Society is facing more moral dilemmas than ever. For ages homosexuality was a closet sin and so were many other social issues, but now it has become a social sin to suppress what was once frowned on. It is now more wrong to speak right, truth has become an opinion and society has opted for the ten suggestions.
We have a litany of social issues, but in decrying the symptoms have lost sight of the causes. Doctors may treat root cause, not symptoms, but more money can be made from symptomatic treatments. Rather than understand why we feel the way we do, we revert to placebos, pain killers, anti-depressants and so on.
As with homosexuality, many have reverted to rather simplistic right/wrong debates. There was a time when the priests of Israel used the Urim and Thummin (yes/no, guilty/not guilty) method of divination. They were bones or stones that the user cast to the ground as a somewhat arbitrary method of discernment. It was used by Joshua to (correctly) single out Achan for the offence he brought on the nation when he took forbidden loot from Jericho.
That system faded, because God never advocated a simple yes/no or right/wrong posture - unlike Catholic and social emphases on sins, God is concerned with Sin: a state of being by which all humans stand guilty before God. The priests of old hid the Urim and Thummin inside the ephod, a garment encrusted with semi-precious stones, each representative of one of the tribes of Israel. By implication, the priests had hid a yes/no philosophy inside the fabric of an intermediary model, by which a priest could rather intercede before God on behalf of the people. Jesus took that to its ultimate conclusion when He bore our sins to the cross, thereby replacing a right/wrong model with a grace and truth model. He dealt with sin and took our blame.
There is a substantial yes/no dilemma at the heart of homosexuality. Any boy who falls out of the frame of normality poses a dilemma for a yes/no society. Thus, rather than accept his uniqueness (some of the greatest men of biblical and secular history were different, contemplative and non-physical), others label him and force him into his own right/wrong choice about where to find solace and acceptance. It often starts at home, though, when fathers fail to accept the uniqueness of each child or neglect to provide a sound model on which to frame their choices and worldviews.
This all points to a greater issue – the universal need for acceptance, which having been denied provokes all of us to find ways to frame our own value relative to others. Thus, by putting down others and gravitating to certain groups, we ensure perceptions of acceptance. That has led to a vicious cycle of materialism and social one-upmanship, resulting in a myriad social problems, including broken homes, substance abuse, stress-related illnesses, crime … and, of course, sexual identity issues. As "The Who" sang way back in 1978, we are now all asking, "who are you?" and "who am I?"
Acceptance issues have made pharmaceutical and cosmetic markets very lucrative, for the worse we feel about ourselves the more we spend and the more we spend the worse we feel. Paul rightly said, in Romans 8, that we were made subject to vanity, but the root of that vanity is common to all … it is a sin nature that can only be cured by the cross. Thus, our world, for all its woes, is in trouble – not because of its social exceptions, but because we excepted the only God who could give us real acceptance.
(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net
No comments:
Post a Comment