Idolatry in Education (intro)
We established yesterday that in terms of worldview, there are only two cosmologies: either this is an open universe created, upheld, owned, and acted upon by our transcendent God, OR this is a closed universe and all reality is contained within it (including the divine).
This is the closed box or one box view of the cosmos. And this has become the view of the academy, and this view has profound ramifications for spirituality, morality, and the concept of freedom.
Acts 17—God’s relation to the creation/cosmos is prime/ultimate/bedrock reality (Paul to biblically illiterate intellectuals).
We saw yesterday that the reason people choose the closed box view of the universe is because of their heart commitment to independence from God (science is not the reason).
This morning as we examine Romans one we will look deeply into the heart commitment of the unbeliever.
Romans one is God’s analysis of 1ˢᵗ C. Greco-Roman culture through the apostle Paul (His servant). This chapter has an uncanny relation to our present culture at the beginning of the 21ˢᵗ C. Parallels are chilling: public advocacy of homosexuality and infanticide. But one difference was that Rome did not recognize gay marriage—nor would they have ever considered homo’ marriage to be a legitimate building block of society. Are we further down the death spiral than Rome? Homo’ is an index sin of a society’s abandonment of God.
Today we’ll seek to answer: what is the worldview behind the public advocacy of homosexuality? And we’ll make a case from Romans one that one’s cosmology totally shapes one’s spirituality, which shapes one’s view of homosexuality.
Today’s Christian students are tomorrow’s moral leaders who will provide the conscience of this nation and contend for the truths which hold back the advancing tide of wickedness. I want us to see today that sexuality is the epicenter of worldview—the watershed or continental divide. And that the powers of darkness are using sexual perversion as the fulcrum to deconstruct biblical theism.
How do we talk to our unsaved friends about God’s plan for man and woman? What do we say when they cite the passage in Leviticus that calls for homosexuals to be stoned to death? How can we properly represent God’s good and wise laws which provide loving boundaries on our dignity and humanness?
Sexuality is a seething surging flowing river of fire, and unless it is hedged in on all sides it wreaks incredible havoc. Every society in history that has permitted sexual license has also become a violent society. How many abortions in America since it became legal?
U.S. Abortions… Now Over 50 Million!… How Many Dead Babies Are Enough??? January 26, 2010 — SadInAmerica
Three years ago the United States experienced its 50 millionth legal abortion, the overwhelming majority of which were conducted for reasons of convenience. (Over 50 MILLION innocent lives ‘disappeared’… by choice… that obviously meant NOTHING to 50 million women… HOW do these women sleep at night?… HOW? ~ S.I.A.)
The tragic statistic — which spans the 37 years since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide in 1973 — is based on data compiled by the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute and tallied by the National Right to Life Committee. Guttmacher’s data is respected by both sides of the issue and comes directly from abortion clinics.
The mark of 50 million was passed in 2008 and likely approached or reached 52 million in 2009, although data is not yet available for that year. The 50 million figure actually is an estimate based on Guttmacher data from 2005 — the last year of data — when 1.2 million abortions were performed.
The abortion rate ranged between 1.2 and 1.3 million from 2000 to 2005. If the same number of abortions performed in 2005 were performed in each succeeding year, then the number stood at 52 million at the end of last year.
To put the total in perspective, the combined number of military deaths in all of America’s wars –- from the Revolutionary War to the second Iraq war –- is 1.2 million.
“We’ve been brutalized, desensitized and paganized by an ever-rising flood of the unborns’ blood as our nation continues to abort roughly one out of every four babies conceived,” Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said.