Posted on 04/10/2015 5:34:35 AM PDT by xzins
Whenever people today say that Christianity needs to update and adapt its moral standards for the 21st century, I hear echoes from 100 years ago. Back then, the calls for change had less to do with morality and more to do with miracles. But the motivation was similar, and the results are instructive.
What rocked the early 20th century was the call of many church leaders to adapt the Christian faith to the scientific age of discovery. One could not expect thinking men and women to accept at face value all the miracles in the Bible, the thinking went. The biblical testimony of the miraculous was embarrassing to an educated mindset.
In order to rescue Christianity from superstitious irrelevance, many church leaders sought to distinguish the kernel of Christianity (the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man) from the shell of Christianity (miracle stories that came from another cultural vantage point). One could still maintain the moral center of Christianity while disregarding the events that required suspension of disbelief.
As this adaptation spread, belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus was reinterpreted and given a solely spiritual meaning (he is alive in the hearts of good people). Miracle stories such as Jesus’ feeding the 5,000 were given a moral twist (the true miracle is that suddenly everyone shared). The Virgin Birth was rejected altogether.
Meanwhile, churches outside the West were appalled to hear “Christians” reject the clear testimony of Scripture and what the church had always believed. In North America, the rise of the evangelical movement was due, in part, to a desire to reclaim the center of Christianity and refuse to allow contemporary sensibilities to alter the faith “once for all delivered to the saints.”
Presbyterian minister and theologian J. Gresham Machen made the case that this refashioning of Christianity was no longer Christianity at all, but a substitute religion with a Christian veneer.
Over time, the effort to save the kernel of Christianity and leave aside its shell had the opposite effect. The distinctiveness of Christian teaching disappeared, and the shell of church rituals was all that remained. This is why, even today in some denominations, bishops and pastors and parishioners openly reject the core tenets of the faith but continue to attend worship and go through certain rites. The denominations that followed this course have since entered a sharp and steady decline.
One hundred years later, the church is once again being rocked. This time, many Christians are calling for us to rethink the “embarrassing” parts of Christianity — specifically, our distinctive sexual ethic. After all, many of the moral guidelines we read in the New Testament were written from another cultural vantage point and are no longer authoritative or relevant today. If Christianity is to survive and thrive in the next century, many of our ancient prohibitions (sex outside of marriage, homosexual practice, the significance of gender, etc.) must be set aside.
Outside the West, this enthusiasm for rejecting Christian moral precepts that have been accepted by all Christians, everywhere, for 2,000 years is mind-boggling.
Churches that accept society’s dogma on marriage and sexuality may think of themselves as “affirming,” but the global church sees them as “apostate.” Meanwhile, it is the height of imperialistic narrowness for a rapidly shrinking subset of white churches in the West to lecture the rest of the world — including those places where Christianity is exploding in growth or where Christians are being martyred — on why they are wrong and how everyone else in Christian history has misread Scripture regarding the meaning of marriage.
Nestled within our own times, it is easy to think the trajectory of history will lead to an inevitable change within the global Christian church. But history’s lesson is the opposite. A century ago, the modernists believed that the triumph of naturalism would lead to the total transformation of Christianity.
It must have seemed thrilling for these leaders to think they were at the vanguard of reformation, that they were the pivot point of Christianity’s inevitable future. But such was not the case. Traditional stalwarts like Machen and G.K. Chesterton (who were criticized as hopelessly “backward” back then) still have books in print. The names of most of their once-fashionable opponents are largely unrecognizable.
It’s commonplace to assume that contemporary society’s redefinition of marriage, gender and the purpose for sexuality will eventually persuade the church to follow along. But if we were to jump forward into the 22nd century, I wonder what we would see.
Most likely, we would see a world in which the explosive growth of Christians in South America, China and Africa has dwarfed the churches of North America and Europe. And the lesson we learn from a century ago will probably still be true: The churches that thrived were those that offered their world something more than the echo of the times.
(Trevin Wax is managing editor of The Gospel Project and author of multiple books, including “Clear Winter Nights: A Journey Into Truth, Doubt and What Comes After.”)
Churches that accept society’s dogma on marriage and sexuality may think of themselves as “affirming,” but the global church sees them as “apostate.” Meanwhile, it is the height of imperialistic narrowness for a rapidly shrinking subset of white churches in the West to lecture the rest of the world — including those places where Christianity is exploding in growth or where Christians are being martyred — on why they are wrong and how everyone else in Christian history has misread Scripture regarding the meaning of marriage.
The people of Sodom and Gomorrah speak to us from the grave, are we listening?
I’m surprised that the homos aren’t demanding that the bible be re-written to remove all references to Sodom and Gomorrah and verses pertaining to homosexuality being an abomination. Next they will probably say Jesus was gay abd that was the reason he and Peter hung out so much together and why he never got married. Not meant to offend anyone; just stating how far the Left will probably go if they aren’t reigned in.
Tomorrow is a whole new day.
They will allow us to keep the name “Christian” but the Human Rights Campaign will be issuing the legal version of the Bible.
God forbid that the perverts ever get around to publishing a “gay” Bible..but sadly it almost seems bound to happen..given current realities.
So long as the Catholic Church allows homosexuals within its ranks, it will continue to bend to the demands of homosexuals and suffer the consequences. Religious acceptances of homosexual relationships cannot be demanded but they will reach a detente because too many immoral people have shown up on the courts to legitimize homosexual “marriage” and that 1-2% of the population has been given a platform in the media to demand rights to their perversion while the public is caught in between—hard to say no when the church itself is filled with homosexuals. Heck, even when found abusing children, homosexual priests are protected, what’s a little homosexual marriage in comparison?
There will come a time when Christians will be forced to change. The gay militia have already forced their perverseness on society.
They will never stop. Enough will never be enough.
“Christians must change to except sodomy!”
-but what about islam?
“Islam is...oh look, a squirrel”
If it does, the left then will find the next point of resistance, and like gay “marriage”, criminalize that.
There is no amount of appeasing the world or the prince thereof.
They will settle for nothing less than the elimination of Christian values and God’s laws.
> God forbid that the perverts ever get around to publishing a “gay” Bible..but sadly it almost seems bound to happen..given current realities.
It would be an abomination given the sanctity and history of the bible, the generations handing down the history carefully by word if mouth until writing was invented, the care and guarding of it was taken to preserve it down through the ages by scribes and religious men if great faith whomgave their lives for it, the vetting of the current chapters in it, etc...but none of this matters to a group of people who want to change it so they can have sodomite sex, faux marriage, and still say they’re going to heaven..../s
“For I am the LORD; I change not.”
- Malachi 3:6a
If = of
Reminds me of a line attributed to Groucho Marx. "I would never join a club that would have me as a member."
Two observations:
1. The Church is not a club for the righteous. It is a hopsital for sinners.
2. Homosexuality is not the only sickness that needs healing.
Truly, that is happening. One testimony of that truth:
This book gives a good general history of Christianity in China, with plenty of detail and interviews with current followers of Christ in that nation.
Recommended.
I recently spoke with someone at Ligonier Ministries, a parachurch organization. Their publications are being prepared for distribution in China, along with John MacArthur's study Bible.
South America and Africa are indeed witnessing explosive church growth, too.
The Holy Spirit is still changing hearts.
America, too, needs a revival.
Pray for it.
As they become ever more single focused..so must we!!
an Utterly post modern Bible,,,would not BE a Bible at all.
It’s not “the Church” that’s on the offensive here, as your two observations inherently assume.
That’s falling for the left’s “victory through victimhood” framing.
The left is on the offensive to criminalize Christianity. Surely you realize that.
Homosexuality just happens to be THEIR “club” to be USED ON the righteous.
If not homosexuality, it would be beastiality or child sacrifice - at whatever point Christians resist, that resistance will be criminalized.
If we reject the miracles, how can we possibly believe in the resurrection? What is easier to believe: a lame person cured or a three-day dead man raised to life?
The Queen James Bible has been out for quite some time.
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