Driving to Toronto some time ago, I was encouraged to hear a number of people call in to a local talk show to argue that same-sex marriage is unbiblical. Unfortunately, the talk show host kept irritably swatting their arguments aside as if they were flies buzzing around his head on a warm summer night. “Why are you bringing the Bible into this?” he asked. “This isn’t a theocracy, we are a secular country. Haven’t you ever heard of the separation of church and state? We are under the rule of law,” he went on, “and all we’re talking about here is basic freedom of rights.” We have all heard these arguments before and perhaps we have even tried to counter them in some fashion: “But, but...”

What was happening? Assuming we defend a biblical worldview, why do we so often have a sense of futility in these situations? The answer to this question requires us to take a step back. We need to understand that we are involved in a war of cosmic proportions. The battle for the preservation of the biblical definition of marriage is but one skirmish; this war first came to earth when Satan convinced Adam and Eve to join him in rebellion against God. Mer­cifully, rather than leave man in the hands of the enemy, God declared all-out war on Satan. That war continues to this day between, as Augustine put it, the City of God and the City of Man.

What is a Worldview?⤒🔗

The term worldview popped up in the previous paragraph; what does it mean? A worldview is a system of thought, a way of looking at reality. It is the sum total of a person’s beliefs about the world and is comparable to an invisible pair of glasses that profoundly affects everything one believes and does. Everyone has a worldview. In fact, the term world­view is very similar to the term religion. Everyone has a religion since man is incurably religious. Some examples of worldviews include Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism, naturalism, pantheism (everything is divine), atheism (literally, “no God”), secular humanism, agnosti­cism (man can’t know for sure), pragmatism (if it works, do it), utilitarianism (what can I get out of it?), and Christian. There are more and they often overlap. For example, an atheist usually holds to the tenets of secular humanism as well as naturalism for which the late Carl Sagan, in 1980, offered a famous definition: “The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be” (Sagan, Cosmos). Since he was a scientist, many assume this statement to be a provable fact. It isn’t. Instead, Mr. Sagan was sharing his faith or his religion with us. Put another way, he was say­ing, “In the beginning matter.” We counter, “In the begin­ning God.” The well-known spokesman for evolutionists, philosopher of science Michael Ruse, admitted as much: “Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning and it is still true of evolution today” (Michael Ruse, “Saving Darwinianism from Darwinists,” National Post, May 13, 2000). The war then, is between those holding a Christian worldview and those holding alternate world­views. It is between God and His army with everyone else arrayed in opposition. In the talk show above, the host held to a secular humanist worldview; he shot down any state­ments that didn’t conform to this worldview.

Knowing the Enemy←⤒🔗

Wars involve tactics and strategy. They also involve know­ing the enemy. Many have said that if western leaders had read Hitler’s Mein Kampf, they would not have been taken in by one ruse after another until a war involving millions of deaths became the only way to stop him. The same could be said for Christians over the centuries. Satan’s strategy since Adam and Eve fell has been to keep mankind chained to sin and to tempt God’s people into sinning as much as possible. In order to achieve this objective, one very clever tactic he has come up with is to transform the public square, which in the past was in many ways characterized by bibli­cal principles (Christian judges, teachers, and schools, for example), into something that is quickly becoming anything but Christian. Today we have a secular public square that is thought by many to be neutral.

A Neutral Public Square←⤒🔗

Proponents and defenders of the secular public square declare it to be neutral and tolerant, pretending that it is above the fray of competing religions and worldviews. Religion is permitted as long as it is kept private and woe to those who try to impose their religion on anyone else. Indeed, while the secular state declares tolerance as the highest good, “inside its velvet glove of tolerance is an iron hand of tyranny” (J. I. Packer). Under a disguise of neu­trality and tolerance we find that secularism is really the religion of atheism and its sibling, naturalism (the belief that natural causes alone are sufficient to explain every­thing that exists). Abraham Kuyper recognized this over a century ago when he attacked the public school system in the Netherlands as one of the institutions of a secular or atheist state complete with secular “priests” who ran the public school system and would not allow any Christian schools. By using this method of attack, he was able to win funding for a separate Christian school system. He saw the threat that the public school system represented to Christian families. Covenant children could not be sent to the “temples” of a religion that denied the very existence of God. Surely, in light of promises made at baptism and many other reasons, parents need to seriously rethink these kinds of decisions.

Now looking back on what the talk show host said in the opening paragraph above, we can see that while he might have thought he was insisting that religions need to be kept out of the public square, he was in fact saying that only the religion of secular humanism counts and that Christianity is, in effect, blasphemous. Does that sound tolerant?

Clashing Worldviews←⤒🔗

The reason we often find it difficult to defend the biblical definition of marriage is because we clash with unbeliev­ers at a much more fundamental level. Most in our society operate on a non-Christian worldview, which Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, compared to a house built on sand. If man has evolved by chance from a random set of mol­ecules (“In the beginning matter”), there isn’t really a good reason to be against anything. In this worldview, what is wrong with polygamy, pedophilia, incest, rape, or...? Ask the atheist or agnostic this question. This may help him see that his house is sitting on sand and is in very grave danger of collapsing on his head. By taking God out of his world­view, the atheist (or anyone who refuses to recognize God as his Master) has removed the moral Law Giver with the result that he has eliminated all moral laws. This is not to say that the atheist doesn’t have morals, but rather that his having morals is consistent with a Christian worldview and not an atheist worldview.

How can moral law exist without a moral Law Giver (God)? Evolution provides no moral laws. Cornell Univer­sity biology professor Will Provine says that the Darwinian revolution is incomplete because man hasn’t adopted all its moral and religious implications, some of which include that “there is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life...” (in a debate with Phil Johnson, April 30, 1994). Here is a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bath water! If evolution is true, then the strongest man (or group of men) wins. Hitler was an atheist and understood Darwin’s proposed natural law, known as “the survival of the fittest,” very well indeed.

You cannot reasonably expect to convince an atheist that his worldview is in shambles in one conversation. But at least you might get him thinking. Once you have spent time examining the house representing his worldview, it is time to take him to the house representing a Christian world­view (the one built on rock in the Sermon on the Mount). In the Christian worldview, the existence of morals can be defended since there is a moral Law Giver – God. The alternative is chaos, which is where our society is headed if God and His Word continue to be ignored.

Sin and God’s Word←⤒🔗

Most atheists will offer lots of challenges to the idea of a moral God. What about pain and suffering? What about war? One key response to these questions is to again under­line the fact that he is not in a position to ask a question that involves right and wrong. If evolution is true, how can he ask this question since, in his view, the moral Law Giver doesn’t exist? The answer to the question in the Christian worldview is one word: sin. It is man’s sinful heart that has turned Paradise into the world we have today. God could have left man in his misery, but instead, He chose to send His Son to die in the place of sinners who believe in Him. You see how these conversations can and should lead to sharing the gospel.

The Christian worldview, resting on God’s infallible Word, explains that God instituted marriage as a holy bond between one man and one woman. Sadly, in addition to homosexual behavior becoming acceptable in society at large, the institution of marriage has been perilously weak­ened by easy access to divorce and the rise of so-called common-law marriages. Western society has ignored the injunction, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matt. 19:6). Trivializing the sanctity of marriage leaves it wide open to the attack of homosex­ual marriage advocates. Numerous Bible passages, such as Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and Jude indicate God’s strongest displeasure. In the Christian worldview, the only true worldview, homosexual behavior is sin. This is the right point in the conversation to introduce Christ and how He was sent by God to deliver sinners.

Homosexual Marriage←⤒🔗

An advocate of homosexual marriage may ask, “If God created mankind, why did He give some people homo­sexual inclinations?” The answer brings us back to man’s fall into sin. Even if some people are born with homo­sexual inclinations – an unproven assertion – this does not make homosexual thoughts or behavior morally defensible. Man’s sinful nature is evident very early on in the propen­sity of young children to lie, for example, but this does not make lying morally acceptable. To bring this argument to its logical extreme, rapists could argue that they are born with this inclination and so should not be held culpable for their actions.

Having a discussion like the one above would clearly take some time. Talk shows do not always lend themselves to serious discussion. But even making a few points can help people understand the Christian worldview better and start them asking more questions. Don’t be afraid of opportunities to have more extensive discussions. As I worked on this article while sitting in Chicago’s O’Hare airport, I had a chance to speak with someone for ten min­utes or so on why morals have no foundation in a secular humanist worldview.

Biblical views on marriage, sexuality, family, and work (to name a few) are increasingly under attack in the Western world. We are all called to speak up in a firm and winsome way. How long will God be patient with us?