I find it interesting that everybody is going off the handle
about this whole "Duck Dynasty" fiasco. What I've noticed is that
most people are just reading what other people are saying Phil said and are
taking things out of context. Personally, after having studied the GQ article
rather intently, I believe that a lot of what Phil has said has been
misunderstood. If we had all looked at this from an unbiased viewpoint, I
believe that there would have been a little bit less drama. Rather than acting
like schoolchildren, we should dissect what was said.
For instance, I forgot about the fact that I disagree with
homosexuality and looked at the comments from the outside. I have several
friends who are homosexual, so it's not that I'm hating them in saying that I disagree
with it. I just don't feel that it's Biblical, but you won't see me condemning
or attacking anybody for homosexuality any more than I would for seeing a child
taking something from a store without paying. I would offer my thoughts, if
asked, but would not attack or put down...which is, I believe, what Phil was
doing. He was simply offering his view and quoting Scriptures that supported
his view.
What he was saying, also, was not that bestiality was the
same as homosexuality. He was listing off sexual sins and just happened to
place the two next to each other. It was a list, though, and not saying that
they were the same thing. Phil knows that they are not the same thing. He is
the elder of a church, 67 years old, and has quite a testimony. And I did look
very hard at the things he said because I am all for love and grace and I
wanted very desperately to see if he was wrong because I kind of look up to the
guy and respect him a lot.
After this, I took a look at the civil rights comments. This
one was a little bit tough for me to swallow and I thought, at this point, that
maybe I should give up and maybe some people were right...but then I realized
that that wasn't what he was saying, either. He wasn't saying that every single
black was happy before civil rights. He was saying that he had never seen them
treated harshly. And back whenever blacks were treated so harshly, some of them
were actually treated fairly well...not many, true, but some, so maybe he knew
some who were treated well. And after some thought, I realized that he was
saying that the ones he knew were happy because they had Jesus. He was saying
that, even through it all, having Jesus kept their joy. It didn't matter in the
grand scheme of things...he wasn't saying that it wasn't wrong and neither am
I. He's saying that the ones he knew still had some joy because they still had
Jesus...of course they would be singing. They had Jesus. Christians all across
the world who are imprisoned and tortured still sing sometimes...because even
their situations cannot take their joy from them and they know it.
Now about marrying fifteen year old girls...there's nothing
wrong with marrying somebody who is fifteen. People did it all of the time for
thousands of years without a problem. If you are in love with her, she is in
love with you, you speak with the parents, and the parents approve, then there
is nothing wrong with it. It becomes wrong whenever the person is younger than
fourteen. There are some families, even here in America, who will allow their teenager
to get married at so young an age as fifteen. As long as things are kept above
board and the parents are in agreement, then it should be fine.
Phil Robertson, I've deduced from several interviews,
doesn't want to hurt anybody and he didn't mean for his words to be taken so
wrongly. But Scripturally, he is on track...he was not calling anybody names
and he did not say anything hateful. He merely offered his opinion, some people
disagreed, some people were too sensitive to it, and some people overreacted.
We have to be very careful about persecuting a person for
speaking their opinions. If we turn this nation into one where people will be
afraid to speak their minds and their hearts, then we will turn this nation
into one in which--soon--nobody has a choice in anything and nobody has a voice
in anything.
I stand with the Founding Fathers in this: If you take away
somebody's voice, you will take away your own.
