We may not fully understand the reasons for God’s laws, but we can be assured they are for our good…always (Deut. 6:24; 10:13). Man’s inability to see the end of the Lord’s actions is illustrated by man’s failure to work out the gospel (1 Cor. 1,2). Nobody worked it out by his own wisdom. This habit of matching wits usually starts as children questioning why parents insist on what they insist. Many can identify with Mark Twain’s observation that when he was at home growing up his father knew nothing but some time after Mark had left home he was impressed by how much his father had learned! Don’t knock down a fence before you know it was put up is an adage worthy of acceptation. If your parents have put up a boundary you are not to cross, respect it – it has been built with experience. Moses said if children want to live long on the earth then they should obey their parents.
God doesn’t always explain why He prohibits or commands something. When God doesn’t supply a reason, He’s saying, in effect “trust me”. But that’s where the Devil steps in with a “reason”. In Eden he suggested that God had an ulterior motive – “you’ll be like Him, knowing good and evil”. This was true, to a point, and sounded plausible. But Adam and Eve didn’t find the knowledge of good and evil so wonderful – their first knowledge of evil was that they had disobeyed with all the inherent consequences. Naturally the Devil is a past master at suggesting that God is against fun – that God loves misery!
But why is the world like it is – so full of problems! We have a world run by experts but its problems know no bounds. Why? Because man rejects God’s ways. The way of man is not in himself said Jeremiah. But God’s ways are for our good always.
What is wrong with abortion? The babies go to Heaven, right? God hates the shedding of innocent blood. It may be that we have already aborted the person who would have found the cure for cancer. What if Moses had been aborted? What if Mary had chosen to abort Jesus? But more than this, the fact is the practice does something to the people who practice it. It creates a society with a climate of death. It is no wonder that on the heels of abortion there comes euthanasia. God says, choose life.
Note the injunction in the law to not muzzle the ox that treads the corn – and as Paul says in 1 Cor. 9 “Does God take care for oxen?” – no, “for our sake’s this was written”. When we abuse animals it does something to us. Connections between child abuse and animal cruelty are commonly found.
God doesn’t always tell us the reason for laws because of technicalities involved. Years ago E.S. McMillen wrote a book entitled ” None of These Diseases” . He got the title from Ex. 15:26 where God tells Israel they would not get the diseases of the Egyptians if they followed His commands. They didn’t know about bacteria that could be seen through a microscope – they didn’t know about contagion and the principle behind quarantine – they didn’t know flies carried disease and so on. With the advent of medical research we now understand why God commanded the things He did.
God also prohibits things like pre-marital sex. It is often thought the Bible is sexually naive, but nothing could be further from the truth. God was the inventor of sex and safe sex. Israel live amongst neighbouring countries that had religious prostitution as part and parcel of life as well as every sexual perversion. Paul and others evangelised in cities where sexual immorality was rampant (1 Cor. 6:9-11). God’s laws on sex are for our good always. Why did God restrict sexual intercourse to marriage? Meg Meeker, a medical doctor, brought out a book entitled Epidemic: How Teen Sex is killing our Kids. She has some chilling observations to make. Amongst other things, she tells us that in 1960 only 2 STD’s existed. Today the number is over 30. One in five kids over the age of eleven has genital herpes – that’s a 500% increase since 1976. 13% of girls aged 15-19 test positive for chlamydia and this is in an age of wonder drugs! There’s a saying that when you sleep with someone, you sleep with everyone that person has slept with.
One of the most pervasive arguments of the Devil has been the idea “try before you buy promotes a better marriage”. Sounds good, doesn’t it. “Living together” with your “partner” is in vogue. Some have bought the line that these “trial marriages” are the way to go in helping prevent divorce. But when God says it is fornication and sin, then no matter what we may think, it won’t do what it is cracked up to do. Sexual adjustments are made within marriage, not outside it. It is not possible to simulate being married without being married. I’ve been to leper colonies in India but I don’t know what it is like to live in those places. Whilst there everything I think and experience is subject to the overriding thought “I can always leave and in a few days I will be back in Australia” – the slum-dweller cannot. When two people live together they are not creating a trial marriage for they are not in a binding covenant which lies at the core of marriage. A relationship that is based on sex is doomed to fail. Sex lies at the core of living together whereas commitment lies at the core of marriage. J.D. Unwin, a British social anthropologist, spent seven years studying the births and deaths of eight civilizations, and concluded that every known culture has followed the same pattern:- during its early years of existence, pre-marital and extra-marital sexual relationships were strictly prohibited. Apparently this inhibition of sexual expression leads to a greater creative energy, causing the culture to prosper. Much later in the life of the society, its people begin to rebel against the strict prohibitions and as the mores weakened, the social energy abated, eventually resulting in the decay or destruction of the civilization. Dr. Unwin stated that the energy which holds a society together is sexual in nature. When a man is devoted to one woman and one family, he is motivated to build, save, protect, plan and prosper on their behalf. However, when his sexual interests are dispersed and generalised, his effort is invested in the gratification of his sexual desires.
If those who disparage the marriage covenant as “just a piece of paper” that means nothing, why are they so afraid of signing it? Generally they are afraid of the commitment and if they do leave the relationship they can do so with no guilt, and vindicate in their own mind the proposition they were only doing it for good of divorce statistics.
Is homosexuality a healthy option? Rom. 1:27 says not. We break the laws of agriculture and sow at the wrong time we reap a crop failure. Homosexual activists attempt to portray their lifestyle as normal and healthy, and insist that homosexual relationships are the equivalent in their way to their homosexual counterparts. Hollywood and the media relentlessly propagate the image of the fit, healthy, and well-adjusted homosexual. It’s not true and even the homosexual newspaper New York Blade News reported several years ago that reports at a national conference about sexually transmitted diseases indicate that gay men are in the highest risk group for several of the most serious diseases.
We are familiar with HIV and AIDS, Gonorrhea and Syphilis – all rampant in the Gay community. There’s a thing called Human Papillomavirus (HPV) which comprises about 70 different types, of which 20 are incurable. According to the homosexual newspaper The Washington Blade , HPV is almost universal amongst homosexuals. Hepatitus A – the Centre for Disease Control says that outbreaks of Hep A among men who have sex with men are a recurring problem in many large cities in the industrial world. Increased risks of contracting Hep B and C are part of the homosexual risk too. There is a thing called GBS (Gay Bowel Syndrome) which is a collection of sexually transmitted gastrointestinal syndromes. A Canadian study a few years ago came to the conclusion we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Truly, as the Bible affirms, this practice is against God and nature and not healthy at all.
But its more than that. A 1975 Dictionary of Psychology states that fetishism, homosexuality, exhibitionism, sadism and masochism are the most common types of perversion. Now, of course, it is not politically correct to call these things perversions but variations. But which ever way you measure it, this sort of activity is obviously suspect. There are exception, but studies indicate that the average male homosexual has hundreds of sexual partners in their lifetime. One study found that almost half have 500 or more partners, and over a quarter have more then 1000. Only 2.7% were monogamous! In another study it was found few homosexual relationships last more than two years. It’s true that heterosexuals abuse the marriage commitment, but they are amateurs compared to the homosexual. Alcohol abuse is higher among homosexuals. And they’re streets ahead in domestic violence. In a book Men Who beat Men Who Love Them it is reported that the incidence of domestic violence among gay men is nearly double that in the heterosexual population. They incur a high incidence of mental health problems – a national survey published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology found that 75% had pursued psychological counselling. They also win in the suicide rates.
Culturally it is a dark and seedy world. You only have to have a glance at the sort of thing that goes on at the Gay Mardi Gras. This kind of thing is supposed to gain public acceptance and normalize it. A street fair that was meant to do the same thing featured public whippings, public sex, sado-masochism, and public nakedness. Fair booths sold bumper stickers which said “God masturbates” and “I Worship Satan” and merchants peddled studded dog collars and whips (but not for their dogs). On the sidelines of the fair was a man dressed as a Catholic nun, strapped to a cross with his buttocks exposed, and onlookers were invited to whip him for a two dollar donation. What does all this sort of thing tell us about what happens to our thinking when we get away from God’s laws? As Joseph Nicolosi, a U.S. President of the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuals said, How long can psychologists be in denial about the significance of the dark side, and ignore what it implies about the homosexual condition?
God hasn’t made laws to punish or afflict us, but for our good always. We reject them at our peril. Opposition to homosexuality is not because of hatred, but out of concern for homosexuals’ physical, psychological and spiritual health.