Feelings are not the goal

I was reading this morning in the book of Judges.

It was a sad time when Israel was fighting with itself - between tribes they were killing each other and stealing each other's women to have multiple wives and added concubines.  Reading it and God's reaction to it makes it hard to comprehend how a people whose history is so connected with God could become so overwhelmed with falling for temptation that they disconnected it from what God wants and "reasoned" it out for themselves.  One particular piece was about some enemies attacking and insisting on taking a man that was a guest so they could sexually abuse him, and the "honorable" solution was to instead give the men a virgin daughter and a concubine so as to not dishonor their guest.  Needless to say, these men killed the girl in the process, initiating a horrible attack and revenge.

Further in my reading I moved to 2nd Corinthians, where Paul talked about the way, as he said "the dark god of this world" had infected the thinking of the Corinthian people, making them more likely to choose things that did not please God over those that did.  His (Paul's) focus in this writing was on how the people had become accustomed to pleasing themselves and expecting God to be about pleasure rather than the service He expects.

Recently Bill O'Reilly of Fox News made some comments about the whole marriage issue, that the traditional marriage side has "lost" the argument because the "Bible Thumpers" argued on the basis of the Bible, which Bill says has no place in the public debate.  He has crept across a line I am afraid our whole society drifts toward, just like the people of Israel did long ago and the people of Corinth did somewhat later.  Somewhere we, as a society, concluded that what God has said and how it affects lives is not relevant in public policy.  In the rush to eliminate any vestige of conflict between church and state, we are making God as an issue not relevant and leaving, instead, our "feelings" and what "pleases" us to judge right and wrong, determining social policy based on what makes us happy, what some believe is "fair",  instead of what history, tradition, and God established as norms over thousands of years.

I was sorry to hear Bill argue that we cannot have any mention of God or the Bible in public debate.  I believe it is a cop out, and, as Paul says, a cave in to "the dark God of this world".  If we eliminate God from our discussions and instead depend on our human intellect, that "dark god" knows we will eventually lean away from faith and pleasing God and defeat God's efforts on our own, saving that dark god the trouble.  And Bill O'Rielly has fallen into the trap.  His "logic" leaves no place to go, because we can't judge the right and wrong of a sacred institution without the point of view given by God, therefore defeating it because we believe desires rule over what is truly right and wrong.

Its a shame to see us drift toward so certain a fate.