It’s the year 2040. I am sitting in my house watching a hologram of myself run to the store to pick up some organic reindeer milk for breakfast in the morning. Most days I choose to go out rather then send my hologram, but today was an especially challenging day of street ministry. It breaks my heart to see how much “the definition of marriage has changed over the past ten years” (Nelson, 2015). When I first went into ministry, back in 2015, about “forty percent of Americans thought marriage was obsolete as a concept” and unnecessary (Nelson, 2015). That number is probably closer to ninety percent today. As I watch my hologram, enter the food bank, someone holds the door for me. I barely notice what they are wearing or if they are a boy or girl, but I see, with the entirety of my heart, the lack of boundaries and morals and values that consumes the light within their eyes (Nelson, 2015). Even as they hold the door for an elderly person, this act of kindness, seems to be more of a challenge. We make eye contact. They look at me. I see them. It makes them angry to be “seen”. They let go of the door and shoot me a bird. In 2040, people shoot birds with their ring finger. Theirs has six rings on it. It still shakes me, to the core, that marriages are no longer for a lifetime. These days most couples are choosing either a five- or two-year renewable contract (Nelson, 2015). It is just an opinion, and you know what they say about opinions, but I think the legalization of gay marriage played a huge role in the number of bisexual, transsexual, and sexually androgynous (those who choose to wear gender neutral attire) people in our society (Nelson, 2015). It has become so prevalent that doctors no longer announce the gender at childbirth-if the parents wanted a girl then it is a girl- regardless of their genitals or the parents may even choose to raise the child as gender neutral until the child decides what they want to be identified as (Nelson, 2015).
You’re probably wondering why I even bother to tell anyone about Jesus anymore. I often wonder if God has already come back and I have been left behind, so your bewilderment is completely merited, but let me share with you about the place in which I have found hope to exist. The institution of marriage is a “culturally universal, inviolable social structure, regardless of how these features might be altered by specific cultures: the desire for life long, mutually committed partner-love, the nature of sexual reproduction, the psychological benefits of marriage to most spouses and their children, the need for intimacy, and the compelling beauty of self-sacrifice for another” have not-it is just misplaced for now, waiting to be rediscovered (Johnson, 2022). As lost as our society is they still believe God is vital to a successful life and relationship (Johnson, 2022). The only problem is that God is relational, and they do not know more than His name and His mercy. I worry more about the professing Christians who want to be “normal” (Johnson, 2022). There is a old saying that goes: if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, then it’s a duck. Too many Christians look like the world, act like the world, and smell like the world these days, but I love and I love and I love. Never condemning nor condoning any situation, choice, decision, or person in hopes that just one will find me to be a mirror of God’s grace, mercy, and love; and choose to leave behind the cultural norms.
Justin Babb- Full time college student and minister disguised as a residential/commercial painter. He preaches the gospel with discernment and boldness through his life and actions. He completed his associates degree while serving a 460 year sentence, suspended to three consecutive ten year sentences in South Carolina’s Department of Corrections. He made parole after 6 years. He is a husband and father. This brother has a phenomenal writing style that always wows his readers.
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