I've lived long enough to see that my denomination is hardly different when it comes to morally compromised people making a hasty comeback. Still, what sticks out to me is not the literal reality of this man's statement so much as the metaphor of it all--a metaphor that explains a good bit of what's going on in our current American social crisis.

When we fail to fulfill its demands because the bar is way too high for our human striving, we are not told to "do more!" and "try harder!"; but rather we are shown that Jesus came, not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it perfectly for us (Matt 5:17).

The Law diagnoses sinners: condemned and dead in their sin (Gal 3:19). It's purpose is to amplify sin and to silence every self-justifying argument before God.

To be sure, the main problem is not that Cruz deems the Ugandan laws too strict. That is a reasonable stance for conservatives to take. The issue here is Cruz's full-throated embrace of an outdated conservatism that idolizes individual autonomy at the expense of the culture's moral and spiritual health. By paying lip service to the powerful gay lobby, which seeks to annihilate traditional values, Cruz is just another symptom of the moral compromise that pervades today's conservatism.

Warnings come to us all -- not only in these exceptional circumstances, but also during times when all seems normal and safe. Some years ago, I was the rector of a seaside parish church in a suburb of Richards Bay, a port city on the east coast of South Africa. Between our suburb and the town centre was a lake that flowed into an estuary via a canal. A bridge over the canal carried the access road from our suburb into town.