Recently we have seen judicial activism on steroids at the Supreme Court. That is especially true in their hubris-laden decision of June 26, 2015 to set aside “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” (as America’s Founders put it) and say that same-sex “marriage” is now the law of the land in all 50 states. Period.

We-a-slim-majority-of-the-Court have spoken. But by what authority did this majority do this?

As Chief Justice John Roberts himsef said in his dissent, you can celebrate this decision if you want to, but the bottom line is it had nothing to do with the Constitution.

If the Constitution means whatever the justices want it to say, then the nation is like a great ship set adrift without a rudder—or worse, with a fixed rudder pointing us inexorably toward a great waterfall.

The United States of America has been a great and noble experiment. How can sinful man govern sinful man in a way that allows freedom—including for those who don’t share the same values? Power had to be balanced and parceled out, lest we have a monarchy or an oligarchy, a rule by the few. This was the genius of the American system. It gave us great freedoms. But now, power is concentrated in the hands of five lawyers.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented in this case, noting: “The system of federalism established by our Constitution provides a way for people with different beliefs to live together in a single nation…. By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority [of this Court] facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas.”

He added, “If a bare majority of Justices can invent a new right and impose that right on the rest of the country, the only real limit on what future majorities will be able to do is their own sense of what those with political power and cultural influence are willing to tolerate. Even enthusiastic supporters of same-sex marriage should worry about the scope of the power that today’s majority claims.”

What is of particular concern to Christians about this decision is that the highest court in the land has basically nullified the biblical view of marriage as being consonant with American law. If you disagree with same-sex marriage, keep your opinions to yourself. It might cost you your job or your livelihood.

Again, quoting Alito’s dissent: “I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.” So much for the freedom to disagree with the prevailing, politically-correct ethic.

Justice Antonin Scalia noted in his dissent, “Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.”

One of the greatest books summarizing the history of the 20th century—the bloodiest century on record because of the anti-God views of so many leaders, i.e., Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.—is Modern Times by the excellent British historian Paul Johnson. He noted that at the end of the 19th century, many intellectuals were claiming that God was dead. This created an incredible vacuum.

Johnson writes, “The history of modern times is in great part the history of how that vacuum has been filled…. In place of religious belief, there would be secular ideology…above all, the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by any religious sanctions whatever…. The end of the old order, with an unguided world adrift in a relativistic universe, was a summons to such gangster-statesmen to emerge.”

Anthony Kennedy’s decision on June 26, 2015, written in the voice of a philosopher-king, rather than a judge, divorced marriage from the norms of history, world civilization, and God.

In 1821, Jefferson warned, “The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in…the federal judiciary.”

We can only take comfort in the fact that God will have the final word. Said the Apostle Paul, “Let God be true and every man a liar.”