July 2, 2019 

If you have ever done gardening or tended to your yard, you know that it’s a never ending process. My bushes and hedges are relentless in their desire to encroach on the boundaries of where I want them to be. If I’m not out there every two weeks to three weeks with my hedge-clipper, I will lose control of the yard. The thing is though, that I don’t see the encroachment happening on a daily basis. If I trim on Saturday, the yard still looks nice on Sunday. But in two weeks, the difference is very noticeable. The same thing is happening with encroachments on our religious freedoms. We may not notice the loss of our religious freedoms daily, but over time, we can’t miss that our freedoms are being taken. You may have read in the news yesterday that the California Assembly has passed a resolution calling on religious leaders in the state of California to affirm homosexuality and refrain from counseling anyone that this lifestyle is not God’s will for them, and that change through Christ is possible. That bill will now be voted on by the Senate, which is likely to pass it as well. 

Assembly Concurrent Resolution-99 proclaims that the state’s legislators have “found that being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming.” Further, it “calls upon religious leaders with conviction to counsel on LGBT matters from a place of love, compassion, and knowledge of the psychological and other harms of conversion therapy.” Did you catch that? The government is “calling on” religious leaders to endorse the government’s ideology of sexuality over Biblical sexuality. 

The point of my article today is not a rant against the LGBTQ community, and the ever-increasing move toward normalizing and accepting behavior that God calls sin. Its advocates have been planning this for years and we are just now waking up to a world that has changed. My point is that our religious freedoms are being eroded. Or sticking with my gardening analogy, our religious freedoms are being encroached upon by a government that is increasingly involved in legislating what Christians can say and can’t say, and where and when we can say it. Today they are “calling” on religious leaders to support their agenda. Tomorrow they may try to dictate what we can say from the pulpit, especially as the definition of ‘hate speech’ becomes broader and more inclusive. In the future, Christian churches may be threatened with losing their tax exempt status if the pastor uses ‘hate speech’ to proclaim what the Bible has to say about healthy human sexuality according to God’s design.  

Doing nothing is unacceptable. We need gardeners who will fight back against the encroachment of government. We need people who will fight for religious freedom and who will stand on the truth of the Bible. Sadly, on the same day the news about Assembly Resolution 99 was reported, we lost a great gardener of Biblical teaching and values. Norman Geisler died at age 86 yesterday. Geisler, a Michigan native, graduated from Wheaton College in 1958, and later earned a Master’s in theology from Wheaton and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Loyola University. He taught at Dallas Theological Seminary for about a decade before co-founding Southern Evangelical Seminary. He is best known for his writings, debates and lectures on creation and evolution, human sexuality, Biblical inerrancy, and the existence of God. Among his books are If God, Why Evil?,When Skeptics Ask, and I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, co-authored with apologist Frank Turek. 

Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Tim. 4:7-8 apply as much to Geisler as to anyone: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.” As time moves on and the current generation of faithful gardeners goes home to be with the Lord, I am concerned that there are less faithful gardeners who hold to the truth of the Bible, and more weeds. If we don’t pay attention and do something, our religious freedoms could disappear in a matter of a decade or two. 

We should be praying for our country and its leaders on a daily basis. We need legislators and judges that recognize that once our country loses its Christian foundation and morals, our freedoms will quickly follow. We should be evaluating candidates for office based on their convictions about upholding religious freedom, the authority of Scripture, and the value of Biblical preaching. Finally, we should not passively accept that we’ve lost the battle. God is still sovereign. He still answers prayer. He still loves us and wants to bless us. If we forsake Him, He will forsake us as Romans 1 makes clear. If we ask for healing for our country, God may be gracious to grant spiritual revival. It will take faithful gardeners who are bold to ask!