"Their desire is to offend Christians and encourage them to keep their religious beliefs out of the public square."

The “Satanic Temple” is trying to raise hackles by putting together a sculpture that is more or less a stone/concrete/whatever version of the scary critters you’ll see in a lot of comic books and video games. My take is that we should let them—they are showing themselves to be the intellectual and spiritual equivalent of 13 year old boys. “here, let me hold the door while you walk that sculpture through—it’s telling the world everything I ever wanted to say about Satanism.”

(Weird Al’s “Tacky” comes to mind, for the initiated….for the uninitiated, watch. It’s no eye gate problem.)

And our lesson? Stand up and object when people try to fill our churches and such with “Jesus Junk”. We have a wonderful savior—why would we need to pollute His name this way? No need to act like those who claim to worship the source of pollution, no?

about soul liberty. because I’m really wanting to know. so, does being h’mos’xual fall under being a soul liberty?

Is “soul liberty” what the constitution is talking about?

I just need to figure out how to talk about this stuff. b/c I am against spreading and promoting the practice of h’mos’xuality, but where sin and the constitution meet are … weird places to be.

The godless are definitely going for the “shock and awe” treatment on Christians today. From the media, protests, giving their desires an “air of inevitability”, I do believe God can and is judging the ungodly today (Romans 1). Part of the form of that judgment is definitely allowing the ungodly to be given over to those desires.

However, that doesn’t mean that we should not be “salt and light” and be a preservative in resisting evil and keeping good. I’m not a big political fan, and that is only one way to be involved in resisting sin. I would like to hear from others at SI about how they feel are God-honoring ways to preserve good and resist evil. Obviously, evangelism and discipleship is another way. What else would you add? What can the church as a community organization do to promote godliness?

because I think a certain subset of christians is just withdrawing from political-involvement-as-a-christian, and kind of taking on the decision-making and moral ideas of the worldly.

I’ve been reading William Wilberforce’s book and re-reading parts of the US Consitution trying to figure out what’s the better way of going about this. The only part of the constitution I can see bearing on the soul-liberty idea is in the bill of rights “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

So, in promoting biblical ideals, are we trying to establish a religious control of some sort?

I think it can’t be logical because otherwise we’re just establishing a moral control of another sort– one that doesn’t call itself by a religious name per se. I don’t see the constitution as addressing morality itself, but since christianity has been the “controlling” moral compass of society for so long, it seems that it’s been “legislating” it’s standards.

Anne, wonderful questions, and my take is that individual soul liberty speaks to a man’s right to worship as he pleases, and transitively, that also means to make moral, or immoral choices. The state, then, is parallel; they are called to enforce God’s morality (and have done a lousy job generally), and our role as citizens or subjects is then to pray and petition so that the state’s laws, and the state’s execution of them, is Godly.

Now obviously for the time being, Christians have lost regarding the topic of homosexuality specifically and really regarding sexuality generally—what we have is laws prohibiting rape, polygamy, incest, and the like. But really, our system or paradigm is the same; we confront sin in the sinner, and pray and petition that government will align its law with God’s.

My take at least….would love to hear more from others here!

I think, though, that a dwindling percent of the population thinks that the govt should enforce God’s morality. To them, this question doesn’t even exist. The govt is just to support one’s own morality, not to indicate what morality that should be.

So … I’m personally at the point where I do speak out at certain times, but I am very very careful to do it with a kind and thoughtful, but confident, unashamed-of-God tone.

I would also like to hear others’ thoughts.