I'll start with an admission that might surprise you. For this evangelical Christian opponent of gay marriage, the Kim Davis question is not clear cut. On the one hand, I absolutely do not think the law should compel her to issue licenses for gay marriage. I also have a very big problem with the way this law was established, which was by no legislative process at all.
But: She is an elected official of a secular institution, and she takes an oath to enforce the law - although the law imposed by the Supreme Court was not the law when she decided to run for the office. Even so, laws change all the time and no elected official can say, "Hey, if I'd known that was going to be the law, I wouldn't have run!"
So while the law is wrong and unjust, and not very legitimately established if you ask me, it's still the law - and it's still her oath to enforce it. How can we criticize Eric Holder for refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act but say Kim Davis can ignore laws she doesn't agree with? Holder was wrong. But how is the principle different for Davis?
That said, I certainly agree with her that God's law supersedes man's law, and if I was the clerk, I wouldn't issue the licenses either. So . . . what then? Do you throw in with the idea that she should resign if she can't do her job? A pastor I know said as much during a discussion on Facebook last night, arguing that Matthew's exit from public service upon his decision to follow Jesus serves as a model. Public office, he says, is no place for Christians anyway.
Well that really got me thinking, because you know who I bet agrees 100 percent with that statement? The secular left. In fact, I've thought all along that this was really the whole idea of the whole gay marriage movement:
As the licenses were issued, Davis was being held at the Carter County Detention Center, about 35 miles away. Bunning ordered the 49-year-old clerk to be taken into custody for refusing in the face of multiple court orders to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Davis, an Apostolic Christian, has said repeatedly that she could not issue such marriage licenses because of her religious beliefs. Pressure on Davis intensified after the Supreme Court on Monday decided not to grant her a reprieve.
"To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience,” Davis said in a statement Tuesday. “It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision.”
She consigned herself to jail Thursday, sparking a fresh round of legal wrangling and political calculation in the face of the most audacious display of defiance on the issue of same-sex marriage since the Supreme Court declared in June that gay couples had a constitutional right to wed.
If you really question most secular leftists, you'll find the thing that terrifies them the most is the prospect that Christians will "take over government," which I guess means the laws and the implementation of same reflects biblical principles rather than whatever the secularists' flesh wants at that moment. The pattern reveals something: Government is their god. And it's not hard to understand why. They can't control God and they have no intention of obeying Him. But government, they hope, they can gain and keep control of, thus giving them a power mechanism to use in fine-tuning society to be what they want it to be.
This is why they freak out whenever a Christian legislator uses the Bible to justify an issue position or a vote. God's truth is and has always been what they fear the most, and people who live according to it - and are guided by it in their public servants - are the biggest threat imaginable to the god of the secularists.
That's what made gay marriage such the perfect gambit. You establish a legal right to something clearly identified in Scripture as sin, and you do a lot more than just give people something they want. You also force all kinds of other people to make choices they would otherwise not have to make. The Christian county clerk has to choose between her job and her faith. So do judges at every level. So do governors, prosecutors, civil rights commissioners . . . who is levying this idiotic fines on bakeries? It's public officials who think they have no choice because of what the Supreme Court says the law is.
And that's the point of this whole thing: Pass completely immoral laws, using whatever means you can, and then when Christians in public service face a conflict, issue the inevitable ultimatum: If you can't follow the law, resign.
Kim Davis is just the start, and for that reason, she deserves legal support. She also deserves the nation's attention. Because if the secular left succeeds in passing even more immoral laws - and don't think for a second they're not going to try - Kim Davis will soon prove to be only the first of many in her situation.
The secular left's goal is to make government so unbiblical that it's virtually impossible for Christians to serve in it. And by the way, I disagree with my pastor friend who thinks it's just as well because politics is no place for Christians anyway. Politics is a nasty world, but God is raising up a standard as the enemy floods this nation, and some of those He raises up will be called to assignments in the political world. The enemy knows that too, and gay marriage has never been about gay marriage at all. It's been about preventing those people from taking their positions and doing their assignments.
And that has to fail.
I'll start with an admission that might surprise you. For this evangelical Christian opponent of gay marriage, the Kim Davis question is not clear cut. On the one hand, I absolutely do not think the law should compel her to issue licenses for gay marriage. I also have a very big problem with the way this law was established, which was by no legislative process at all.
But: She is an elected official of a secular institution, and she takes an oath to enforce the law - although the law imposed by the Supreme Court was not the law when she decided to run for the office. Even so, laws change all the time and no elected official can say, "Hey, if I'd known that was going to be the law, I wouldn't have run!"
