Christians: Is It Time For Civil Disobedience? (Part 1)

In last week’s postings, I shared the words of Dennis Prager of SRN radio.  This week, I commend to your reading these words primarily from Matt Barber – founder and editor-in-chief of BarbWire.com.

“The push back has begun,” says Barber.  “Christian business owners, lawyers, parents, judges, county clerks, organizations, universities, hospitals, adoption agencies and other individuals and groups have been given an ultimatum by five unelected, unaccountable liberals in Washington, D.C.: “You must now obey us and disobey God.  You must pretend, with us, that sin-based same-sex ‘marriage’ is an actual thing.”

To which I profoundly say – Hogwash!

“Absolute truth is a stubborn thing,” says Barber.  “Attempts at marital alchemy notwithstanding, the highly contentious, wholly contemptible 5-4 ‘gay marriage’ opinion (and that’s all it is, an opinion) released last week by five pagan extremists in black robes is altogether illegitimate and should be treated as such.  From a moral, biological and legal standpoint, the court’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges is a complete farce. It’s an absurd missive, a bohemian word salad that was roundly, and rightly, condemned by the court’s four dissenting justices.”

“The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie,” mocked Justice Scalia.

These “five lawyers,” as Chief Justice John Roberts called them, can no more suspend the laws of natural marriage, than can they suspend the laws of gravity.  “[D]o not celebrate the Constitution,” wrote Roberts.  “It had nothing to do with it.”

Barber goes on to say, “This opinion, which has been branded ‘the Dred Scott of marriage,’ has not changed, one iota, the fixed and immovable reality that the institution of marriage, an institution as old as mankind itself, is, and shall forever remain, centrally defined by its binary male-female requirement … Indeed, as the four dissenting justices noted, the majority failed, at every level, from a precedential, historical, moral and, perhaps most importantly, a constitutional standpoint, to make the case for redefining marriage – something no man can do.”

So how should we Christians react to this haughtiness – to this rebellion against God?

In Acts 5 we read of the apostles being persecuted and jailed for preaching publically of Christ Jesus.  And when brought before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest for their disobedience to the order not to teach in His name, Peter and the others said – “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

Jesus told us this would happen when He said, “Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’  If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also.  If they obeyed My teaching, they will obey yours also.” (John 15:20)

Like the prophet Daniel (of old) and the contemporary prophet (the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), we Christians must engage in peaceful response to the imposition of same-sex ‘marriage’ in widespread civil disobedience.  It’s the right thing to do.  

It is sinful not to engage in civil disobedience.  In James 4:17 we read, “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

No doubt some of you would prefer the path of least resistance.  Perhaps some of you would be quick to quote (out of context) various verses of Holy Scriptures to avoid the possible persecution that will come as a result of obedience to God … such as, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.  For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” (Romans 13:1)

Listen: Under our form of government as a constitutional conservative, “We the People” are “the governing authorities” … not our elected officials in Congress and the White House. They are subject to us, and we are all subject to the Creator [God] … who endowed us with certain unalienable rights and is the final Authority.

Barber concludes, “These nine unelected, unaccountable justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are appointed and confirmed by the elected officials we hire to represent us.  Five of the nine have now presumed to defy both the sovereign will of tens of millions of ‘We the People’ who engaged the constitutional process and voted to defend the immutable definition of marriage, as well as, and more importantly, the sovereign will of God Almighty, the very Author of marriage itself.”

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel