 5:31). Man’s proud design is that God be lowered
to our depraved and fallen standards. God is perfect and that can’t happen; we
are proud and disagree - so we create idols, exchanging the immortal God’s
glory for images in keeping with our imagination and desires (Rom. 1:23, 25).
Having proudly gone against what is natural in faith (for creatures to worship
the Creator) we go against what is natural in practice, arrogantly breaking the
Creator’s laws. The Apostle Paul seems to regard homosexuality as the ultimate
demonstration of this prideful travesty, writing of “dishonourable” desires and
“shameless” acts between members of the same gender (Rom. 1:26-27). Lest anyone
think they are in the clear though, he also lists other manifestations of
humanity’s folly that proudly masquerade as “wisdom” (Rom. 1:28-31). In any
case, God’s righteous decree is “that those who practice such things deserve to
die.” Sadly, in pride, people “not only do them but give approval to those who
practice them” (Rom. 1:32).
Whether they
have a parade or not, all sins are rooted in the damned foundations of proud
selfishness. “But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord
knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord
depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19).
This was printed in the worship bulletin of Grace Baptist Church (Wood Green) on 30/06/2013.
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