I have been travelling around the country for the last decade or so speaking to evangelical churches and conferences about gender and sexuality. In those travels and indeed in my own church, I have heard story after story from ordinary Christians about how difficult it is to be in secular workplace environments that are becoming increasingly hostile to Christians who believe what the Bible says about marriage.
A dear brother shared with me once about a small celebration in his office during work hours for a colleague who was soon to enter into a gay “marriage.” Should he eat a piece of cake with his officemates? Or should he risk alienating everyone in the office by not participating? We ended up agreeing that he shouldn’t participate, but how do you do that without burning both professional and personal bridges in the process? It’s not easy. Sometimes conflict can’t be avoided. In fact, such weekly decisions are quite agonizing for many ordinary Christians who aren’t trying to wage culture war at work but who feel like their work is waging culture war against them.
I could go on and on with stories like this, and they are playing out from Los Angeles to New York and everywhere in between. And that is not even to mention Christians who are wrestling mightily against same-sex attraction themselves and who are doing their level best to discipline themselves for the purpose of godliness. Experiences like this make me very concerned about those who are now arguing that Christians can be personally against gay marriage while also being legally for it. It is an inherently unstable position that undermines the resolve of ordinary Christians to hold the line on marriage. It is this temptation that I address in a column for WORLD magazine today. Here’s the link:
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The image of Mario Cuomo above is a cropped version of a file licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
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