“Drive out the scoffer, and contention will go out, Even strife and dishonor will cease.” Proverbs 22:10
There is an important biblical principle about those who mock authority. It is this: When scoffers are allowed to spread their poison, contention spreads. When they are driven out, it stops.
Last week, President Barack Obama set aside his role as Chief Executive and became “Scoffer in Chief.” He became the first president in the history of the United States to make an executive statement communicating his moral and political support for changing the historical, common law, statutory and biblical definition of marriage to sanction the ability of two men or two women to marry. Despite the fact that he carefully omitted the word “Bible” from his discussion, he made it clear from his statement that his opinion was more important than God’s written declaration.
But far more was going on than a simple statement of opinion from the President. The carefully timed, highly strategic presidential declaration to the American people, launched just before Mother’s Day, was a cue to the media, to ultra-liberal pastors, and to activist political groups, that the restraints were lifted—restraints which were implicitly imposed on them by the stated unwillingness of their hero and defender to cross certain boundaries.
It was like a master unleashing his wild and ravenous dog and saying—-“sic ‘em!”
And the first wave of the mauling is aimed at the one book which continues to inspire awe and some degree of reverence even with unbelievers — The Holy Bible. The tactic — confusion, reinterpretation, mockery, misrepresentation.
Leading the assault is the largely pro-homosexual press corps which has aimed its poisoned pen at the Biblical definition of marriage by using its pulpit to generate a cacophony of scoffing at the Bible as the recognized standard bearer for the definition of marriage.
Here is the form of scoffing which is presented on the home pages of the news outlets like CNN this week:
Barack Obama should be supported because the Bible is pro-homosexual: This week CNN is featuring a new wave of experts — People who do not hold to a belief in the doctrines of inspiration and infallibility, and thus reject the authority of Scripture, and who are actively involved in support for homosexuality, but who are given front page news stories and editorials in which they declare with great personal authority that their study of the text of Scripture reveals conclusively that nothing in the Bible opposes homosexuality — this despite two thousand years of scholarship to the contrary.
Even if the Bible does oppose homosexuality, the Bible should not be taken seriously because it is a book of discrimination. CNN’s John Blake writes: “Some people wonder if the black church will punish President Barack Obama for announcing support for same-sex marriage. Here’s another question: Why would the black church cite scripture to exclude gays when a similar approach to the Bible was used to enslave their ancestors...’The literal approach to scripture was used to enslave black people.’” The fact that this is an outrageous over-generalization based on a misrepresentation of the Scriptures is irrelevant to the press corps. Emboldened by the president’s declaration, CNN is now willing to openly mock and implicate those who believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of Scriptures.
Add to these arguments from the media a litany of video features including some anti-Obama pastors, but a host of pro-homosexual pastors many of whom who do not even believe in the fundamentals of orthodox Christianity, being presented as “Christian” experts on the Bible. The latter are given to the American people to persuade them that reasonable Christians can disagree as to whether two men should be able to marry.
But whether it is sugar-coated or presented in its traditionally venomous form, the public attack on the biblical definition of marriage always reduces to scoffing at God for setting the standards and scoffing at people for believing in those standards.
Once again we see that those who say that the faith of a President does not matter because he is not “pastor in chief” are really missing the mark. The President will either seek to honor the Lord, and say so, or he will inevitably scoff at the Lord and His law — making him “Scoffer in Chief.” And when the President of the United States boldly scoffs at the biblical definition of marriage, a nation of scoffers will rise up.
The answer to this problem is found in Proverbs 22:10.