Posted on 09/12/2005 7:25:38 PM PDT by sionnsar
Hat Tip to David Virtue:
Calling them “kissing Judases” — followers of Jesus who betray him with an interpretation, Guinness ripped the church saying, “we have seen a troubling growth of those who bend every nerve to reach successive generations of the cultured despisers of the Gospel: and then join them and become like them and no longer faithful to Jesus Christ. Some have surrendered to Enlightenment ideas, and become skeptics about God’s sovereignty, or skeptics about human sin, or skeptics about the possibility of the supernatural and any world beyond the here and now.”
Guinness, an Episcopalian who attends The Falls Church in Northern Virginia, said that at one level, the result was an Alice in Wonderland church in which Christian leaders now openly deny what all Christians have believed and many have died to defend; Christian leaders who celebrate what their faith once castigated; Christian leaders who advance views closer to their foes than to their founder; and Christian leaders who deny the faith, but stay on shamelessly as leaders of the faith they deny.
“At a deeper level, these treacherous leaders are a shame and a disgrace to their Master and their fellow-believers, and like Judas are pursuing a suicidal path by surrendering to the spirit of the age leading to triviality and transience.” Guinness cited Dean Inge who said, “He who marries the spirit of the age soon becomes a widower.”
“Surrender to the spirit of the age leads to infidelity – what the Scriptures speak of as apostasy-as-adultery, cheating on God as a husband or wife cheats on his or her spouse. Surrender to the spirit of the age undermines the authority of faith, so that “Sola Scriptura” is replaced by “Sola Cultura” and the church has no fulcrum outside the world from which to speak and act in the world.”
Guinness said that surrender to the spirit of the age severs the continuity of faith, cutting off its advocates from the faith of their fathers and mothers and making them captives to their culture and children of their times. “Surrender to the spirit of the age destroys the credibility of faith. There is little distinctively Christian to believe, and the intellectual of today can say as Oscar Wilde said to a trendy clergyman of his day, ‘I not only follow you, I precede you.’”
Pointing the finger directly at the Episcopal Church, Guinness said that surrender to the spirit of the age obliterated the very identity of faith. In the words of an English philosopher and atheist, “At that point the creed becomes a way of saying what the infidel next door believes too.”
“In the sorry ranks of the revisionists, the loss of anything identifiably Christian is now almost complete.”
But, it isn’t just our problem, either:
Guinness also blasted the broader Christian community, saying that many had surrendered to political ideologies, and become the conservative or liberal party at prayer, or the Marxist party at the barricades.
“Some, including a growing number of recent evangelicals, are surrendering to modern insights, techniques, and fashions — as if we could become more “relevant” by doing the Lord’s work in the world’s latest way.”
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.
But we're now Purpose-Driven (TM)! Doesn't that count?
CC&E
Well, many are "driven", but the question remains, is it "purpose" or "on purpose". Man has never invented a program that improves on the Great Commission itself.
Christ leads, He does not "drive".
I thought that the Church was supposed to shape the culture, not the other way around.
That "driven" bothers me, too. We're to follow Christ, who draws all to Himself, not be "driven" like a herd of water buffalo.
***Well, many are "driven", but the question remains, is it "purpose" or "on purpose". Man has never invented a program that improves on the Great Commission itself.***
I was visiting my local PCA this past weekend to see what my Presbyterian brethren were up to and happened to be treated to a message by the local RUF elder. He said something quite profound: "If we were to ask Paul how to do evangelism, he would have no understanding of our question." You see, evangelism is not something that you do so much as it is something that you are. I think this is one of the reasons why Protestant evangelism has always been spearheaded and driven by Calvinism. By that, I mean our sure belief in the delight of our God to save sinners. If I was to believe in the power of man to get it right, I would soon dispair. Anyone who thinks I have this wrong just needs to spend a week with me witnessing in the middle of an Atheist sea.
AMEN!
I would include many within my own denomination who have surrendered to the gods of this world.
It's Bush's fault!
(Opps, I got carried away.)
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