I have in front of me a printout of the full Obergefell v. Hodges decision handed down by the Supreme Court today. I plan on working through it in the next few days. If you’d like to join me, you can download it and print it out here.
Already, as we have come to expect, a few excellent responses to today’s events have been published. In case you haven’t seen them yet, here are a couple links.
Russell Moore, President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, has a response in the Washington Post entitled “Why the church should neither cave nor panic about the decision on gay marriage.” He writes:
So how should the church respond? First of all, the church should not panic. The Supreme Court can do many things, but the Supreme Court cannot get Jesus back in that tomb. Jesus of Nazareth is still alive. He is still calling the universe toward his kingdom…
Let’s also recognize that if we’re right about marriage, and I believe we are, many people will be disappointed in getting what they want. Many of our neighbors believe that a redefined concept of marriage will simply expand the institution (and, let’s be honest, many will want it to keep on expanding). This will not do so, because sexual complementarity is not ancillary to marriage. The church must prepare for the refugees from the sexual revolution.
Definitely check out the whole article.
Joe Carter has a quick info piece just in case you’re not up to speed on the details of the decision. He also posted 50 Key Quotes from the Supreme Court’s Same-Sex Marriage Ruling, if you don’t want to comb through the whole thing yourself. In fact, the ERLC’s Archive page has a bunch of great articles like that one.
I’m sure we’ll all read more over the next few days. But I thought it would be good to end with one more quote from Moore’s Washington Post piece. When false things are elevated and lauded, let’s remember the most true things:
This gives the church an opportunity to do what Jesus called us to do with our marriages in the first place: to serve as a light in a dark place. Permanent, stable marriages with families with both a mother and a father may well make us seem freakish in 21st-century culture.
We should not fear that.
We believe stranger things than that.
We believe a previously dead man is alive, and will show up in the Eastern skies on a horse.
We believe that the gospel can forgive sinners like us and make us sons and daughters. Let’s embrace the sort of freakishness that saves.