The 2012 U.S. election is over, and more than 100 million Americans participated in the great exercise of democracy — fulfilling the franchise of the vote. Even with some votes not yet counted and some issues as yet clarified, a general picture of the election is clearly in view, and the impact of this election will be both massive and enduring.

Several lessons emerge in the immediate aftermath of the election and Christians should consider them carefully.

A Decisive Victory

First, we must recognize that President Barack Obama won a decisive and clear victory, surging to over 300 votes in the electoral college before midnight. Against the expectations of many, the president held his 2008 coalition together. Voting intensity among younger Americans, African-Americans, Hispanics, and other crucial constituencies held firm. Once the election results started coming in, an Obama victory came quickly into view.

Barack Obama avoided the ignominy of an electoral repudiation and may also have won the popular vote. The decisive nature of his win spared the nation the agonies of the 2000 election and points to a major political realignment. Other issues also became clear. The election returns and voting data indicate that President Obama’s “evolution” on the issue of same-sex marriage cost him nothing. That probably surprised both sides in that controversy

Christians must now pray for our president. As the Apostle Paul instructs us, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:1-2 ESV). We should eagerly and urgently pray for our president. We should pray for his health and his family, for his stamina and his character. We should even pray that he and his administration will be remembered as one of the greatest of our nation’s history, measured even by the convictions that are most important to us.

We are rightly and deeply concerned. We must pray that god will change President Obama’s heart on a host of issues, ranging from the sanctity of unborn life to the integrity of marriage. We must push back against his contraception mandate that tramples upon religious liberty. Given the trajectory of his first term in office, we are urgently concerned about a second term, knowing that the president will never again face the electorate.

As the president acknowledged in his speech last night, our nation faces huge challenges. We must pray that President Obama will lead in a spirit of national unity and mutual respect, bringing Americans together to resolve these ominous problems. Incredible responsibility now rests on his shoulders. He has won a second term, now he must rightly lead.

A Divided Electorate

As morning dawned, the election of 2012 looms as one of the closest in American history. At 2 a.m., only 240,000 votes out of more than 103 million cast separated President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney. That is a margin of 0.3 percent and would rank the election as the third closest, falling behind the slim margins of the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon and the 1880 election between James Garfield and Winfield S. Hancock.

The margin in the electoral college is significant, but the popular vote reveals a deeply divided nation. The nation is divided politically, but that divide points to a division at the level of worldview. The 2012 election makes clear that Americans are divided over fundamental questions. Americans are divided into camps that define and see the world in fundamentally different terms. The election did not cause this division, it merely revealed it. This deep division at the level of worldview presents President Obama with a daunting political challenge, but a worldview crisis is an even greater challenge for the church.

http://www.crosswalk.com/church/pastors-or-leadership/aftermath-lessons-from-the-2012-election.html

So often we hear that allowing two men or two women to marry will not hurt anyone, and certainly not “straight” people. Well, the truth is, we already know what happens when a society promotes sexual license and devalues marriage. We just have to look at history.

Way back before anyone was talking about so-called “gay marriage,” radio talk show host and Jewish theologian Dennis Prager wrote a fascinating article called — get ready for this — “Judaism’s Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality.”

Before the Jews were placed in the ancient Near East, the pagan world was already a sexual free-for-all that debased women, boys, and religion itself in the service of male lust. Every aspect of life was sexualized. The pagan gods engaged in no-holds-barred sex, and so did the people. Homosexuality had almost unquestioned acceptance in the ancient world.

But the key issue wasn’t gender, it was power. Prager quotes Brown University philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who wrote, “The central distinction in [ancient] sexual morality was … between active and passive roles.” Because boys and women were on the receiving end of sexual activity, they were “very often treated interchangeably as [simple] objects of [male] desire.”

Not surprisingly, then, women were relegated to the sidelines, important for giving birth and running the home, but not important as real and equal partners to men, who had other sexual options — with boys and other men.

That’s why Judaism’s claim that God created sex only for a man and a woman in marriage was so revolutionary — and despised by ancient pagans (and modern pagans, I might add as well). As Genesis said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

Prager writes, “This revolution forced the sexual genie into the marital bottle. It ensured that sex no longer dominated society, heightened male-female love and sexuality (and thereby almost alone created the possibility of love and eroticism within marriage), and began the arduous task of elevating the status of women.” No wonder, Prager notes, that the “improvement of the condition of women has only occurred in Western civilization,” which historically has been the “least tolerant of homosexuality.”

Of course, I should note, that it was the Apostle Paul who further carried this Jewish sexual revolution throughout the ancient world. As Sarah Ruden wrote about in her recent book Paul Among the Peoples, predatory homosexuality was common in Rome and Greece; women and children were just property.

Through Paul, however, Christianity ensured that Western civilization promoted sex within the confines of marriage between one man and one woman, and placed off limits the sexual abuse of boys and slaves.

The point is simply this: God instituted marriage for the good of man (restraining and channeling his sexuality), for the protection and dignity of woman, and the flourishing of human society.

Western civilization, the greatest ever, took this to heart, but forgets it now at its own peril.

Chuck Colson‘s daily BreakPoint commentary airs each weekday on more than one thousand outlets with an estimated listening audience of one million people. BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media and print.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=1464672

http://www.lifenews.com/2011/10/04/respect-life-opposing-abortion-must-be-more-than-a-phrase/