Same-Sex Marriage Law
Last year the federal government under Prime Minister Paul Martin passed legislation that permitted a man
to marry a man and a woman to marry a woman. With this law the government gave its total stamp of
approval to homosexual relations. In response to this decision, Mr Stephen Harper, then leader of the
Opposition, promised Canadians that he would –should he ever become Prime Minister introduce a
motion in the House of Commons seeking parliamentary consent to re-open the topic of same-sex
marriages. In keeping with that promise, Prime Minister Harper introduced such a motion this past week –
and it was severely trounced. The Prime Minister has acquiesced to the existing status quo, and declared
that same-sex marriage is here to stay.
Those in the nation who fear God cannot but cringe at this development. Yes, we’ve seen it coming for
some time already, but the vote in Parliament this past week puts the issue into focus: our land is apostate.
We deplore this development greatly, aware that God’s curse must press itself upon our country, and we
continue to pray that the Lord God will work repentance in the nation  and in the nations within the
nation.
Gloom?
Is this development cause for despair? I don’t believe it is. My reason for saying this is not (as the media
reported) that the land didn’t grind to a halt after same-sex marriage was legalized a year ago, despite all
predictions to the contrary. As legalizing abortion 30-odd years ago didn’t bring the nation to its knees,
and neither did easy divorce legislation (damaging though both were to the institutions of family and
marriage), same-sex marriage has not and will not break the nation apart. In that sense, there’s no room for
gloom.
But my optimism comes from a different source. To me, this week’s affirmation of same-sex marriage –
offensive though I find it gives evidence of the faithfulness of our God. And that’s encouraging! How so,
you wonder?
Book of Nature
The migrants who settled in Canada over the centuries came to a land of great beauty and majesty. Its
mountains and plains, its lakes and forests, its fertile soils and abundant waters gave loud testimony to the
“eternal power and divine nature” of the Creator, as Romans 1:20 has it. Migrants of the 17 th, 18th, 19th and
even 20th century saw with their own eyes something of God’s heavenly identity when they set eyes upon
the grandeur of Canada – and (Christians as they largely were) they recognized it as such.
Since the middle of the last century, however, the prevalence of the Christian faith has steadily evaporated
from sea to shining sea. The French Revolution, the evolution theory, the effects of two world wars,
materialism: these factors and so many more combined to turn countless Canadians away from the
Christian faith. That’s to say: instead of worshiping the God whose majesty was clearly written in the
grandeur of Canada, thousands upon thousands of Canadians “neither glorified Him as God nor gave
thanks to Him” (Romans 1:21). In their foolishness, they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for
images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (vs 23). No, most Canadians did
not exchange faith in God for a conventional idol as Dagon or Baal in the Old Testament; many Canadians
instead idolized Sport and inducted the gods of Sport into the Hall of Fame. They idolized Music and
immortalized its lead singers, even though the singers and their music denied and defied the Maker of the
land. They knew all about Hollywood and who was winning the Grammies, they knew all about cars and
which was the best one to have, and they built castles for themselves with all the amenities the modern
heart could desire – as if this world was where things were at…. In a word, the eye was taken from the
God whose eternal power and divine nature were so unmistakably written in Canada’s bush, mountains,
lakes and skies, and that eye was turned to glory in the creature instead…. Canada’s almighty Creator was
snubbed.
The Body
God’s response? Many years ago the Holy Spirit summed up through the apostle Paul how the Lord God
reacted to peoples of earlier days who refused to tune in to what the Book of Nature obviously said. Wrote
Paul concerning those who snubbed the Creator in favor of doting on created things: “Therefore God gave
them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one
another” (Romans 1:24). Note the word ‘therefore’; God placed a direct link between pulling one’s eye off
the God whose glory nature reveals in favor of fixing it upon the creature and punishment from holy God.
The punishment? God let them get caught up in created things, specifically the human body.
What we saw in Canada? Beginning in the 1960’s with the sexual revolution, the human body was
idolized. Clothing, advertising, billboards, fitness clubs: the focus became the human body. With that
focus came also the prevalence of the legalization of abortion (remember Henry Morgenthaler?) and
condoms and sex education in schools. That focus on the body was not a surprise; it was rather in
accordance with the pattern the Holy Spirit outlined in Romans 1.
Again, in time past, when people gave themselves to infatuation with the human body, God let them lie in
the bed they made for themselves. Says the Holy Spirit in Romans 1:26,27: “Because of this [ie, their
emphasis on the body], God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural
relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and
were inflamed with lust for one another.” That is: lesbian and homosexual activity was God’s penalty on a
people’s previous sin of worshiping the body. According to God’s pattern in the past, so it happened in
Canada in the last couple of decades. The decisions of Parliament last year and this past week simply
reflect where the nation is at; a just and holy God has given the nation over to embracing indecent acts –
just as He did in the past with previous cultures.
The Future
What, then, does the future hold? In time past the Lord God responded to people’s embracing of
homosexual conduct with a further penalty. “Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain
the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have
become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder,
strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they
invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only
continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:28-32). By
God’s ordinance, then, society regresses from bad to worse, and the stamp of approval is given to sin. In
the light of God’s word, it’s no surprise that parliament would approve same-sex marriage, and decline to
reconsider the topic a year later. Then again, corruption in high places, disregard for authority, moral
baseness, individualism and so many other evils plaguing our land are no surprise either. This is how the
Lord responded in the past to being ignored, and this is how He continues to respond.
Optimism
Why, then, can I speak of optimism in the face of this development? I speak of optimism because I see in
Parliament’s decisions –abominable as they are evidence of God’s faithfulness. God does not change
despite the passage of time or the ebb and flow of civilizations. The God whose eternal power and divine
nature are clearly manifested in Canada’s natural beauty remains powerful and sovereign, Lord of Canada 
even as Canada rejects Him. His way with our apostate land is through a deep valley of perversion, and
since this is His way with our land, all is OK for those whose sins are covered through Jesus’ blood. The
Lord’s church-gathering work in Canada continues, even as the nation-as-a-whole turns its back on Him.
Challenge
Here, then, is also the challenge of the times. In a culture of Godlessness, our privileged responsibility is to
continue to take Him seriously. The Lord God continues to give us mountains and rivers, trees and birds to
enjoy – all so much evidence of His abiding sovereignty over our land. Let’s enjoy the country, receive
encouragement about our God from its beauty, and make a point of living in humble submission to the God
whose laws are always good for His creatures. Taking God seriously in this land can no longer be a matter
of national custom or superstition; Canadians will notice those who a different.
And let us continue to pray that God have mercy on a land that shows His eternal power and divine nature
so splendidly.
C Bouwman
December 8, 2006