For some time
now, American culture has been deliberately steered in a very specific
direction for the past several decades. You see, Americans are very emotional
people. For the past several years, there has been a move to use this tendency
toward emotion, to escalate it, and then to advance certain causes by
manipulating these emotions of the American people. Critical thinking,
intellectual contemplation has been all but lost in American society. People
are moved by their emotions without nearly an ounce of cerebral activity. And
this is by design. For instance, Dan Trabue an adversary of mine continues to
insist that there cannot be one authoritative interpretation of Scripture. What he fails to realize is that his basic
statement puts itself out there as a final authority on how Scripture can be
interpreted. His “anything goes” is just as authoritative as my “only the
authors intent goes.” Dan cannot see the utter destruction of Scripture
that results from his view nor can he understand that Christianity is reduced
to ruins as we push his view to its logical conclusion. This is the kind of
irrational thinking that I am afraid best describes most people in American
culture and that includes many of those in our own Churches, real Churches even.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I think that light is
religious persecution. Persecution will benefit the Church in America a great
deal. Persecution has always benefited the Church through her history. I suspect
this new era will be no different. Congratulations, Christians in America, you
are about to join your fellow Christians in the rest of the world. Christian
Americans have benefited from a very unusual prolonged period that has been
free from persecution. And I am afraid we have wasted it on liberal
Protestantism, the seeker movement, and the emergent church. As of Friday, the
fat lady has started to warm up because we are ending an era. The show is just
about over.
The good news
for the Church anyways, as it relates to the recent Supreme Court ruling on gay
marriage, is that it should provide some clarity around what the Church is and
is not and who is actually in the Church and who is not. Churches will now be
forced to take a stand or not. They will, at a minimum, be forced to make a
decision: gay Christianity or the gospel. It cannot be both. John tells us that
the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Christians in
America, thanks to some who have abused dispensational theology, have bought
the lie that we are not judge one another, and that only God knows the heart.
When that thinking is incorporated into the radical dispensational dichotomy so
that the God of the OT and the Jesus of the NT are view as different or
behaving radically differently, it can only be a recipe for disaster. When
respected men can teach and preach that we can make Jesus our Savior without
making Him our Lord, the consequences are predictable. And here we are. The
problem with this thinking is that it blatantly contradicts the Bible.
Scripture says we can know them by the fruit they bear. Those in the world are
obviously children of the devil and they are easy to recognize so long as the
church wears the correct lens: God’s word.
Given the
current state of affairs, what should the church do? We should learn from our
past mistakes. We convinced ourselves that we were really treating homosexuals
differently than others. With few rare exceptions, that is simply not true. We
have treated them like we treat any unbeliever. We also bought the lie, without
a shred of evidence, that we were obsessed with homosexuality and nearly
preached against it every weekend. I have been in the Christian community for
36 years and I have never heard a single sermon devoted to homosexual sin. Not
one, ever! We convinced ourselves that that homosexual community just wanted to
be treated like everyone else and that they were honest nice people, willing to
respect our differences. That is a lie. Homosexuals demand that everyone, including
those with deeply held religious convictions to the contrary, celebrate their
lifestyle. They have proven that they are not willing to respect different
perspectives on their lifestyle. If you disagree with their lifestyle, you are
a hater, a bigot, and a religious fanatic. Christians, over the last 5-10 years
have been incredibly naïve in how they have handled this issue. This is just as
true for prominent pastors, less prominent pastors, and other leaders. We need
to learn from this and make sure we do not repeat those mistakes.
How do we
respond? We continue to preach the gospel and trust God to perform His work
according to His sovereign plan. We educate ourselves on opposing arguments
against Scripture, against Christianity, against our God. This includes the
arguments advocating gay Christianity. We change the way we live our lives. We
turn of the cable programs and reject the godless messages that are embedded in
these brainwashing, mind-numbing, hypnotic devices. The godless message of
autonomous man and the narcissism that follows are laced throughout the
programming. I am not suggesting that it is a sin to watch TV. I am suggesting
that you keep your defenses up and begin to resist the desensitization intended
by most of the programs. We become less American and more Christian. We stop
worshipping the American dream, and romanticizing American history as if
America was founded by the Apostles of Christ themselves. Poppycock! Stop that
nonsense.
The homosexual,
according to Paul in Romans one, along with every other god-hater engages in
behavior that is worthy of death. That does not mean Paul was endorsing
violence. It means their behavior is wicked. But Paul also included in that
lot, those who give hearty approval to people that engage in wicked behavior to
include homosexuality. They equally are worthy of death. Again, their
endorsements of sinful behavior is extremely wicked. This means that the US
Supreme Court is indeed a wicked body. The Court did not consult God in
rendering its decision. It left God out. The Court has pretended to be the
final authority on the matter even to the neglect of the Constitution. It has
followed its decision to allow children to be murdered with this decision to
allow America to call what is perverse, right.
Churches will
need to deliberately begin to disciple and educate their people. Christians
will have to stop this foolishness of being an intellectual sloth. We tend to
busy ourselves with everything but Christian doctrine. The Scripture commands
us to be prepared to defend the gospel, to defend Christian dogma. That takes
time and energy. We spend 40-50 hours a
week working. We spend another 10-20 hours a week running around with kids, baseball,
basketball, etc. We watch an obscene about of television programming. We play tons
of golf, fish, hike, and go boating. And then we go to Church on Sunday
morning, listen to a fluffy 30 minute Sunday school lesson and a 45 minute
sermon, read 5 minutes in a devotional each day and think we have done our
part. It seems pretty obvious, given our schedules and where we spend most of
our time, where our priorities are. It is the pastor that has to drive this
message home week in and week out. Those of us who invest time and energy in
Scripture, equipping ourselves will never grow weary of hearing that
encouragement. Those who don’t bother will either change their behavior or
leave the community. And that is a win-win situation.
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