Reading the Bible one day, I came across this verse in Proverbs:
“Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors.” (Proverbs 22:28 NIV).
I continued reading and saw it again:
“Do not move an ancient boundary stone or encroach on the fields of the fatherless.” (Proverbs 23:10 NIV).
I had read Proverbs and the entire the Bible but this time, these verses jumped out at me. Hmm… What does it mean not to remove an ancient boundary stone? When I did a cursory search on this topic, numerous verses came up (e.g., Deuteronomy 19:14, 22:17; Job 24:2; Hosea 5:10). The concept of boundary stones or landmarks is dispersed throughout the Bible, especially the Old Testament. It generally refers to private property rights, stones that mark a property line to demarcate one’s property from another. This is a concept of God’s law not to steal by deceptively moving or removing the boundary line of a property.
Further probing resulted in finding ancient boundary stones symbolizing the law of God demarcating spiritual boundaries. In a society where tolerance is preached to embrace everything from same sex marriages to normalization of sex change operations, this concept of not removing the ancient boundary stones seemed immensely relevant. Are we not moving or removing the ancient boundary stones set by God? Without the boundary stones, how would we, and more importantly, our next generation, know where the boundaries lie?
It has become common place, in fact, trendy to be something other than heterosexual. My 14 year old son talks about his friends at school, friends that he grew up together and attended elementary school together. One friend is apparently bisexual whereas another friend said he was gay a few months ago but then now says he is not. A particularly close friend that I know of is pansexual, he tells me. I had no idea what that meant, pansexual. Then, my 10 year old son jumps in our conversation and says he knows. He says pansexual means you like everybody. According to Wikipedia, pansexuality or omnisexuality is the sexual attraction toward people regardless of their sex or gender identity. How is it that this-sexuality, pansexuality-has become so common that even my 10 year old son has already heard about it?
I recently had an asylum case where this man who was gay had applied for asylum because he was from Jordan and had a history of persecution based on his sexual orientation. While he was waiting for the asylum case, he had a sex change and had become a woman. In preparing the supplemental brief to submit to the asylum office based on this new evidence, I came across a letter from the doctor who performed the sex change operation. In the letter, the doctor verified that the man had undergone an irreversible sex change operation. Irreversible. Apparently, what God does is reversible whereas what a doctor does is not.
Tolerance has become the new moral standard upon which we are all to be judged. The tolerance converts preach about tolerating everyone and every type of act as long as the acts are consensual. It’s not just about embracing every sexuality and sexual orientation but everything from New Age, spirituality, lifestyles, and practices that we are to embrace. Yet, if someone does not agree with their beliefs, then that person is dubbed intolerant: Tolerants cannot tolerate those who do not agree with them. And woe to the sincere Christian who mentions the name, Jesus, in a conversation. Tolerants cannot stand to tolerate vociferous Christians. From what I can see, Tolerants are very intolerant of the people with differing viewpoints than theirs.
I am not in denial about the changing world with the changing time. The world and the people in the world are changing. Change is generally good. Change brings progress, advancement, and improvement in our lives. However, some things are timeless: they exist without beginning or end, not restricted by particular time and space. God, who He is, what He says, what He does remain timeless. Numerous verses in the Bible declare that God is eternal:
“But You, O Lord, sit enthroned forever; your renown endures through all generations.” (Psalm 102:12 NIV)
“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.” (Isaiah 40:28 NIV)
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8 NIV)
Before removing the ancient boundary stones, I think it’s important to think about why they were set there in the first place. For example, why did God set the boundary stone to differentiate between a man and a woman? Why did God set the boundary stone of marriage to be exclusively between a man and a woman? When we- the creation-remove the boundary stones set by God-the Creator, what are the consequences?
The consequence of same sex marriages is that we guarantee that a child grows up without his/her biological father or a mother. This is a 100% certainty in a same sex marriage. For those who argue that the consequence is irrelevant to the couples who will not have children, I submit that the consequence is still relevant because once the boundary lines are blurred, the next generation gets lost. They forget about the boundaries all together until the abnormal becomes the norm. This is like the story of a group of monkeys with one eye. A small group of monkeys lived in a forest and they all had one eye. One day, when a monkey with two eyes showed up, they made fun of him and ridiculed him for having two eyes. The one-eye monkeys have never seen a two-eyed monkey before and to them, that was abnormal.
This is what happens to the generations of people coming after the boundary stones are removed. After a couple of generations go by, a child growing up with same-sex parents becomes the norm. No matter how dysfunctional or disadvantaged the child becomes under the same-sex parents, no one notices because the dysfunctional becomes the norm of the society. Generation after generation, problems may arise as people become more dysfunctional but that becomes so prevalent that it becomes the norm. The whole humanity moves along with it. This is why the same-sex marriage couples, regardless of whether they themselves have children or not, impact the society at large.
You will argue that I cannot make the general statement that all the children of same-sex couples will be disadvantaged and you may be right. I am generalizing but I base my generalization in countless evidence of children becoming less than their potential in a single parent household without a father or a mother. There isn’t enough evidence out there to support the claim that the children growing up without a father or a mother are not negatively affected by it. Should we promote this as good and pretend that it won’t be a problem?
Can the psyche of a sex-changed person be normal? Yes, that will depend on the definition of ‘normal.’ And that definition is relative and constantly changing. But there is truth, absolute truth. Some laws in the universe are constant and we need to respect that. The basic law of gravity and the law of motion, for example. Are these laws relative in our life? Are they constantly changing? Who is willing to bet that the law of gravity is relative and jump off a building expecting to live? If we are to believe that the physical laws of the universe which our Creator has set are true, why are we not willing to believe that the moral laws set by our Creator are also true? This is precisely the consequence of moving the ancient boundary stones. Just as we would plunge into death if we were to believe that the law of gravity is no longer true, we will plunge into eternal death if we believe that the law of morality is no longer true. This is why I envision a world where the ancient boundary stones are kept in their places.