PMW 2024-026 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., Th. D.

I live in the deep south, and right in the middle of the Bible belt. Unfortunately, we have gotten a taste of the homosexual revolution in our area. Awhile back recent news items, editorials, and letters to the editor debated the question of homosexuality. Tragically, the conservative South and Christian dominated cities are not immune to the moral decline and degradation of our culture.

Unfortunately, the whole controversy is a study in muddled ethical thinking, contradictory assertions, sloganeering, and outlandish charges. The local resistance to homosexual culture has been ridiculed as: “a breach of the separation of church and state,” “Naziism,” “menacing authority,” “an atrocity,” “right-wing extremism,” “poisonous,” “ayatollah-like,” “warped,” “a return to the dark ages,” “frightening,” “appalling,” “a witch hunt,” and more. Consequently, the dispute exposes our inability to think through moral issues. But public socio-political discourse is not the place for such moral confusion.

So for these reasons, even if for no other, the methodology of the moral charges levied against the Christian concerns demand careful analysis. I will focus on the two highly charged issues so prominent in the debate both locally and nationally: privacy and tolerance.

Homosexuality, Transgenderism, and Society
5 downloadable mp3s by Ken Gentry

The homosexual movement is one of the leading challenges to the moral stability of American culture and to our Christian influence in culture. In this sermon series the homosexual question is tackled head on.

See more study materials at: www.KennethGentry.com

The Right to Privacy

First, the privacy issue: Those who fear this matter coming under legal scrutiny as an “invasion of privacy” by “senseless government intrusion” seem unaware of current legal realities. Government is already (and necessarily) involved in private moral concerns. The liberty ideal asserting the primacy and inviolability of privacy rights has never been the case in America. We have many laws restricting the private acts of consenting adults, including laws against polygamy, prostitution, incest, illegal drug use, bestiality, consensual sado-masochism, suicide, and more.

We also have anti-privacy laws demanding compulsory education, overriding private family convictions regarding medical treatment (e.g., forced blood transfusions for ill children), forbidding cruelty to animals, and so forth. Privacy is only one value among many other competing values. At points of collision, privacy values must give place to other values such as justice, security, and human life.

Private morality cannot be a matter of public indifference. If civil law failed to witness against the abnormality of homosexual conduct, then governmental authority would be encouragin a progressive degeneration of moral values in society. This would be detrimental to society’s moral stability, government’s legal substructure, the dignity of human life, the monogamous foundation of all civilized societies, the ability of parents to raise their children in a stable moral environment, and more. The issues relative to privacy are of gigantic proportions and poorly understood.

Contemporary Theological Issues
by Ken Gentry (21 mp3 downloadables)
A Christian college course dealing with contemporary theological debates within the church. Covers several important topics of concern to Christians, including abortion, homosexuality, alcoholic beverages, and more

See more study materials at: www.KennethGentry.com

The Toleration of Diversity

Second, the toleration issue: The call for “tolerance” is a moral demand. That being the case, it must come from within a particular moral system. And the system that best supports and gives meaning to public, universal, invariant moral principles must be recognized and defensible. This, then, requires public moral discourse which cannot preclude the Christian system at the outset, as so many try to do.

In fact, on historical grounds this “one nation under God” that asserts “In God we trust” should not disallow Christian moral values. The U. S. Supreme Court has noted in Zorach v. Clauson that “we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being” (343 U.S. 306 [1952]). Neither may the Christian sit idly by, for he must “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them” (Eph. 5:11).

In addition, though the term is carelessly tossed about, “toleration” has limits. Those limits must be defined by moral considerations, not loud assertions. The tolerance of all opinions would lead to moral relativism, which would undermine a stable and just society. Such also becomes self-refuting in that it destroys any and all moral objection to any actions – – including the call to tolerance. The very existence of an orderly society of men and laws militates against absolute moral toleration. Rather than absolute tolerance or maximum personal freedom being the goals of the civil order, social rectitude and civil justice should be.

The issue of civil legislation discouraging homosexual conduct is not a question of whether values will be imposed. Rather, it is a question of whose values. All law necessarily involves the imposition of values (we have different values from cannibals, for instance), or else laws are merely suggestions.

We must be aware that law is always and necessarily an imposition of some sort of religious values. After all, law is rooted in morality, and morality is based on ideas of ultimacy and value which are intrinsically religious conceptions. Consequently, all law is fundamentally religious in character. Historical evidence of this has been noted by the Supreme Court in Abington v. Schempp (374 U.S. 203 [1963]): “Nearly every criminal law on the books can be traced to some religious inspiration.”

Local Christians who are resisting the homosexual agenda have an important concern for the moral well-being of the community. This concern is warranted not only by America’s continuing moral decline in general, but by recent national debate seeking to expand homosexual influence by legally endorsing same gender marriages. As Edmund Burke warned long ago: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And as Paul urges us, we must “expose the works of darkness” (Eph. 5:11).

Perilous Times: A Study in Eschatological Evil (by Ken Gentry)

Technical studies on Daniel’s Seventy Weeks, the great tribulation, Paul’s Man of Sin, and John’s Revelation.

See more study materials at: www.KennethGentry.com

The Divorce of Israel: A Redemptive-Historical Interpretation of Revelation
This long-awaited commentary is now at the printer and should be available for the public in late April, 2024. It is an 1800 page, two-volume deeply exegetical, academic commentary on the Bible’s most mysterious book.

Pre-order today for a special discount. Click: HERE