Protestant evangelicals, Catholics, Orthodox, and virtually every other church outside of a subset of shrinking churches in the West believe marriage touches foundational anthropological doctrines and will never be simply something we can “agree to disagree” on. Still, the press surrounding the progressive position can make orthodox Christians feel defeated, deflated, and doomed—as if they’re in the minority now as far as churchgoing Christians are concerned, as if there’s no stopping the runaway revisionist train. This narrative is powerful but false.

Earlier this year, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) surprised nearly everyone, not just outsiders. The denomination, which many believed had been drifting away from the authority of Scripture, corrected course and made clear the church’s conviction on sexual ethics.
The CRC’s clarification went even further than some observers expected. The group voted, as a clear majority, to make its position nonnegotiable. The traditional view of marriage and sexuality is the standard of the church’s teaching. There’s to be no deviation, which goes for institutions like Calvin University, even if some professors there seem to have moved toward the revisionist view of sexuality.
Trend in Institutions
The CRC is not the only denomination to tighten its doctrinal standards around sexuality rather than loosen them.

The Global Methodist Church is in the process of breaking up with the United Methodist Church and will provide a worldwide home for Wesleyans who wish to maintain a faithful witness to God’s Word in the days ahead.
The Anglican Communion is mired in conflict between a fast-shrinking, largely white, and increasingly elderly contingent that advocates for same-sex marriage and a fast-growing, largely black and brown, and increasingly young community of believers located in the global South that shuns the revisionist agenda. Several years ago, the Communion censured the American wing. Meanwhile, orthodox Anglicans around the world are finding new and creative ways of connection and partnership.
The Presbyterian Church of America recently released a lengthy, brilliantly crafted document that reaffirms a biblical view of sex and marriage, even going so far as to provide avenues for evangelists and apologists to make a case for this position in an era shaped by the sexual revolution.

It’s not just denominations. Organizations have been tightening up their standards and clarifying their adherence to the biblical position.

The CCCU (Council for Christian Colleges and Universities) added a statement about Christian distinctives and advocacy, which clarified their adherence to a biblical sexual ethic as a “core Christian commitment.”
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship conducted a four-year process of study and then reiterated the organization’s stance through a nine-part curriculum for all employees.
Fuller Seminary, Wheaton College, and Christianity Today have also, in recent years, reaffirmed their commitment to the historic view of marriage.

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Written by Rev. Dr. Jim Tonkowich |
Friday, December 31, 2021
Mad Hatters and March Hares will be with us until the Second Coming. And until then mad laws will be commonplace. In part, we need to deal with it. In part, we need to avoid making matters worse by our cupidity and stupidity, acting instead with wisdom as we love God and our neighbors.

One hundred years ago it was illegal to kick back with a beer, celebrate with champagne, or sip a martini even in the privacy of your own home. “National prohibition of alcohol (1920–33) — the ‘noble experiment’,” wrote economist Mark Thornton, “was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America.” In truth, it did none of these things, benefitting only “bootleggers, crime bosses, and the forces of big government.”
So how did we get what was, in retrospect, an insane constitutional amendment? And how did we end up with other outrageous laws?
For example, California demands that by 2045 all trucks and vans will be electric while simultaneously shutting down power plants even as Californians today endure power shortages without adding hundreds of thousands of electric trucks, vans, and eventually cars.
How do things like that happen?
A Lesson from the Mad Hatter and the March Hare
In 1923 as Great Britain toyed with Prohibition, G.K. Chesterton explained it with a little help from Lewis Carroll.
All mad laws proceed, he wrote in How Mad Laws are Made, from collusion between two unlikely allies: the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. That is, from “a compromise between a fad and a vested interest.”
The Hatter is mad, in a quiet way; but he is merely mad on making hats, or rather on making money. He has a huge and prosperous emporium which advertises all possible hats to fit all possible heads; but he certainly nourishes an occult conviction that it is really the duty of the heads to fit the hats. This is his mild madness; in other respects he is a stodgy and rather stupid millionaire.
If money can be made, the Hatter is at the table. Thus Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, and Honda think California’s new rules are just wonderful. Replacing a vast fleet of vehicles will do wonders for their bottom line.
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A leader who doesn’t view himself as being inside an accountability structure effectively becomes a law unto himself. He teaches everyone under him to fear him, when it’s only God whom we should fear. Loyalty to a leader is indeed a good thing, but good loyalty is loyalty to his leadership under God and anyone else under whom God has placed him, like fellow elders or a congregation. Good loyalty says, “I’m committed to you and your success as a leader, and that means I cannot follow you into folly or unrighteousness, because it’s bad for both you and us.”

Good Authority Is Not Unaccountable but Submits to a Higher Authority
Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”—John 1:49
The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.—John 5:19
I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. —John 8:28
Jesus is king. Jesus obeys. How do we hold those two truths together? And what does it teach us about any authority we’ve been personally given?
Passages like these three in John’s Gospel offer us far more than “principles of good leadership.” We should be careful about merely trying to draw moral principles from passages that focus on the identity of the incarnate Christ and his relationship with the heavenly Father. Still, these passages do offer us such principles. For instance: good authority is never unaccountable, but always submits to a higher authority.
Jesus, the God-man, came to be declared king. Yet throughout his ministry on earth, he submitted himself perfectly to his Father in heaven. He spoke only what his heavenly Father taught him to speak, and did only what his heavenly Father taught him to do. Or as the apostle Paul put it, “the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3).
Does Jesus Christ’s submission demean him? Only if righteousness and rule are demeaning.
Authority and submission are two sides of one coin. To be in authority you must be under it, and to be under it is to be in it. Furthermore, we exercise authority in order to uphold something that is righteous or true, and when we submit we render the judgment that that something is righteous or true.
Jesus’s submission to the heavenly Father was the declaration that God is righteous and true. For Jesus to rule, furthermore, he had to conform himself perfectly to the rule of the heavenly Father. He could rule like Adam was supposed to rule by submitting in a way Adam and Israel never submitted. By submitting, then, he ruled together with the heavenly Father in perfect righteousness.
Another Illustration: A Symphony Orchestra
Let me offer a less exalted illustration of how good authority always submits to a higher authority. My friend Susan offered me this one. Susan has played viola in a number of orchestras over the years. Generally speaking, a standard symphony orchestra has ten first violins, ten second violins, ten violas, eight cellos, and six double basses. Typically, the most skilled player plays the “first chair” of each section, also called the “principal,” and everyone in the section follows that principal. All the viola players follow the principal viola player, all the cellos the principal cellist, and so on. The principal of each section, in turn, follows the first chair of the first violins, called the “concertmaster,” who follows the orchestra conductor. The concertmaster tunes the entire orchestra before a concert, and then leads every string section when it comes to matters like timing, bowing, and so forth.
String players can adjust their bowing in a multitude of ways, each of which gives a piece of music a different interpretation. When do you bow up? When down? What style? How hard onto the strings? How lightly off? A piece written by Bach might call for one kind of bowing, Beethoven another, Debussy still another. But the point is, all the strings must bow together. And it’s up to the concertmaster to make this judgment, based on his or her understanding of the conductor’s direction. The principals of each section follow the concertmaster, and the players in every section follow their principals.
Everything in an orchestra, in fact, works according to such a hierarchy. People sitting in the even-numbered chairs (2, 4, and 6) turn the pages for people sitting in the odd chairs (1, 3, and 5), who rank slightly higher. If someone in a lower ranking chair has a question, she doesn’t raise her hand and ask the conductor. She asks the person in the chair in front of her.
If that person can’t answer, the question is passed forward person by person until it reaches the principal of that section. From there, a question would go to the concertmaster, and if the concertmaster cannot answer it, only then does it go to the conductor. If an orchestra tried to operate like a democracy, with all the members having their own say and choosing their own tuning, timing, and bowing, the music would sound terrible. Only by working within a strict hierarchy does an orchestra sound unified and glorious.
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