There Will Rise Up A Stigma

Public shaming has been around for a long time. These men were put into the stocks at Bramhall, England, in the year 1900. I don't know why they were put into the stocks, but they must have done something...very...very...bad.
 
[Photo Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Author unknown.]

A National Public Radio web article flashed the headline: "Christian colleges are tangled in their own LGBT policies." John Stonestreet, President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and Roberto Rivera, followed up with an ominous BreakPoint commentary (link below).

The reality is that many Christian colleges are as much at risk today as "politically incorrect" flower shops and cake decorating businesses. If student loans from the government are not allowed to be used at colleges having particular views on sexual practice, many colleges will not survive the financial hit.

I would only add to the BreakPoint analysis, that even if the student loan situation were not an issue, the "court of public opinion" is. Christian colleges holding to a biblical view of homosexuality will be targets of increasing public shaming for being "intolerant," "narrow minded," and (the worst) "unloving." 

They will be painted as Southern schools of the early '60s with segregation policies. There will rise up a stigma associated with such schools which many Christian students (and their parents) will not be willing to carry in public.

As this stigma becomes a reality for Christian colleges, it will become a reality for Christian K-12 schools. But it will not stop there.

It will become a reality for Bible-teaching churches, too. Christian K-12 schools will be facing the prospect of losing enough students to shut their doors. This is exactly where things are headed. And churches will not be able to dodge this bullet either. The faithful everywhere will be put into public stocks and shamed.

Think it could never happen? Think again.

Christian institutions (whether K-12 schools, colleges, or churches) that hold to the belief that homosexual conduct is sin (I use an old, outdated word) are headed for difficult testing. Some Christian schools and churches will try to "survive" by moderating their views on what is acceptable sexual behavior. This is already happening. 

Such testing is God's way. Allowing the likes of LGBTQ activism to test the hearts and minds of His own has been His way of doing things since the days of Job, and before.

God's judgment begins with the testing of His own people. As the Apostle Peter wrote to his own generation, "The time has come for God's judgment, and it is beginning with the testing of his own people." The Living Water Translation, I Peter 4:17.

For the BreakPoint article, click here. 

Posted by Dr. Christian Overman