Posted on 04/19/2015 1:56:33 PM PDT by ReformationFan
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.
(RNS) 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.”)
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Moreover, that point boils down to whether or not a person is willing to have Jesus as their Savior, because Jesus made it plain that He only saves people who are willing to obey him.
Those who decline to follow Him cannot be granted eternal life.
Now people are free to excuse this all away, but then God is free to decline to give them the priceless (but conditional) gift of eternal life.
Modernist Christianity is for people who feel like they should probably go to church but either they don’t really believe all that stuff or that stuff is kind of irrelevant.
I suppose that could be true.
“Either the Bible is true and sufficient or its merely a historical book.”
Right answer!
Exactly. I overheard a conversation between two co-workers, one who goes to a so-called “Mainline” Protestant church and the other was officially completing his RCIA so he and his wife could get officially married in the Roman Catholic Church. The RCIA one was telling her about how he doesn’t believe much of it but just going through with it to please his wife while the liberal Protestant thought it was wonderful that Pope Francis seemed so liberal to her. I couldn’t help but think what exactly was the point of either of them going to church at all?
Is this some anti-Semitic in-joke?
It ultimately boils down to a question of does one believe the Bible to be true or not?
You, SoConPubbie, and in essence parroted by Tax-Chick and Manc, replied: "Stupid question."
I beg to disagree.
Reformation Fan's question cuts straight to the issue at hand and is the core question which must be answered -- by Christians and non-Christians alike.
Sadly too many who call themselves "Christians" yet pick and choose what they want to believe about the Bible, essentially create a god in their image, instead of worshiping the God of the Bible who created us all in His image.
The penchant for creating god in one's own image is part and parcel of evolutionary dogma where man creates himself from slime and evolves into the glimmering self-important godless egotist he becomes.
I contend that this same evolutionary dogma is at the foundation of what is to be found leading to this present day societal reversal which in turn is leading us to a redefining of "marriage" not how God established it but how man chooses to manipulate the term "marriage." Man does this to serve his own lust of convenience, not in any way intended to affirm how God Himself both ordained and designed the institution to be a reflection of His relationship to the Church.
Again sadly there are too many Christians beguiled into a functional infidelity with Christ, who have bought the lie that society's social "scientists" have won the evolutionary argument and they meekly knuckle under to a redefining of "love thy neighbor" as merely "go along to get along" without standing for the Truth found in the Word of God -- even as we are commanded to do in Ephesians 6.
FReegards!
Read the bible and you’ll figure it out.
Paul refers to this when he says,
Romans 2:15
"They [Gentiles who do not have the Law] show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them"
I think I’ve misunderstood the whole discussion. I was not saying Reformation Man’s question was stupid, but rather that the question in the headline is stupid.
I thought that was the topic.
Oops.
This is an excellent article, thank you for posting. I believe what it truly boils down to is “Does God love us?” My answer is always “yes”. Which means that God tells us right from wrong because of that love. He knows the enemy is death and He shows us the way we can have life. A life of the spirit that rejects the vanity of the World,the Flesh, and the Devil.
The Bible is true and for Christians to decide its wisdom and truth do not suit the times shows a narcissism that is not unique to this age but which has been allowed to grow aggressive with the help of the media, the elite, and even our own churches.
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