Justice or Judgment - PCUSA Decision on Marriage Equality

This year's General Assembly for the Presbyterian Church (USA) decided that pastors living in states that have legalized marriage equality can now officiate at all marriages, without fear of sanction.

For some, this is a day longed for, a day of justice, a day sought with prayer and tears.

For some, this is a dreadful day, perhaps day of judgment, wherein God allows evil to win, for a time, to reveal the depravity of humankind.

Which is it?

Both sides prayed fervently ... citing Scripture, the Confessions, tradition and various clinical studies.

Lincoln wisely noted this in his Second Inaugural Address:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

To read how well Lincoln dealt with this matter, please read the entire address - it's a stunning example of clear-headed thought and moral review.

So, where are we today in the PCUSA?

A day of justice or a day of judgment?

For me, it's a day of justice, but for sisters and brothers of other persuasion, a day of judgment.

Will we ever know?

For sure?

History, of course, is a mess ...

What we do is move on, as best we can.

Limiting our worst instincts of either gloating in "victory" or despairing in "loss."

Finding solace in Lincoln's closing paragraph:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The Gettysburg Address

THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS:


Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in
a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their
lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot
dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.
The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated
it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will
little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never
forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here
have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this
nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people shall
not perish from the earth.