The State of Arkansas is perilously close to approving sinful behavior against the wishes of the people. Judge Chris Piazza ruled that Initiated Act I of 2008 violated sexual privacy of residents who were living together and not married and who wanted to be foster parents or adopt children. Editorial writers and letters to the Voices Section, of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette want the ban eliminated because children need a loving home and people who care for them. It isn’t easy to discern the religious leanings of the editorialists, but based on the contents of the letters, the writers care little for God and are primarily sympathetic to the unmarried living together and to homosexuals. All of that in a state that is populated with conservative and Bible based people.

Those who support the elimination of the ban say that children need a loving home. There is no argument on that fact, but the words, a loving home, are open to discussion so it is necessary to determine what constitutes a loving home. Verse 33 of Ephesians 5 gives us the model for a loving home where Paul gives the following instruction to the men: Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.  Note the words wife and husband. Paul didn’t write partner or significant other. Nor did he countenance the idea that homosexuals should raise children or pretend to be married.

Then Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:1, Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Paul again was writing to men and women who are married and who are members of the Lords body. It says in the Lord, which means that it is pleasing to God for children to obey their parents as the parents have obeyed the gospel. Then in verse 4 we read: And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. How is it possible for a child to be reared by people not married to be raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord when the act of living together is sin in and of itself? How can children obey adoptive unmarried parents or unmarried foster parents in the Lord when they are violating Gods commands on this matter in all respects? How will the couple and answer when the child asks why they aren’t married?

Proverbs 22:6 tells us, Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Train here means to instruct early; the way is the way selected for him or her as a path for life with early training will cause the child to know godly behavior and follow it through out life. But the early learning of wrong will follow the child throughout life as well. Those who live together without benefit of marriage are sending the wrong signal about marriage and the lack thereof to the children in their care. Can that be said to be a loving home when two people refuse the commitment of marriage, but want to partake of the benefits of it in an illicit manner?  

Paul told the Corinthians the following: Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. (1 Corinthians 6:18)  Those unmarried men and women living together and who have sexual relations without the commitment of marriage are engaging in fornication and are committing sin.

Are the judges of the State of Arkansas going to make sin official by ruling against the ban passed by the people?  If they do, they will enshrine sinful behavior into the laws of the state. And people wonder why our society is in decline.

© 10-06-2010 DEC