Borrowed, For Your Enjoyment

I thought that two following entries from Dr. Albert Mohler's blog were worth passing along. Since I believe he says it better than I can, I decided it would be best to allow him to say it. His blog can be found at http://www.albertmohler.com/blog.php.

"It's Always a Disaster" -- Young People on Marriage


Posted: Wednesday, August 09, 2006 at 4:09 am ET

The Boston Globe offers a frightening view of marriage in the eyes of young African-Americans. The article is haunting as it reveals the bleak view of marriage held by these young people:

``I'm not looking forward to marriage," says Nakeeda Burns , a 17-year-old resident of Revere and daughter of a single mother, ``and I don't think we [people in general] should be married, because I see how other marriages ended up in my family and on television. It's always a disaster."

Even the married couples these teens know don't seem particularly happy. ``All of my friends who are married, they tell me not to get married," says Anderson Felix , 17, of Dorchester. `` `Wifey is going to keep you on lock.' `Everywhere you go, she'll call you every five minutes.' I won't be able to deal with that."

Anita Marshall blurts out, ``I want a big wedding if I get married," but she doesn't think she'll make it to the altar. Her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were married; now they're all divorced.

More:

Their disillusionment mirrors a growing resistance to marriage among African-Americans. In the post-Civil War era, when African-Americans had the option to marry legally for the first time, many did. The 1890 Census showed that 80 percent of African-American families were headed by two parents, according to Andrew Billingsley 's 1992 book, ``Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Enduring Legacies of African-American Families ."

But in 1970, census figures showed that only 57 percent of black men and 54 percent of black women were married. By last year those numbers had slipped to 42 percent for men and 35 percent for women. In comparison, 68 percent of white men and 63 percent of white women were married in 1970, vs. 59 percent of men and 57 percent of women in 2005.

This is not only a matter of demography -- but of worldview and the future of marriage as an institution. When young people see marriage as a "disaster" in the making, something essential to civilzation and human happiness is lost.



The Accommodating Middle


Posted: Friday, August 04, 2006 at 2:27 am ET
Robert A. J. Gagnon, Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, has contributed some of the most important biblical scholarship on the question of homosexuality and the New Testament. He is also a committed churchman who writes with outrage and grief over his denomination's recent vote to allow what amounts to a local option on the issue of ordaining practicing homosexuals to the ministry.

In a recent paper, Professor Gagnon responds to Professor Mark Achtemeier of the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, a member of the Task Force that brought the proposal adopted by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) [See this news article].
In this important section, Professor Gagnon rejects the position that poses as a "middle" option. The entire paper deserves a careful reading, but this section is mandatory:

The truth is that Prof. Achtemeier has truncated the gospel definition of grace, which includes God caring enough about us to turn us from self-dishonoring, self-degrading sexual behavior that mars the image of God stamped on our sexual being to God-honoring, life-sustaining sexual behavior that enhances that image. Here too Prof. Achtemeier would have done well to compare Rom 1:24-27 with 6:12-23: Whereas God's wrath is manifested in giving persons over to the mastery of pre-existing impulses for sexual "uncleanness," of which impulses for same-sex intercourse are a paradigmatic instance, God's grace is now manifested in delivering us from the primary lordship of such impulses so that we no longer put our bodies at the disposal of such "uncleanness" (Rom 1:24; 6:19).

It is a terrible thing to manipulate the text of Scripture to advance what is essentially an anti-Scriptural agenda. There can never be true Christ-centered unity around the toleration of sexual immorality that would have appalled, and does appall, Jesus. The church should be about graciously and humbly recovering the lost, not training them to be content with their lost condition.

In all too many cases of theological declension in denominations, the forces of theological and moral revisionism are "enabled" by an accommodationist "middle" faction that refuses to draw essential biblical distinctions or to defend necessary theological and biblical boundaries.
See "I Am of the Middle": The Subgroup of the "Middle" and Its Accommodation to Sexual Immorality / A Response to Mark Achtemeier by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D., July 12, 2006. See other resources at www.robgagnon.net.