“You may be an ambassador to England or to France. You may like to gamble, you might like to dance. You might be the heavyweight champion of the world. You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls. But you’re gonna have to serve somebody. Well it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Those are the opening words to Bob Dylan’s song, You Gotta Serve Somebody, off of his 1979 album, Slow Train Coming. Although almost no Dylan fan would situate this song in the upper echelon of the songwriter’s grand corpus, the lyrics to the song are undoubtedly some of the most culturally relevant droplets to ever spill forth from the artist’s pen.
Mankind is going to serve somebody. At this point in the human drama, such a statement should carry with it the hammer of dogmatic certainty. The overwhelming empirical evidence of the centuries piles up, as high as the eye can see, in support of Dylan’s statement. In a post-enlightenment age, in an age that exists post mortem Dei, at least culturally speaking, understanding this idea couldn’t be more of a pressing issue.
When Nietzsche’s Mad Man read the obituary of God to the startled onlookers in The Gay Science, he realized that the death of God had left in its wake a large void. A void that once was filled by the metaphysical, but now was open to be filled by the physical. Power was up for grabs. People, having abandoned their faith in a deity, were not simply going to become autonomous heterogeneous agents. They would be ruled over again. They would serve again. Can’t you almost hear Nietzsche moaning in Bob Dylan’s raspy voice, “You gotta serve somebody!”
Nietzsche was right, well, partially right. The power vacuum left by the death of God would not remain void. But, if history has taught us anything, it does not appear that the void is readily filled by rogue Übermensch, as Nietzsche had hoped, and fancied himself the finest. Rather, the void left by God and religion being displaced as the primary shaper of cultural milieu, is filled in a Hobbesian rather than Nietzschean fashion. That is to say that the state is the first one to the party; ever eager to drink up the spoils of abandoned authority. Where religion and God abdicate power, the state comes barreling in, and this train ain’t coming slow.
The state, acting as a functional deity, not only plays on religious themes and motifs (read how Marx writes of the proletariat!) but actually starts to demand the respect, honor and subservience that God does. Power is an insatiable beast, and the state’s hunger increases in direct proportion to its size.
In light of such a structural framework, the state’s ever-increasing power will not be stymied or even slowed by things as trivial as the constitution. In its pseudo-messianic, bestial role, the government won’t stop until the first commandment is practiced by all: You shall have no other gods before me.
This principal, when applied properly to the Triune God, is one of the foundations of Christian life, practice and worship. All things in life, including familial ties, must take their proper, subordinate role to one’s relationship with the Creator and Sustainer.
Christ drives this point home in emphatic fashion in Luke 14: “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” It is quite clear that lukewarm loyalty is not acceptable. Christ must come first, and the state, as the stand-in Christ demands the same.
Having assumed its illegitimate role as the neo-Christ, the state continues to mount an assault on any impediment to its lordship, any false idols. The family, as Christ noted in Luke’s Gospel, in many cases, stands as a natural impediment to proper prioritization. By the very constructs of its biological ties and spatial proximity, the family can easily stand as a barrier between an individual and outside authority. This is not acceptable to Christ, nor to our replacement Christ.
The state’s desire to demolish all impediments to its authority is the root issue driving the freight train that is the gay agenda. To steal from Hobbes, the state’s desire for “power after power” is the real wolf, masquerading behind flowery talk of “equality”, “justice”, and “rights.” Gay marriage is a major step towards the complete dissolution of marriage in and of itself. The destruction of the family eliminates a major buffer between the state and further authority. Civil marriage becomes replaced by government regulated contractual relationships. In the end, it may be the state, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna serve somebody.
For a greater study click here: http://thefederalist.com/2014/04/09/bait-and-switch-how-same-sex-marriage-ends-marriage-and-family-autonomy/