A bunch of barriers have been broken down and a boatload of boundaries have been bounced over in the last 55 years.
- A woman can terminate the life in her womb and it is considered to be healthcare.
- A man can have sex with another man and it is considered normal, natural behavior.
- A woman can be chemically and surgically altered to look like a man.
- All kinds of people can have all kinds of sex in the movies and TV series – casual one-nighters, passionate short-termers, and complicated long-term affairs are perfectly acceptable.
Every barrier (it seems) has been breached – yet there’s one barrier that’s as hard as steel and immovable as Gibraltar. If a married man has a sexual relationship with someone not his wife – the wrath of the Culture comes down on him. (There is another boundary the Culture won’t cross – coercive sexual manipulation which includes rape or a power differential.)
This was amply illustrated last week when the CEO of an AI company was caught on Jumbotron at a Coldplay concert in a more-than-casual embrace with the Human Resources Director of his company Everyone looking at the Jumbotron saw this and now that it has gone viral, millions have seen it – including the man’s wife and the Directors of his company. I don’t know what his wife has done, but his company forced him to resign. Even in the wild, wild West of a no-holds-barred-anything-goes-the-more-far-out-the-better sexuality – this was unacceptable.
This just isn’t the judgment of the baptized-in-pickle juice-prudish Church – this is the judgment of the most sexually liberated, barrier breaking, boundary breaching culture in the history of the world. This just isn’t the verdict of holier-than-thou Christians – this is the verdict of those who reject Jesus Christ and do not regard the Bible as having any binding authority on their conscience. Why would a conscience that’s accepted the breaking of all other sexual barriers cling to this one prohibition? Why is this boundary left standing when all others have been torn down?
Former atheist and now Christian philosopher, Dr. J. Budziszewski, argues in his book, “What We Can’t Not Know”, that a prohibition against adultery exists and has existed in every culture on earth and in every historical epoch. The second chapter of Romans declares that God has written His moral law on every conscience. Cultures which never heard of either Moses or Jesus have held to the inviolability of the marriage covenant. Why is that? It’s because the moral law of God is written on their conscience.
But if postmodern culture has breached, broken, and bounced over so many sexual barriers, why is this one so binding? Because it involves a promise to another person that you will be faithful to them – and this includes sexual fidelity. A man and a woman, whether Christian or not, enter into the sacred covenant of marriage. This is so desirable and so ignites the imagination and so binds the conscience that only the most bent can engage in the intellectual backflips necessary to set it aside. Covenant marriage binds the conscience of all men.
It gives me great hope to see a non-Christian culture react so swiftly to the adulterous shenanigans of this CEO and his Human Resources Director. God has not left Himself without a witness. The conscience is a deep witness to God. Someone can quit going to church and stop reading the Bible and disavow faith in Christ – but he can’t silence his conscience. He can become indifferent to its message – but he can’t silence his conscience. God has not left himself without witness. The Coldplay concert and a Jumbotron jointly bear witness to the God you can never really get rid of.
Tim Brown has been in some sort of ministry since February of 1973 – as a youth pastor, an assistant pastor, and a senior pastor. Tim planted Calvary Chapel Fremont in January of 1997 and continues to pastor there. Tim has been married since August of 1976 to Fran. They have three children and nine grandchildren.
