Fighting for what's His

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

This statement by Dutch statesman and theologian Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) continues to convince me that we cannot give up on warring against the cultural juggernaut that is abortion and the LGBT movement.

I have lately heard pastoral and irenic-sounding voices in the church counseling that it is time to cease and desist from fighting against these movements. Even Pope Francis, departing from all pontiffs before him, chided the Catholic Church for being “obsessed” with abortion and homosexuality.

The reasoning I have heard goes like this: We must “pick our battles” and redirect our energies away from fighting gay rights and into fighting to keep our own Christian rights; gay marriage is a done deal anyway; we were cruel to homosexuals so we must repent of being strident; the church and the world are two different kingdoms, and our business is to tend to those inside the church, not to seek to control or influence the world’s laws and business.

Notwithstanding these Johnny-come-lately sentiments, partly generated from battle weariness, we have a claim of God as old as the Garden of Eden to the contrary. No single verse of Genesis 1 and 2 is needed to prove to the good faith reader that grand introduction to God’s Word is a majestic statement of his Creatorship and Lordship over every inch of it. He made it all and said, “It is good.”

Then God put the man and the woman in the Garden with a mission—to subdue everything under His kingdom, to extend the boundaries of His government. Satan had insinuated his way into the Garden not by force but by guile, and still operates that way, making his agenda seem like the very definition of enlightenment and progressiveness. If you and I back off from fighting the gay-abortion programs—and if we even tacitly aid and abet it—we are falling for his same old trick.

Nevertheless, if the divine claim of “Mine!” isn’t reason enough for us to keep speaking out against sex between men and men, and women and women, and men and boys, and polymorphous unions, then maybe we can be motivated by the fact that people who engage in such things are looking at an eternity of hell. That’s what Jonathan Edwards would have told them. Does love compel you to speak?