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Conclusion
Chapter 13 Leviticus has extremely long, detailed instructions to rabbis how they should diagnose the disease of leprosy. I submit to you, I'd rather go to Kaiser. I'd rather go to my own doctor and say, okay, I have this thing on my skin.
Do I have leprosy? I don't think my doctor is going to say, let me look at the book of Leviticus and see. Because it's extremely detailed. And I think the diagnosis of modern medicine, I'm sorry, I'm going to take that as if I have a choice.
And secondly, here's the point. What if someone has a disease like this? According to the Bible, it's an abomination. I'd like to offer you Mother Teresa and her work with the poor and the sick of Calcutta, India.
And her order, the Sisters of Charity around the world. They do not make lepers dress in rags and live outside the village and cry unclean, unclean. I would offer you two thoughts. The book of Leviticus did not win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize. Hear that again and think about that. The book of Leviticus did not win the Nobel Peace Prize. Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize. You could argue that Mother Teresa is violating the Bible.
Yes, you certainly could. You could say that Mother Teresa's work is in direct violation. She takes in lepers, let alone all the other diseases. Well, as a sociologist, I would tell you this. The sociology of medicine is an absolutely fascinating subfield of sociology.
Yes, it certainly is. We learn a lot about how different societies view leprosy, etc., etc. And, thank God, thank God, we are allowed to make progress in our diagnostic abilities. And we are not limited to one thing written over 3 ,000 years ago.
If that were true, the world of medicine would be stuck. Well, we're not stuck. That's exactly right. And there's so many things also, by the way, I must mention one more before I forget. I had a conversation this very morning with a professor at Stanford that I've been trying to reach for quite a while.
Let me just say this. Dr. Joan Roughgarden did not get to be a professor of biology at Stanford by being stupid. She is a very eminent professor of biology. And this very morning, I finally had the contact I've been trying.
A number of years ago, Dr. Roughgarden gained a lot of international publicity when she said, I have documented naturally occurring homosexuality in over 100 species of animals. I wanted to make sure I had that right.
And I had a talk with her top research assistant this morning, who said, Mike, you're a few years out of date. A few years ago, yes, that came out. We have documented homosexuality in over 100 species of animals.
It's now over 300. I would grant you, Charles Darwin would not know what to do with homosexuality. Charles Darwin would say, okay, homosexuality doesn't really work with natural selection, survival of the fittest.
Fair enough.
But that, I think, is not the question. If homosexuality can occur naturally in over 300 species of animals, it's not because they chose to be gay. They didn't say, oh, I want to live this sinful, abominable lifestyle.
I don't think so. This is one of the things we're trying to understand in the field of genetics, etc., etc. Where does homosexuality come from? If it's seen in over 300 species, they can't have all chosen to be gay.
That's one of the great questions of biology. He has a background in biology. I know a little bit about it, too. We have a lot more to understand about where homosexuality comes from.
Developing a Christian worldview requires the careful utilization of the Christian scriptures. Leviticus chapters 13 and 14 do contain a great deal of discussion about the leper. These, of course, were designed to help the ancient Israelites who did not have a doctor down the road to deal with infectious diseases within their context.
I'd like to point out that that same book of Leviticus probably should have won the Nobel Peace Prize because only a few chapters later you have these words, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, one of Jesus' favorite quotations from the very same section of the scriptures.
A Christian worldview takes into consideration all that the Bible says, not just a small portion of the Old Testament law. Christians were known for many, many centuries as those who were willing to take in, for example, in the Roman Empire, those that the Roman Empire allowed to be cast out.
When they would not have an abortion, they would just simply expose the child. It was the Christians who were known for coming along and taking those people, for dealing with the lepers and those who were sick, because they had a fully formed Christian worldview that takes into consideration the entire revelation of God, not just the book of Leviticus, but all the way through the book of Revelation as well.
Our discussion today was not supposed to be specifically on homosexuality. As I said, I've debated that issue before, and I would direct you to a discussion of that from a biblical perspective. Our discussion today is on gay marriage.
Marriage has a definition, and marriage involves that which was ordained from a Christian perspective by God in the very beginning. And I have suggested to you that if you see design and purpose in human life, if you see the biological basis for that, if you see it on the cellular level, on the level of DNA and things like that, then hopefully you can step back a little bit and likewise see that design on the macro level, the fact that men and women are designed to fulfill one another.
And it is my assertion that a mirror image cannot fulfill, a mirror image cannot produce life. Even a homosexual couple that would have children, where would those children come from? Even if they used an unnatural mechanism of in vitro fertilization or something, where did those building blocks come from?
They did not come from the same sex union. That cannot give life. And instead, if a child is raised in that context, that child will never have the God-designed examples that should be before them as to what they are to be.
I do believe that there is a Christian worldview that starts with God as the creator, and hence there is a purpose. And if you look inside yourself, and I believe the scriptures tell me that you do look inside yourself, that you can see the fingerprints of God upon your very soul, as well as upon the creation around you.
And when you do that, if there is a God-purpose, then marriage has a purpose. There is a reason why, out of the billions and billions of species, did we just hear 300? And what will happen to the individuals in those species, who engage in homosexual behavior consistently?
They will be selected out of the species. That's how natural selection works. That's the Darwinian perspective. You see, the biblical perspective, we don't have to just depend upon natural selection. The tooth and the claw.
Because God has designed us, he has named it proper to reveal to us what we might call the owner's manual. How we may use these bodies to his glory, to our benefit, and to our happiness. And when, in doing so, the first institution amongst mankind that he established was marriage.
One man and one woman. And this same Bible tells us what happens when that union has been violated, when polygamy has come in, and the heartbreak that results. Instead, as I said, from the Christian perspective, the Apostle Paul, the same one who spoke much of that cross and defined it for us, likened the relationship of Christ to his church as that of the man and the woman.
And in that context said, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. So for a Christian, there really can be no question about that. I am to love my wife as Christ loved the church. The question then becomes, can we possibly in some way redefine that so that's no longer a mutual or compatible love?
And I say to you, we cannot.
Thank you very much.
We'll give both these gentlemen a round of applause.