"The time and energy we so often expend in trying to get other people to do and be what we wish, whether sexual or not, could be more constructively channeled into building relationships with those people. Relationships are neither an exercise in manipulation nor a joint enterprise of individual fulfillment; they are a mutual adventure in knowing."
It seems that envy of the rich, or animosity toward the rich, is such a deeply engrained characteristic in many people's minds that they are not willing to let the rich keep more of their money even if this would mean collecting more government money in taxes and increasing personal freedom in society as a whole. The most important thing is thought to be taking more money from the "wealthy," who presumably are thought to have gotten their money unjustly or are thought not to deserve the money they have earned.
-Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible, 289.
"No matter what we try sexually, relationally, or chemically, nothing satisfies us. Indeed, the more we depend on these, the less return they provide. The tragedy of the fall is that we get nothing for which we hoped and lose all that we wanted. Instead of freedom, we become enslaved to our senses and impulses and quite literally try to find love in all the wrong places." - Kuehne, Sex and the iWorld, 137.
The more instantaneous our technology, the more we are losing the ability to communicate. Twitter and text-messaging result in economy of expression, not in clarity or beauty. Millions are becoming premodern — communicating in electronic grunts that substitute for effective and dignified expression. Indeed, by inventing new abbreviations and linguistic shortcuts, we are losing a shared written language altogether, in a way analogous to the fragmentation of Latin as the Roman Empire imploded into tribal provinces. No wonder the public is drawn to stories like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, in which characters speak beautifully and believe in age-old values.
John Mark Reynolds (from Biola) writes about recent polls showing that more and more Americans are finding marriage outdated and irrelevant. I was particularly struck by his observation that future generations will look back in horror on our trampling of one woman-one man marriage, since moral facts are unchangeable.
Values endure, but fashions change. Recent surveys showing growing numbers of Americans are not that into marriage tell us something interesting about us, but nothing about love and marriage.
Survey says: we are becoming decadent. Morality says: it will not endure. Moral facts are no more fragile than physical facts. It is any given civilization that is fragile. Americans may reject romance, but love will endure, because Americans can no more harm marriage than they can loot Heaven. We can damn ourselves, but future humanity likely will shake their heads at our folly and use us as a moral lesson.
Marriage will endure, because it is the only worthy response to real romantic love. Romantic love is spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical. It is what happens when a woman or man discovers that there are other humans, equally people, but different from self. This other “side” of humanity seems designed to complement our souls.
It is the deepest form of sexism to believe that women or men could be replaced in such a relationship. Whatever the survey says at the moment, men and women complete each other in a unique way. Call a social contract or any other kind of love “marriage” and the romantics amongst us will simply invent a new word to describe this particular and powerful union.
The sexual revolution occurred decades ago, and Christians are now presented with another opportunity to challenge [the sexual revolution]. Yet in challenging it, Christians must understand that at its heart the sexual revolution is not about homosexuality or same-sex marriage but about human sexuality and relational fulfillment. The primary reason Christians have not had the fortitude and conviction to challenge our culture on the issue of same-sex marriage is that a growing number of Christians now doubt the traditional Christian teaching on human sexuality and feel it is wrong to condemn consensual sexual behavior...
...The sexual behavior and attitudes of many Christians deviate so significantly from traditional Christian teaching that it is no wonder an increasing number of Christians have been unwilling to hypocritically impose different standards on practicing homosexuals.
- Dale S. Kuehne, Sex and the iWorld, 27-28 (emphasis mine).
"Another argument against abortion is the incalculable loss to the nation from the deaths of more than one million babies per year. Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, nearly 50 million children have been put to death through abortion. Some of those would now be thirty-seven years old. Others would be thirty-six, and thirty-five, and so on, down to 1,200,000 of them who would be in their first year of life....
....I agree that it is important to consider all the issues that Republicans and Democrats stand for before deciding how to vote. But it is hard to see how any issue could have more importance than stopping the wrongful murder of more than 1,000,000 innocent preborn children every year, year after year after year...
...[Concerning the 2008 election], the nation has willingly chosen to be represented by people with these convictions. What will God's evaluation of our nation be in light of this decision? Or do we not think that God is still sovereign over the affairs of the nations?"
-Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible, 165, 177, 178.
