‘What are we Christians to do?’ Jesus has already answered that

By David McElroy · June 28, 2015

In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage in the United States, I’ve seen a lot of ugly things said by those on both sides. I’ve tried not to read much of the reaction, because the vitriol depresses me and it makes me angry when people are unfair to those they don’t understand.

I have an opinion about the subject, which I’ve expressed before. I don’t have anything new to add on the basic issue, but a question Sunday from a social conservative — and fell0w Christian — has been gnawing at me for hours.

Speaking at the Kimberly Church of God in Kimberly, Ala., today, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court railed against the marriage ruling. Chief Justice Roy Moore is expected to try to stop probate judges in Alabama from granting marriage licenses to gay couples, and he’s been one of the loudest political voices insisting that the state has a responsibility to enforce God’s morality (as he sees it).

“Is there any such a thing as morality anymore?” asked Moore. “Sodomy for centuries was declared to be against the laws of nature and nature’s God. And now if you say that in public, and I guess I am, am I violating somebody’s civil rights? Have we elevated morality to immorality? Do we call good, bad? What are we Christians to do?”

I’d like to suggest to Mr. Moore and many other sincere fellow Christians that Jesus Christ answered that question long ago.

The premise of Moore’s questions is that government determines what is moral and what is not. This is a serious error — and you won’t find any support for it from Jesus.

When Jesus walked on this earth, He spent much more time with sinners than with the religious people of His day. He didn’t excuse the wrong that sinners did, but he lovingly showed them the truth.

You won’t find one example — in all of the Gospels — of Jesus asking for any sin to be stopped by force, government or otherwise. You won’t find one example of Jesus asking that His will be carried out by force. You won’t find a single time when He said, “In order to feed the poor, go forcibly take money from other people.”

Both left and right today try to force their own views onto who Jesus was, but Jesus wasn’t a political figure. You won’t find any evidence that Jesus supported coercive political solutions to the sin He preached against.

If you believe that homosexuality is a sin, nothing changed with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. If you believe that homosexuality is just a normal part of human experience, nothing changed insofar as the morality of the issue with the ruling. Governments don’t determine what’s moral and what’s not.

If you believe that certain things are sins, you have the same freedom today to preach about those things and to call people to repentance from sin. Nothing changed for you.

Roy Moore asked what we Christians are to do. Wasn’t Jesus clear enough about that?

— Jesus told us to love our enemies and to do good to those who persecute us.

— Jesus told us to give generously to the needy. He didn’t say to rely on government to take care of people. (And He also didn’t validate those who would steal from others to give to the poor.) He gave His followers this task.

— Jesus told us not to be concerned with building up earthly wealth, but to be concerned about spiritual treasures instead.

— Jesus told us not to judge other people. He told us to worry about the sin in our own lives instead of being so eager to tell others what’s wrong with them.

Throughout scripture, Jesus instructed His followers how to live. He never once said anything about taking over the levers of government and forcing other people to obey His commands. He told His own people to do things — and He told us to exhibit love in all we did.

He told us that we don’t have the things we need because we don’t have faith.

So to Chief Justice Roy Moore and my other fellow Christians, I say that Jesus has already given us instructions. We have been very deficient in obeying Him. Some Christians have been more obedient about these things than others, but most of us have something to learn and something to repent for.

My responsibility to love other people is far more important than my need to convince others that I’m right about anything — and that’s true for those of you who are stridently and angrily hating enemies right now.

Jesus has given us plenty to do. It’s time to set politics aside. It’s time for us to realize that Jesus didn’t come here to set up an earthly kingdom. Whatever you believe, preach it in love — and remember that Jesus gives every man and woman the choice about whether to obey.

It’s not your job to force people to be moral — or to determine what morality is for them.

Our job is to follow Jesus and emulate Him in the best way we know how. I’m not very good at it, but I have faith that He is slowly making me the man He wants me to be.

Loving others — whether we agree with them or not — is the first responsibility Jesus has given us toward others. He’s already told us what to do.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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