Friday’s attack in Paris, when ISIS terrorists attacked a concert hall, a soccer stadium, and a neighborhood known for its cafes, killing at least 129 people and wounding another 350, was the second wave of terror launched against the City of Light just this year. Back in January, terrorists attacked the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket, killing a dozen people.

According to French president Francois Hollande, ISIS has “declared war” on France and that France’s response will be “pitiless.”

And the most common reaction here in the States, besides pity for the victims, is fear… that what happened there could happen here, wherever “here” might be for you. So let’s start by making one thing clear: for the Christian, the fear of God casts out all other fear. Yes, it’s reasonable to be concerned about personal and public safety, but we’re commanded throughout scripture to not be afraid. That’s because in the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has definitively dealt with evil.

Now it may not look that way after Friday. But as the author of Hebrews wrote, “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him,” that is, Jesus Christ. Christianity acknowledges the fact of evil and suffering. A Christian worldview isn’t about sticking our heads in the sand and seeing the world in a Pollyannaish sort of way.

But other worldviews aren’t able to call evil, “evil.” In an article in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, residents of the neighborhood that was attacked on Friday described the perpetrators as “victims.” One person said that the terrorists were “victims of a system that excluded them from society . . . who live here in alienation, and we are all to blame for this alienation.”

Another added that “These are people the government gave up on, and you have to ask why.” As Haaretz put it, “No one wanted to talk about Islamists or the Islamic State, even after it took responsibility for the attacks and French President Francois Hollande announced that the group was behind them.”

Secular liberalism simply can’t wrap its mind around the kind of unadulterated evil that ISIS represents, in large part because it can’t understand what motivates ISIS and its supporters.

That motivation, as the March 2015 issue of The Atlantic told readers is a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately bringing about the apocalypse.

Actually, a better word than “apocalypse” would be “eschaton,” the end of the present age and the ushering in of what they consider to be the reign of Allah.

Since it no longer believes in the Christian eschaton, the West cannot even begin to understand an Islamic one. So it treats ISIS like it does the rest of our broken world: something that we can master, provided we bring the correct tools, politically correct language, public policy, and techniques to bear.

Never mind that this kind of utopian approach has a lousy track record even when dealing with much smaller evils than ISIS. Never mind that it’s absurd to “declare war” on an evil when many of your people can’t bring themselves to call it “evil.”

That’s sticking your head in the sand.

But there’s more to that verse from Hebrews. The author goes on to write, “But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

Christ has triumphed! And while events might tempt us to fear and even doubt, like the original recipients of the letter to the Hebrews, we are called to look past events and see what is ultimately true and real.

So as Christians our work is to continue to participate in God’s work to restore all things under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And neither ISIS nor any event in Paris should change that.

This article was originally posted at BreakPoint.org.

Poll Support for ‘Gay Marriage’ Plummets

Who would have thought that an anti-”gay marriage” rally in France would draw at least 340,000 people and possibly much more — and that support for homosexual “marriage” would drop precipitously in the polls? (French support for same-sex “marriage” reportedly fell from 65 percent to 52 percent — though I don’t trust polls and suspect that most surveys overstate support for the pro-homosexual agenda.)

Beneath the YouTube video (after the jump) there is an excerpt from an AP report on the rally, which includes a police estimate of 340,000 people attending the massive rally (organizers claimed 800,000 marchers).

Note too that the organizers of the rally folded a message of opposing “homophobia” into their pro-natural-message campaign (e.g, see the marcher holding the “Friend of Marriage Not Homophobia” sign at 1:09 of this 3-minute video). This viewpoint is far from one that AFTAH would put forward, but nevertheless the rally shows how unpopular the dominant LGBT goal of homosexual “marriage” is even in highly secularized countries like France.

PS. The huge rally in socialist-run France and the plummeting “gay marriage” poll numbers speak volumes about the “gay” activist propaganda line that LGBT victories are “inevitable.” They are not.

YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/embed/LUeFZcCdpGE

Gay Marriage Protest Converges on Eiffel Tower

PARIS (AP) [Jan. 13, 2013] — Holding aloft ancient flags and young children, hundreds of thousands of people converged Sunday on the Eiffel Tower to protest the French president’s plan to legalize gay marriage and thus allow same-sex couples to adopt and conceive children.

The opposition to President Francois Hollande’s plan has underscored divisions among the secular-but-Catholic French, especially more traditional rural areas versus urban enclaves. But while polls show the majority of French still support legalizing gay marriage, that backing gets more lukewarm when children come into play.

The protest march started at three points across Paris, filling boulevards throughout the city as demonstrators walked six kilometers (3 miles) to the grounds of France’s most recognizable monument. Paris police estimated the crowd at 340,000, making it one of the largest demonstrations in Paris since an education protest in 1984.

“This law is going to lead to a change of civilization that we don’t want,” said Philippe Javaloyes, a literature teacher who bused in with 300 people from Franche Comte in the far east. “We have nothing against different ways of living, but we think that a child must grow up with a mother and a father.”

Public opposition spearheaded by religious leaders has chipped away at the popularity of Hollande’s plan in recent months. About 52 percent of French favor legalizing gay marriage, according to a survey released Sunday, down from as high as 65 percent in August.

French civil unions, allowed since 1999, are at least as popular among heterosexuals as among gay and lesbian couples. But that law has no provisions for adoption or assisted reproduction, which are at the heart of the latest debate.

Hollande’s Socialist Party has sidestepped the debate on assisted reproduction, promising to examine it in March after party members split on including it in the latest proposal. That hasn’t assuaged the concerns of many in Sunday’s protest, however, who fear it’s only a matter of time.

“They’re talking about putting into national identity cards Parent 1, Parent 2, Parent 3, Parent 4. Mom, dad and the kids are going to be wiped off the map, and that’s going to be bad for any country, any civilization,” said Melissa Michel, a Franco-American mother of five who was among a group from the south of France on a train reserved specifically for the protest…. [click HERE to continue reading full AP article]

More background on French opposition to ‘gay marriage’

The growing coalition against “gay marriage” in France is made up of traditional religious and irreligious (including pro-”gay”) forces. See THIS LifeSiteNews story describing previous rallies in Paris in November 2012 — one secular, the other religious.

Photos: Facebook page of “La Manif Pour Tous”: http://www.facebook.com/LaManifPourTous

Written by Carol Kuruvilla, New York Daily News

The Pope sent a clear message to gay rights activists who are celebrating gains made this year – the Vatican still thinks same-sex marriage is a ‘manipulation of nature.’ 

Pope Benedict XVI, right, made it clear during his Christmas speech that the Vatican believes marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Pope Benedict used his annual Christmas message to denounce gay marriage, saying that it destroyed the “essence of the human creature.” 

In one of his most important speeches of the year, the Pope stressed that a person’s gender identity is God-given and unchangeable. As a result, he sees gay marriage as a “manipulation of nature.” 

“People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being,” he said at the Vatican on Friday. “They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.” 

The Pope has said that gay marriage, like abortion and euthanasia, is a threat to world peace. 

In response, LGBT activists staged a protest at St. Peter’s Square. Equally Blessed, a coalition of Catholic organizations in the U.S. that supports gay marriage, repudiated the Pope’s claims. In a joint press release, the groups said that Benedict’s “rigid and outmoded” view of gender identity contrasted sharply with the reality they were witnessing in America – same-sex couples creating happy homes for their kids and transgender people living “healthy, mature, and generous lives.” 

“Catholics, following their own well-formed consciences, are voting to support equal rights for LGBT people because in their churches and communities they see a far healthier, godly and realistic vision of the human family than the one offered by the pope,” said the joint statement from Call to Action, DignityUSA, Fortunate Families and New Ways Ministry. 

As Pope, Benedict sets both tone and theology for the Catholic Church. Officially, the church still considers homosexuality an “intrinsically disordered” act. 

However, 59 percent of Catholics in America favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, according to a poll released this year by the Public Religion Research Institute. 

That’s exactly what is worrying the Pope. He fears the opinions people form in their own consciences will lead them away from the doctrines set forth by the church. 

“When freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God,” Benedict said. 

The Pope’s Christmas message comes during a time when advocates for same-sex marriage are gaining ground in the U.S. and Europe. American voters in Maine, Maryland, and Washington endorsed gay marriage at the ballot box in November. A total of nine states now allow marriage between two men or two women. Three additional states officially recognize marriages that were performed outside of state lines, according to the Religion News Service. 

Efforts to legalize gay marriage, though controversial, are also being pushed by politicians in several European countries. The Constitutional Court in Spain, where a majority of citizens are Catholic, upheld a law that legalized same-sex marriage last month. The British government will introduce a legalization bill next year. French President Francois Hollande has said that he will enact his “marriage for everyone” plan within a year of taking office last May. 

This week, thousands marched in Paris in support of the Socialist government’s plan to legalize same-sex marriage. However, the French LGBT rights movement still faces strong opposition from religious leaders like Gilles Bernheim, France’s chief rabbi. 

On Friday, Pope Benedict quoted Bernheim, saying that the movement to grant rights to lesbian or gay couples to marry and adopt children was an “attack” on the traditional family unit. 

For Pope Benedict, the image of traditional family has not and will not mean anything more than a man, a woman and their children.