There were many good responses to SCOTUS' decision this past Friday by evangelicals and I personally liked a lot of them. In terms of what to do next, so far, my favorite has been John Piper with his motif of lament and mourning (maybe it's because I'm working on the Nehemiah part of our NIVAC Ezra-Nehemiah commentary). While we need to be careful to set the context in the Persian period for Nehemiah, there are points of applications for us nevertheless. Upon hearing of the calamitous news from Jerusalem in the province of Yehud in chapter 1, Nehemiah becomes a mourner and goes "dark" for a few months, praying and fasting and interceding for the king of Persia to revert a decree he had made (recorded in Ezra 4). Again, we can't have a direct application to the US situation, but maybe it's time for us to "go dark" too and to have a posture of prayer and repentance for our sins and the sins of the people. The idea that "nothing has changed" after Friday is ok if by that we mean that God is still in control and that the nations are mere drop in a bucket (Isa 40) etc. etc. However, it's not ok if we mean disengagement from the situation. We are to pray actively for our government, Scripture teaches us. We ought also to feel the weight of what happened and lament and weep over this decision that so blatantly goes against the will of God (as so many other SCOTUS decisions before). We should also pray that we might not be hampered in proclaiming the Gospel, esp. those of us involved in Christian higher education.
So, maybe it's time for us to go dark too and while we're there also to weep and mourn for the tragedy in Charleston, the persecutions of our brothers and sisters in Africa, the Middle East, China, and many other unknown places. Finally, and not least of which, let us weep and mourn also over our own personal failures and shortcomings, as Nehemiah prays, "even I and my father's house have sinned" (Neh 1:6)
