The following is by Family Council team member Charisse Dean.
Have you ever tried to draw a straight line on a blank piece of paper without a guide like a ruler? The inevitable result is always a crooked line. No matter how many times you try and no matter how steady you hold the pencil, even if by the naked eye it seems to be straight, when held to a true and straight standard, it will never be quite right.
Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines a standard as “something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example.” The Word of God provides a guide for everything that concerns us from our personal lives and family to our society and government.
Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” But in this day and time, it seems that so many have left using the true and straight standard of God’s word for something that’s not quite right. In our modern, humanistic society, people are slowly but steadily leaving the standard of God’s word and opting for a new “standard” of comparing themselves among themselves as the criteria for what is right and wrong. Paul warns of this as being unwise in 2 Corinthians 10. Left to their own devices, people are essentially comparing crooked lines to less crooked lines that have been accepted as straight. But Proverbs 14:12 warns that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”
One apparent example of this is same-sex marriage. According to the standard established by the authority of God’s Word in Genesis 1:27, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and said, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it…God saw everything that he had made, and it was very good.” In the second chapter God expounds on the purpose of creating man as male and female, and says that it is not good for man, Adam, to be alone. God in his infinite knowledge and wisdom, makes the observation that man alone is not good, which is the polar opposite of everything that he had created which was very good. So his solution was to form a mate, specifically a female that was appropriate and correspondent for him. From here we see the first marriage ceremony when God presents Eve to Adam and Adam replies, “This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:23, 24). From this we derive our God-established standard for marriage to be the union of one man and one woman.
But unfortunately people have begun to leave this standard and opt to redefine marriage and leave it open for any and every alternative relationship to satisfy the desire for companionship. But any marriage other than the one God defined, no matter how hard one tries to make true and straight, will never be quite right and will never be the solution to the primal desire not to be alone.
The good news is that after this recent election, it is apparent that there are those who still choose to draw the line of their life with God’s Word as the standard and guide for everything which will always have a result that is true and right.
The question is: How will you choose to draw the line of your life?
John Howard