roots: Journal for Wednesday, July 25

By Wednesday, my trip to New England had only just started. I got in late Tuesday night and met Derek, my roommate from England. He showed me where to register. I got to bed that night pretty exhausted from my long day flying, driving, and researching in Connecticut.

Now the sun was up, and I had a thrilling day ahead of me, my first experience of Plymouth, Massachusetts. There were a lot of Doane Family association events planned, but I managed to slip out and see some of the sights today.

A normal looking street like any other American town

Town Brooke, the stream that attracted the Pilgrims to settle here by fresh water

Town Brooke

Jenney Grist Mill

These are the two main churches at the top of Plymouth's first road, Leyden Street. The brown one is the former Congregational Church which first met in 1621 as the Pilgrims' Church, and claims to be the continuing congregation since their day. Unfortunately by 1801 this church had been infected by the new Unitarian heresy, and departed from Biblical Christian beliefs. A minority, who still held to the Pilgrims' faith in Christ as the Son of God, had no choice but to leave and start their own (Congregational) church next door.

This is the sign on the Congregational Church that remembers the split. Sadly this UCC church has now become deeply liberal, and only gives lip service to traditional Christian doctrines.

Two years ago it decided to become an open and affirming congregation, choosing to side with a politically correct version of faith rather than the teaching of Jesus on sexuality. This raises the question if our sexuality exists for pleasing oneself, or honoring God. I suggest that the Bible describes only two sexual orientations; self-orientation, and God-orientation. Both heterosexuals and homosexuals can live for their own freedom to indulge themselves. On the other hand, I believe that sexuality is a gift from God to be used in accordance with the designer's direction. This view helps me to neither be arrogant (I respect gay people) nor accommodating ideas that do not agree with Scripture. I see both temptations affecting Christian churches today... angry, superior attitudes or subservient equivocation. I reject both. God is our greatest pleasure (Psalm 16:11), the bed is meant to honor him (Hebrews 13:4) and all of life was made to be experienced for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31) but according to His categories, not our own (Romans 12:1) because we cannot trust our own intuitions and motives (Proverbs 14:12). In this I consulted also a lesser source, Of Plymouth Plantation, by William Bradford, in which he describes what happened in the Colony in 1642:

Marvelous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickedness did grow and breake forth here, in a land where the same was so much witnessed against, and so narrowly looked unto, and severely punished when it was knowne; as in no place more, or so much, that I have known or heard of; insomuch as they have been somewhat censured, even by moderate and good men, for their severity in punishments. And yet all this could not suppress the breaking out of sundry notorious sins, (as this year, besides other, gives us too many sad precedents and instances,) especially drunkenness and uncleaness; not only incontinencie between persons unmarried, for which many both men and women have been punished sharply enough, but some married persons also. But that which is worse, even sodomy and buggery, (things fearful to name) have broke forth in this land, oftener than once. I say it may justly be marveled at, and cause us to fear and tremble at the consideration of our corrupte natures, which are so hardly bridled, subdued, and mortified; nay, cannot by any other means but the powerful worke and grace of Gods spirit.

I pray that God will give Christians in America love & patience towards homosexual people, but courage to resist redefining the Bible and its claims upon us. It is sad to see the yoga parlors and witchcraft seminars in Plymouth, demonstrations of spiritual blindness and empty searching. All very foreign to the Separatists of Plymouth... or was it? Their time in England and the Netherlands exposed them to many ideas in which people pooh-poohed taking the Bible seriously as the rule for faith and life. That is why they saw themselves as pilgrims in this world.