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Continuation
Well, good afternoon and welcome. I guess I need to start off, first of all, by thanking you all for having me here and also by clarifying a little something. The citation that was given earlier, first of all, I am not a part of the Ethiopian Evangelical Theological Society.
I presented a paper there a decade ago in 1998, and what was quoted was one of the founders of ETS recalling a situation in 1948, why they included in the ETS charter the phrase, the scriptures and the scriptures alone were to be the sole source of authority for the discussions within that group.
So, I was not around in 1948. I may look like I was, but I assure you I was not. And I wasn't suggesting you look like you were around in 1948.
I was three years old.
Oh, you were three years old? Okay, all right. We'll blame you for what happened. So, I just wanted to clarify that. I think it's very important, since we have a very, very brief period of time today, and these debates are simply meant to cause you to think, to consider the issues that are presented before you, that what we have here is a fundamental conflict of worldviews.
Each one of us has a worldview, whether we have it consciously, whether we specifically work to make it a consistent worldview, whether we actually put forth effort to live in light of our worldview in such a way that we consciously apply it to political situations, ethical situations, indeed to all of our life, we all have a worldview to one point or another.
And in this situation, in our society today, I would say there are three major worldviews that come into conflict and that will decide how we look at this issue of same-sex marriage. Obviously, I come from a Christian worldview.
I believe that all of creation has a purpose, that there is no such thing as purposeless creation, that when God created, he did so in such a way as to stamp his purposefulness upon the creation. In my undergraduate work, I was both a Bible and a biology major, and so I did a lot of work in the area of genetics in biology, the DNA transcription methodology with RNA and allosteric enzyme systems and all of these wonderful things that very clearly demonstrate the existence of a designer and a purpose in creation.
If we can see that evidence on that level of our existence, I believe that we can see that on a much higher level, that is in how we have been created, male and female, and what our purposes within that context really are.
Human sexuality, gender, and marriage, from the Christian perspective, are all ordained for specific purposes, and in light of God's purpose, the family unit is to provide for mutual love and protection, the proper control of the human sexual desire between husband and wife, the procreation of children in a safe and nurturing environment, the provision of both gender roles to the children via the parents as well.
Now, a denial of one of the roles of the parents from the Christian worldview, whether the mother or the father, to a child, is called a tragedy, whether this takes place through death, through some sort of unnatural separation, war, accident, disease, whatever it might be called, that it calls for the compassionate assistance of others in the community.
Never should a child be deprived of a father and a mother simply because an adult has a sexual desire for the same sex. Such would not in any way, shape, or form fit within the context of the Christian worldview.
And so the Christian worldview, since there is purpose, since there is design, marriage likewise has a design, and we can expand upon that in a few moments that we have a little bit later on. Now, of course, within our society today, we have the Darwinian or naturalistic materialism viewpoint, which predominates certainly within the academy.
And ironically, a true, hardcore, rock-ribbed Darwinist would reject gay marriage in its strictest form simply because Darwinian natural selection pushes for the widest distribution of one's genotype through the production of offspring.
Thankfully, I don't know too many people who actually live very consistently with Darwinian natural selection, but they certainly would have a basis for arguing that. And, of course, we have basically the secular, humanistic worldview of people who are more or less consistent with themselves.
And since the highest good to many of these individuals is personal satisfaction, what feels good becomes the functional standard. And in light of that, then, they would say that man's laws and man's institutions should be, in some sense, created on the basis of my desire for self-fulfillment.
Now, you may be here today, and you may go, I'm not really sure what my worldview is. In fact, my worldview is being challenged as I come here to school, and I'm hearing one thing from my home situation and another thing here at school and another thing at work.
Yeah, this is a period of time in which those issues are being clarified, and many of you are being pushed back to those foundational issues that hopefully were laid for you in your younger years, and you're thinking through what those things mean.
But as we look at the issue of marriage, the question has to be, how do we define marriage? How do we define what this institution gives? So far, the discussion has basically been within the context of discrimination and giving rights.
I do not believe that the issue of gay marriage has anything to do with discriminating against a minority group or giving rights. Marriage is not an issue of rights. Marriage is an institution. And when we ask the question, how do we define institution, how do we define this institution, that then takes us to the real reasons.
There is no question about the matter of gay marriage from, I believe, a truly Christian or biblical worldview. Indeed, any worldview that takes seriously the compelling and plain evidence of design, not only on the biochemical level, but in this instance upon the physical level, cannot possibly miss the obvious fact that men and women are designed so as to maintain humanity through procreation.
You may not be aware of this, but one of the reasons that Europe will be a completely different place 50 years from now than it is today is a simple matter of biological facts. That is, in many of the European Union nations, the women who live there who are part of the natural populations, say in Germany or in France, are averaging about 1 .5 children offspring per woman.
To maintain a society at a level number, you have to have 2 .1 offspring per woman. And so the number of Germans, the number of Russians, the number of French are decreasing per generation. And those who are coming into those countries, for example from Pakistan, are averaging 4 .5 offspring per woman.
It's a simple matter of numbers. You don't have to be a math genius to figure out that in a very short period of time, those societies will look completely different. Marriage, from the Christian perspective, is not just limited to the production of children, but it cannot be defined outside of the family unit, the creation of life.
Marriage then is not merely a civil or contractual arrangement, and hence something the government can just give rights to. To be entered into willy-nilly and exited as easily as it was entered. The degradation of marriage in Western culture has led to the very discussion of this topic today.
And the acceptance of gay marriage would do nothing to reverse the trend away from making marriage the highest ideal. Something to be protected, something to be presented, and something to aspire toward.
That was how I grew up. When I grew up, marriage was something to look forward to. It was something that I knew would be difficult. It was not something that I, you know, I hate to name names, but you know, it never crossed my mind to view marriage like Britney Spears has viewed marriage.
To enter into it and then to annul it in, what was it, 55 hours or something like that in Las Vegas, is to demonstrate that you have no respect for that institution. That is not how I was raised. And I can guarantee you that having been married for almost 26 years now, I am very certain that it was that background and that being raised, that idea that has helped my marriage to last for 26 years.
If you go into it with the wrong ideas, you're going to have many difficulties. Instead, I would think that the granting of same-sex marriage, which removes from marriage the very concept of the creation of life, it removes the mutuality and the compatibility of male and female.
The removal of that, I would think, would continue the trend toward marriage as something focused upon myself, my wants, and my desires. Anyone here who has been married more than about five years knows that marriage is a wonderful way to burn selfishness out of you.
And it's meant to be that way. The only thing better than that is when the kids arrive, they do it even better. Instead, I view marriage as a sacred commitment involving self-sacrifice and sacrificial love of others before myself, and I will admit that's not the majority viewpoint anymore, but my question is, for the health of our society, should it be?
Is our society better because of all the broken families? Is our society better because of the degradation of marriage?