“Your God Is Imaginary!”
While O’Reilly was away for a week, Laura Ingraham hosted the Factor and interviewed two guests after the court rendered its two horrendous decisions. The two held views diametrically opposed to one another. The first was Bernard Whitman, who was described as a Democratic Strategist. The second was Robert Jeffress, senior “pastor” of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, who had commented in time past on moral issues. Both men were commenting on the significance of the recent decisions. Whitman, of course, was hailing the decision as a great one for homosexuals, citing some study that homosexual parents do an even better job of raising children than a husband and wife do. Jeffress could not remain silent. At his first opportunity he commented thus:
I just want to remind that neither he nor any of us would be here had it not been for a heterosexual union between a man and a woman. Nature teaches us (and I believe it’s God) that the best relationship in which to raise a child is with a father and a mother. To say that two men can just as easily and effectively raise a child is to demean the role of women. And, listen, even though culture changes and the court may change, God’s Word never changes. He designed marriage. He knows how best to operate it.
Notice that Jefress did not say that a one-parent household could not adequately rear a child or that two women (a woman and her sister, for example) could not adequately accomplish the task. His point is that ideally, the home should be as God designed it—there is a role for both father and mother. In cases of hardship, that will not exist, and it does not mean automatic failure, but still one parent of each gender is the Divine design.
Whitman became greatly agitated while Jeffress was making these remarks. He interrupted with the following protest:
You do not have a lock on God, sir. You do not have a lock on God, and my God does not agree with you.
The segment was then out of time, but I will respond with what should have been said. “Mr. Whitman, your God is imaginary. He is one that you invented—not the one of the Bible, and any time you can find the courage to debate the issue, I will gladly accommodate you. You made a statement that you need to defend—and the sooner the better.” In the event you choose not to respond, the following will serve as my reply.
First, God defines Himself in the Book, the Holy Bible. He is not defined in the Qur’an, nor in any other book written by men. The Bible is the only book that can be shown to be Divinely inspired of God (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
Second, therefore, the Bible is an objective source of material. It does not depend on what any individual says or thinks about it for its truthfulness and clarity. It can be understood by all in matters that are crucial to our character and behavior because God chose to use words that men understand—even when it is correctly translated into any language. For example, when God says to Israel, “You shall not steal” (Ex. 20:15), that does not mean that some of us have a right to say, “I think stealing is all right under certain circumstances. I have some friends who steal (that are quite brilliant and artistic). They are hard workers, and I don’t believe we should deny them their rights just because they live a little bit differently from the rest of us.” The word says what it does—whether we like it or not, whether we agree or not.
Third, the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin prior to the Law of Moses (Gen. 18:20; 19:4-5), under the Law of Moses (Lev. 18:22; 20:13), and as part of the Christian system (Rom. 1:26-27; Jude 7). God declared His will on this subject, and it does not need my acceptance to be valid. This is precisely the reason why the Bible had to come from an objective source—from God Himself: man is too wishy-washy to stand with God for very long. Even though God spoke directly to the people against idolatry, in less than seven weeks they had made a golden calf. How could such a thing occur? Was it an idol? Yes. Were idols explicitly forbidden? Yes. Then it was objectively wrong to make it no matter what human rationale might have been used to justify its existence.
Fourth, when God legislates on any matter, such as, “You shall not commit adultery” (Ex. 20:14), no one has the right to say, “You do not have a lock on God, sir. My God does not agree with you.” If God were subjective and could be whatever we wanted to make of Him, then each one of us would have his own God, and this sentiment would be valid. When I stole your brand new Mercedes Benz, I would simply say, “My God told me to do this,” and you would naturally not file a police report out of respect for my religion! When your boss convinced your wife to leave you and marry him, you would simply deduce, “OK, the better man won”—if God were subjective.
The fact is, however, that God did not reveal Himself to be the kind of being that is all things to all people. In fact, He even pinpoints what is wrong with this way of thinking. People project on God their own views and opinions. “You thought that I was altogether like you; but I will reprove you…” (Ps. 50:21). God is not (in reality) the way we make Him or would like for Him to be; He is the way He has revealed Himself to us. Any other concept of God stems from the imagination, which makes Him imaginary.
Those who construct God the way they want Him to be are only deceiving themselves—they are the ones who think they have a lock on God. To them it does not matter what the Scriptures teach. They are confident that God would not condemn the sin they are committing (or which their friends are committing); so they believe that God will comply with their thinking. They are the ones who believe they have God in their pocket.
We who abide by what the Scriptures teach do not have an agenda. We have made up nothing; we have no opinion of our own; we just recognize what the Bible teaches. Doing so does not imply that we have a lock on God—only that we respect His Divine revelation. In fact, to accuse someone of “having a lock on God” is calculated to arouse prejudice against him and to charge him with attitudes he has never possessed. Furthermore, it obscures the fact that the false accuser is actually guilty of the very thing he claims of others.
When God approached Israel at Mount Sinai, He did not say, “Make of Me what you will. Define Me however you wish. Every ideology will command the same respect as any other.” Instead, He provided moral absolutes which everyone could understand. Other parts of the Law of Moses are equally understandable. Under that covenant (and only under that covenant) God commanded that the Sabbath be considered a holy day. To be sure, if He had left it at that, people would have done anything and justified every practice as being holy; so He spelled out what He meant by it.
No one was to do any work, and that included any children, any servants, and strangers, or any cattle (Ex. 20:8-11). Resting from their labors was the way that God wanted the day observed. When someone violated that principle, he was stoned to death (Num. 15:32-36). God means what He says. When the Holy Spirit said that a man would leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife (Gen. 2:25), He was not authorizing two men or two women to be “married.” He designed marriage for a man and a woman. Homosexuality is a grievous sin to God. He does not authorize two of the same gender to marry regardless of what any culture thinks about it.
Members of the body of Christ would agree that Jeffress does not have a lock on God, and with his theology we take strong exception, but when he points out that marriage was designed by God between a man and a woman, he is simply calling attention to what the Bible clearly teaches. That Whitman believes in homosexual marriage does not change even a whit what God has revealed on this subject. Adulterers don’t like what God said on that subject, either. John said to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother Philip’s wife.” Herod could have countered by saying, “You don’t have a lock on God, and my God doesn’t agree with you.” Instead Herod imprisoned John and later had him beheaded.
Such is not unusual for those who are devoted to sinful behavior; violence and force, rather than argumentation, is their solution when they are in power—or abusing the law rather than upholding it.