Live Libertarian

Because the word Libertarian has so many connotations, It would be easy to misunderstand what I mean when I say “Live Libertarian.”

First, understand that we are called to live, not under the law, but under grace.

1 Corinthians 6:12 “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.”

As the founders of the USA so eloquently put it, we are given the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by the almighty God. Even more than that, we as Christians are free from sin, in Christ.

Second, understand that as much as we are called to live under grace, so we are called to extend the same grace to everyone else that is extended to us.

Do not expect others to live in any particular way. Extend to those around you the assumption that they are free to live however they choose, free from your judgment or disapproval provided they don’t damage the lives of those for whom you personally are responsible.

Romans 14:2-4 “One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?”

Finally, what is meant by living libertarian is simply making this basic approach natural to the way we see the world.

LIVE this. Don’t just appreciate it or agree with it. Make it a habit and integrate it into the way you approach life.

This doesn’t mean that you approve of everything that people around you do, but before you can reach out a hand to help, you have to understand what it means to allow others to live their own lives.

There is a world of difference between demanding change of others and offering them change. By nature, demanding is not going to lead to good things. Offering change may be a good thing, but for some of us, learning not to judge instinctively what the people around us are doing and automatically offer disapproval can be really difficult.

In a healthy society, appreciating the people around you for the good they offer must eclipse the drive to make the people around you be “good” (or the compulsion to see yourself as somehow being better than others, for whatever reason comes in handy first…)

Live libertarian means that you give everyone around you the freedom to do or say what they choose without you instinctively analyzing their behavior and deciding whether you disapprove.

Don’t Die on the Wrong Hill

The battle that so-called “Christianity” in America is waging against same-sex marriage is a wrong hill to die on–not just a bad hill or an undeserving one, a wrong one.

While homosexuality is clearly defined as immoral in the Bible, the response from the American “church” is entirely unlike Christ. Satan has suckered us into a position where we are fighting a selfish battle we deserve to lose and, truly, had already lost before it was ever really begun, both spiritually and in the popular mind.

First, what is the Christian response to homosexuality?

I begin here by reiterating a point that no Christian should need to hear twice, because scripture is clear. Homosexuality IS immoral. (See 1 Corinthians 6 and Romans 1. If you really follow Christ, this should be enough to lay that question to rest.)

That said, how would a real Christian respond to a claim of homosexuality in a brother or sister? I promise, it wouldn’t begin with a call to repent, or with a finger pointed in blame ( far less with acceptance). Such a claim should be met with the question “where have we gone wrong?”

This must be belabored, because too many people do not have eyes to see it. Homosexuality is an EFFECT, not a cause. It is an immorality that people are given over to as an indication of other CAUSAL sins. (This is stated plainly in Romans 1.)

As always, brothers and sisters must see each other with love, and love is always the closest possible friend. Homosexuality is no worse a sin than adultery, and far less a sin than pride or contempt or manipulation. If you are confronted with the sin of homosexuality, approach it in another the same way you would approach a sin that you personally are prone to. If you cannot do so, then it is YOU who are in error.

When you see one brother approach another with a pointed finger, beware. That brother is in the hand of Satan.

Now, what was that about the wrong hill?

It would be unjust if the church in America won a battle to strip freedom from others, even the freedom to do wrong. Our country was founded by Christian men on the principle that all men are given the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness BY God. …Those rights are not amended because we disapprove of the mistakes other people make on that pursuit. Why would God listen to us when we demand it be removed so that we can put others back under the law?

We are ASKING God to lend a hand in whitewashing what we know to be a tomb. Do you really think He is such a fool?

There are about a million ways in which that battle could have been fought justly–or at least not unjustly. The freedom of worship, for example, would have been a rock on which this battle might have been fought–instead of a sad footnote, left broken and near death in the wreckage.

The American church has branded itself with the iron of the pharisees, and it hasn’t even the secular power to make its decrees meaningful.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

When it comes right down to it, the ONLY effect the church has achieved by dying on this hill is to make God look weak and petty before all the world by association. This was not His battle the church just lost, or He would have fought it and won, but it IS His name that we’re dragging through the mud.

It seems to me that if the church is so apostate that it is willing to swallow camels and swat at gnats, a good dose of the fear of God is due us.

Yes, our nation is due a judgment, but it is NOT because of a sin like homosexuality as some would have you believe. It is because we, like Sodom, have “…pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease…” Ezekiel 16:49

In fact, America is in precisely the same position the house of Israel was in, as seen in Ezekiel 16. Let that sink in a bit. It’s scary.

Woe be unto America, but even more, woe be unto the body of the American church that has fought to whitewash this tomb instead of opening it up for cleansing.