Ellen DeGeneres, 50, and Portia de Rossi, 35, exchanged rings and were "married" under California law Saturday in front of nineteen guests, including DeGeneres' mom Betty and de Rossi's mother Margaret Rogers. This was indeed a sad day in America's young history. Not just because two lesbians were able to legally marry but that they did so in a country rooted in a Judeo Christian world view. Even more sad, is that nobody, including evangelical Christians, was shocked and or abhorred by this dark day. Very few of our hearts melted in sorrow and very few if any churches prayed (including mine) the following day for God to have mercy on us as a nation.

God will hold our society responsible for the slow but steady drift away from our moral moorings and roots. What previous generations allowed in moderation is now celebrated in excess. This is the flow of sin and evil. Yes, what these two women did is sin and evil. And, if I am wrong, God truly will owe Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.

Please know I am not trying to be mean spirited and I often wonder what possible motivation the late Jerry Falwell had when he referred to Ellen Degeneres as Ellen "degenerate." From one extreme to another we evangelicals do not know how to respond to social sin. Some call for love and tolerance and conclude that calling sin what it is, sin, is not loving even though our God of perfect love called homosexuality sin. Others mock and call names with the purpose of hurting rather than helping.

Before we tsk tsk our way back to church next Sunday we need to pull back our own curtain of hypocrisy. Why should it shock us that two lesbians married in our culture, a culture wreaking with the stench of all sorts of moral perversions, many of which have made their way into the everyday life of the church and our homes? How many of our men are addicted to porn and have grown increasingly dissatisfied with their own wives? How many leaders have fallen into the trap of thinking more highly of themselves than they should? How many of our kids now regularly experiment with same sex partners because they see it done with regularity on the Internet? How many kids reject their parents' authority, no, reject all authority? As a pastor I feel sometimes as though I am no longer preaching to the choir because the choir has left its first love. Is there any hope? Yes, there are families who are standing firm on God's principles and building a legacy of faith into their children. Yes, there is hope. There are single people who are using their singleness as a platform for kingdom building. Yes, but God must rend the heavens and come down. Perhaps all believers need to put on one of those two-sided signs and roam the streets of the cities and the highways and hedges of the suburbs and warn that Armageddon is on the way. Why? Because it is.

In His Grip,
PB