ONE of America’s influential evangelical pastors has lamented at the institutionalization of homosexuality and called it the new calamity.
Writing in a commentary , John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, said: “My sense is that we do not realize what a calamity is happening around us.. Christians, more clearly than others, can see the tidal wave of pain that is on the way. Sin carries in it its own misery.”
It’s been nearly a week now since marriage for gay and lesbian couples was legalized in New York and since hundreds of thousands of Americans celebrated homosexuality with gay pride parades, not only in New York but also in Piper’s home state of Minnesota.
Amid ongoing ‘gay pride’ celebrations and the continual push for gay marriage across various states in the US, Piper wants to put it all in perspective for the church.
Homosexuality and its celebration are nothing new, the pastor clarified.
“[Homosexuality] has been here since we were all broken in the fall of man,” he wrote. “What’s new is not even the celebration of homosexual sin. Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia.”
“What’s new,” he underscored, “is normalization and institutionalization. This is the new calamity.”
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Amid the movement to redefine marriage, Piper made it clear that Jesus created sexuality and “has a clear will for how it is to be experienced in holiness and joy.”
“His will is that a man might leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and that the two become one flesh (Mark 10:6-9). In this union, sexuality finds its God-appointed meaning, whether in personal-physical unification, symbolic representation, sensual jubilation, or fruitful procreation.”
Nevertheless, there are no signs of the gay marriage movement slowing down. With that, Piper left Christians with this concluding note:
“This is what I am writing for. Not political action, but love for the name of God and compassion for the city of destruction. ‘My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law.’ (Psalm 119:136).”
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