The Series of Personal Testimonies that Glorify Jesus Christ

Testimony #1 Fidelity to Truth by Phillip Lee

Fidelity to truth, God’s absolute truth, both in doctrine and behavior, is not an option for faithful followers of Christ Jesus.

When Christian leadership allows secular demands and guidance to trump Biblical teaching, the world has its foundation to boast of having become the light of the Church which completely reverses the formula that Jesus prescribed – "You are the light of the world" – (Matthew 5:14-16).

However, there will always be those willing to say what is most definitely unpopular but nonetheless redemptive, standing for what is controversial but true, even when truth is being relentlessly and systematically obscured…

It is 1981, I am living in San Francisco and very much a member of the gay community. On a Sunday afternoon, I leave my apartment and walk down Powell Street toward Market Street, the main drag of downtown San Francisco.

The closer and closer I get to Market Street, clearly something is going on because the boulevard is lined with a huge crowd of people. I have happened upon my first Gay Pride Parade.

I cannot believe what I am witnessing. Frankly, the first thought that occurred to me was – “Why aren’t these people being arrested?” – largely due to the pornographic nature and displays that are parading by, one after another after another.

And, I am thinking, “This is what I am to be proud of?”

It was my first and last gay pride parade.

Today, far, far beyond equal rights for many groups in America in their attempts to reweave the social, cultural, and political fabric of this country, is an unquenchable thirst for power.

Right on the heels of the power quest is a relentless crusade by many groups for acceptance and to gain society’s stamp of approval on a considerable list of various behaviors.

When gay marriage became legal throughout America (but not lawful in the Kingdom of God), the entire lid to Pandora’s Box came off. Various groups that had been for a very long time standing along the sidelines waiting their turn, busted out of the box and began to be much more vocal and visible, demanding to be recognized and accepted.

And, let me be perfectly clear by stating, we, the Church, did contribute to the past, and the on-going cultural vacuum that has allowed the redefinition of marriage, family, etc. to happen with so little resistance.

One of the groups that came parading by in 1981 was the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), an organization at the forefront pushing for the right of adult homosexuals to have sex with minors.

At its seventh General Membership Conference held in Boston in December 1993, NAMBLA adopted numerous and various points, as well as this position: “Whereas it is impossible to say at what age a person is capable of consenting to sex because every individual and every case is different; and therefore any attempt to set an age is capricious, arbitrary, and unfair…” NAMBLA has long been dedicated to the replacement of the age-of-consent laws.

The push for the acceptance of pedophilia is by no means new on the scene as some seem to think today. The ongoing push and threat for the lowering of age-of-consent laws, so that sex with youth might be legally permissible, reveals a threat that pedophilia poses to children and through them, to society.

Herein lies my concern…

If you can get the public to think pedophilia is just another thing – then the battle for legal and social acceptance and rights is pretty much in the bag.

Have we not traveled this exact same road before?

No matter how strongly we may be opposed to any number of agendas, we are first of all called to be Christians who have the privilege of representing Christ to all the communities of the world, regardless of class, color, nationality, gender, or sexual orientation.

That said, it is not enough to condemn the darkness, if we fail to shine a light of hope on our disintegrating culture.

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, then I am not confessing Christ, however boldly, I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is tested.” Martin Luther