IrRELEVANT

In an article in RELEVANT Magazine (a "Christian" magazine on "God. Life. Progressive Culture.", there is an article on Why Our Generation Doesn't Care about Prop 8. Now, I find it odd that "our generation" would need a magazine to make Christianity "relevant", and I find it more bizarre looking at the main index to find that "relevant" to "our generation" would be things like an interview with Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman on their new movie, The Switch (about a single woman who wants to be artificially inseminated, and her male friend who drunkenly switches his own sample as a replacement for her intended donor) and a news item about a woman in the UK who says she has an abnormally high electromagnetic field that makes metal objects stick to her. But, this isn't about the relevance of a Christian magazine called RELEVANT. It's about the article.

So what's going on? According to a Pew Forum poll, only 45 percent of "religious Americans" ages 18-29 oppose gay marriage. A 2008 poll told us that 52% of "young evangelicals" support either gay marriage or civil unions. These numbers are vastly different in the older population. What's up with that? The author, Jonathan Merritt, cites several reasons:
1) Young people have gay friends and now ask, "Aren’t they still the neighbors that Jesus asked us to love?"
2) The rhetoric is hateful, without respect, not Christlike.
3) Aren't heterosexuals just as bad at denigrating marriage as homosexuals? Isn't that hypocritical?
4) Just because it's immoral is no reason to say it should be illegal.

One commenter writes, "We need to stop letting our dogmas interfere with our ability to love others."

Another commenter says, "I think the source of shifting opinions is the questioning of how we interpret Scripture."

If this is truly indicative of the upcoming generation, we're in trouble, folks. Here are the essential components of this kind of thinking. First, it is not possible to believe that an act is immoral and still love the person. Apparently it's not possible to pass a law on something and still love those who would violate it. Indeed, taking a stand on an issue like this can only be construed as hateful and un-Christlike. Look, since there is hypocrisy in the church, we should simply allow people to do as they please. If we can't get it right, we have no right to suggest what is right at all. Besides, you can't legislate morality. Just because it's wrong doesn't mean it should be illegal. Laws should not be based on moral values.

Some might think that I'm complaining about today's younger Christians. That would be a mistake. No, I'm complaining about today's Christians. I'm complaining about the parents that have failed to teach their children, the churches that have failed to train their disciples. I'm complaining ... about us. We have failed to teach them to think any better than "If you call something 'wrong', it's hate speech." We've failed to help them make the connection between morality and law. We've failed to show them what real marriage looks like and assured them there is no such thing. Brothers and sisters, these things ought not be.