A recently published article entitled “‘This Week’ Panel: Are Evangelicals Out of Touch With Mainstream Views?” addresses the dramatic shift in public opinion on gay marriage. A recent poll said 59% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage with that figure rising to 75% from those polled less than thirty years of age. This is an about-face on this issue regarding public thought just twenty years ago.
The article is in step with public opinion and questions the Christian position on same-sex marriage. This issue is riding the wave of public popularity at present. The Christian community has been called vicious, intolerant, and homophobic. They claim those who hold to biblical principles will be “on the wrong side of history” when the dust eventually settles. This article suggests we are “out of touch” with mainstream views.
Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich authored Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf and it was published in 1936. Reich in strict Freudian fashion claimed mental problems were caused by repression of natural sexual instincts. This repression was in turn caused by the over socialization of the super-ego by Judeo-Christian morality. When his book was translated into English in 1945 it was entitled The Sexual Revolution.
Here in America “the sexual revolution” began in earnest in the 1960s. I do not think it was Reich’s ideology that caused our society to abandon several millennia of biblical wisdom on sex. Reich may have provided an excuse, but our headlong rush into hedonism was sparked by nothing more than old-fashioned lust; it felt good to have uninhibited sex, at first.
Then life got complicated. Marriages crumbled, babies were aborted, sexually transmitted diseases, and teen pregnancies began to skyrocket. In time a new disease arose, AIDS. Heterosexuals feeling guilty and confused over their own sexual practices could not say no to homosexuals and “marriage equality.”
The sexual revolution has not been kind to America. And while Christians are being maligned as vicious, intolerant, and homophobic, we provide services and counseling to unwed mothers and those women who have experienced the trauma of abortion, we support medical treatment for those who have sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS. And I have not even addressed the heartache of emotional and psychological trauma caused by all of this.
Paul warns us, “Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body,” 1 Corinthians 6:18. When we embrace sexual immorality we are not just sinning against God, we are sinning against our own bodies. This is a proven medical fact. But if Christians warn others they are engaging in unhealthy sexual practices we are being vicious and intolerant; we are “out of touch” with mainstream views.
When the consequences of your sins become more than you can handle, I recommend that you get in touch with those “out of touch” people. It is the “out of touch” people who offer healing, forgiveness and hope in Christ, that’s who we are in touch with.
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