Where Does the Heart Lead?

From the San Diego Tribune:

Mayor Jerry Sanders reversed his position on gay marriage Wednesday, supporting it in emotional remarks punctuated by pauses, shaking sips of water and his wife's hand resting one time reassuringly on his back.

Sanders' wife, Rana Sampson, stood next to him as he acknowledged publicly for the first time that his daughter, Lisa, is a lesbian.

“I've decided to lead with my heart, which is probably obvious right now, to do what I think is right and to take a stand on behalf of equality and social justice,” Sanders said.

A few thoughts:

1) Homosexuals have the same rights as heterosexuals to marry someone of the opposite sex. They don't need special rights and make the claim that they're "married" to someone of the same sex.

2) Right and wrong don't change just because sin has now visited us up close in our own families. We don't have the luxury of deciding that, since we or a member of our family has chosen a habitual sin, that this sin is now not a sin. In other words, right and wrong aren't relative.

3) Mayor Sanders says he now wants to "lead with his heart." But here's what the Bible says about the reliability of our hearts:


Matthew 15:19-20 - For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man 'unclean'

Jeremiah 17:9 - The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.


In other words, the heart is not a good barometer of right, and not a good compass for truth. It will deceive you into justifying what you would normally know is wrong.

Would Mayor Sanders "follow his heart" and give approval if his daughter was a heroin addict? Probably not at this point, but if society had undergone a decades-long PR campaign to lead people to believe that heroin use was normal, natural and health, he probably would. But his daughter's homosexual conduct is probably about as unhealthy as drug addiction. Drug use simply lacks the societal approval which homosexuality has recently come to enjoy. But they'll both destroy the body and the soul.

Mayor Sanders should stick with what he knows is right, what is immutably true, and not go with the whims of the heart which yield a brief peace and an eternity of heartache and loss.