By Marta Alves © May 17, 2012
Christian morality is under attack today. Our moral values are being eroded at the base. It is like seeing the river flood waters reach the foundation of our home and wash away the sand from underneath. Very soon the house will fall into the river, washed away by the flood waters.
We, Christians are a Covenant People and marriage is the foundation of our family units. What is happening today has the institution of marriage under attack. Marriage is a promise made by a man and a woman and witnessed by God. As Covenant People, we are in a relationship of love that God initiated. The story is told in the Bible. God said Jeremiah 7:23, “Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you that it may go well with you.”
The statement of the President of the United States saying that he supports homosexual marriages seems to be on everyone’s mind this week of May 17, 2012. Have we as a nation forgotten the Law of God? In the Bible, there are no homosexual marriages. Marriage is honored in Hebrews 13:4: “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.”
God’s law says that marriage is between a man and a woman, so the Law of God commands. If we stand silent and do not work to build the Kingdom of God on this earth, in our nation, in our cities, in our neighborhood, we commit the sin of omission. God is God and we are not. We cannot rewrite the Ten Commandments and make them the Ten Choices. We need to be a nation under God’s Law to prosper and grow in God’s blessings. Identify immorality and weed it out of our society.
Let us honor God with our bodies as 1 Corinthians 18-20 reads: “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”
Yesterday, I read in the internet that the word homosexual is not found in the Bible, and that is right, but homosexual relationships are mentioned and condemned in Romans 1:26-27, which is worth reading. It is good to read Romans 18-32, when Saint Paul talks about how men “exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”
We are a covenant people. God initiated the covenant. He is the King of kings and Lord of Lords above worldly ruler and government. The conditions of the initial covenant still hold.
The Lord God says in the book of Jeremiah 31:31-34:
This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
We are the people of God, guided and redeemed by Jesus Christ, true God and true man, the second person of the Holy Trinity. The Ten Commandments are commands from God not the Ten Choices of Man.
How have we deviated so that immorality is becoming law in this world? For example, abortion is legal. The youngest of all human beings is not safe in his mother’s womb. Now, we are advocating homosexual marriages, why? The good people are silent. We need to speak and no longer be silent. We need to become Christian leaders and lead others to the Truth.
We will be rewarded by the good we do and judged by the evil we have caused for the good we did not do. We need to speak for the reverence and respect of the human marriage between a man and a woman. Marriage is the brick used to build the building of our nation. Marriage is the nest in which good morals are taught.
We are called to pray in family for the family to survive. There is a call to all of us in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “ if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
Homosexuality is to be led in chastity. It is not for procreation. It is not for marriage. In the Catholic community, everyone is welcome but we are to follow the rules of behavior commanded by God. We remember what God told Abraham in Genesis 22:18: “…through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”
We reflect on two Bible quotes. The first one is Romans 13:10-14:1
Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law. And do this because you know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand. Let us then throw off the works of darkness (and) put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh. Welcome anyone who is weak in faith, but not for disputes over opinions.
The second Biblical quote is 2 Peter 1:2-4,
"Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." 2 Peter 1:2-4
We are all called to be brothers and sisters in Christ. The rules to follow for a moral Christian society are found in the Ten Commandments, which are summarized by Jesus Christ in the Great Commandment in Matthew 22:37-40,
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
We are to help build the Kingdom of God on this earth, beginning today with God’s grace. The beatitudes tell us how to obey the commandments. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will know mercy” tell us to be merciful to all. In the spirit of the divine law, we condemn sin but always minister to the sinners, because we are all sinners.
We conclude with the story of the blind man, in Luke 18-35-43, who very well could represent our morally “blind” nation coming to Jesus for healing.
Now as he approached Jericho a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging, and hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what was happening. They told him, "Jesus of Nazareth is passing by." He shouted, "Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!"
The people walking in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent, but he kept calling out all the more, "Son of David, have pity on me!"Then Jesus stopped and ordered that he be brought to him; and when he came near, Jesus asked him,
"What do you want me to do for you?" He replied, "Lord, please let me see."
Jesus told him, "Have sight; your faith has saved you."
He immediately received his sight and followed him, giving glory to God. When they saw this, all the people gave praise to God. +