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.”)
When Christ changes His mind on sexual perversion, Christians should change their minds. After all, Jesus is a happening sort of guy, always into the latest wave of pop culture, and all that nonsense about, “I am the Lord thy God, and I change not,” was just to tease the Jews. Who could imagine that the creator of the universe, the one person who exists in all time, from beginning to end, and outside of it, wouldn’t be influenced by the constantly changing whims and self-importance of mankind? I mean really, with all the vast wonders of mankind, worrying about what humans do with their genitals seems petty, even for God who knows the bigger picture. ...Just throw those Bibles away kids, let your minds expand on the possibilities of a bigger Jesus you can create. Write your own Bibles, reflecting your own moral wisdom. Let God be cool.
“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”
It seems the wind has left the US and is blowing hard elsewhere...
ping to post #8 and #37
Actually its not standards modern standards that Christianity is being expected to embrace but “standards” or rather the lack there of that existed prior to Christianity and the rise of other main religions that helped temper such behavior. Sexual hedonism isn’t new its been tried and has always failed as have the cultures and civilizations that embraced it. I believe its rise is actually a key indicator of a culture in decline. That radical egalitarianism is being coupled with this sexual nonsense makes it even more dangerous because it posits that we can rewrite the ideas of gender and normal sexual relationships to make “equal” what is inferior(gay sex) or just absolutely idiotic and innately harmful (transexualism). What we are witnessing is a death of reason with the rise of these ideas because they are at face value bankrupt and ridiculous.
If a child were to come to the belief that they were really the easter bunny as opposed to simply role playing one there would be no consideration (at least previously) by the child’s school to make sure they allow the child to hop down the halls and color easter eggs instead of doing school work nor would they establish a special species neutral bathroom and call him Peter Cottontail. This illustrates the ridiculousness of the whole thing. We have adults facilitating this nonsense and we have adults who really do seriously claim to be suffering from species dysmorphia which shows how this disordered way of looking at the world goes beyond sexual weirdness and represents a deconstruction of reason.
That's a mere assertion, and one which seems to me to be based on a false stereotype. I have seen no proof that the Catholic Church has more homosexuals, or more sexual abusers, than any other denomination, and considerable evidence that it has less.
Your larger point might be that any denomination which fail to uphold the historic Christian sexual ethic, is heading for major moral collapse, even to the point of accepting sodomitic "marriage." I would agree that giving in, even a little, to the corrupt "accept anything" culture around us, paves the way for moral collapse.
This is going to be an ongoing struggle, not only between the Church and the World, but within every denomination and faith community.
I would say turn the other cheek to’em but they’d look at that as a sexual invitation
Let's get real here, okay? The above is not likely to come true for those who push "youth" into their late 20's and 30's, have graduated college (the booby prize of our era when weighed in the balance) and gotten that killer job that they "needed" to make a family happen.
No, by that time they will have fornicated, masturbated and pornificated like any human denied the above lovely "intoxication" would readily do in this fallen world. Sexual nature really, really, REALLY abhors a vacuum! Want evidence? Look around.
Godly sexuality begins at home, where Papa and Mama got a thing going on (intoxication!). Children need to see THAT, not find porn under Papa's bed or wonder where Mama ran off to.
Sexual union is male-female; two of the same kind cannot UNITE. Discord at home sows the seeds of perversion. Once it arrives full blown there's a collective "Whodunnit???". As always, GOD is not shocked. He warned us about it way back there. Us fools just keep going, and suffer for it!
Haven’t you heard of the Queen James Bible? It was on all the web sites a few years ago.
All the rest of the sexual vices and perversions followed as the natural and logical consequence.
I agree that the contraception debate was a slippery slope that has led to abortion. I see abortion as the effort to remove fertility from sexuality, and in that, it is also the genesis of the modern ‘homosexualism’ culture.
The Catholics have been right on life long before the non-Catholics got their act together.
WOW THE MOST OFFENSIVE Book Cover I have ever seen!!
I may have read about it but likely thought it was satire
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That good news. Hopefully that will continue, but you can see the government and the militant left attacking the around the edges such as the attempt by the Huston mayor subpoena Christian church’s sermons, which later was dropped. But it will be some ministers, preachers or pastors who will finally fall into the prince of darkness web of lies.
Yes, but homosexuality is not the only reason a man isn’t married.
Plus, if a person really did struggle with the behavior, getting married is not the way to fix it.
Agreed - there are good reasons for a man to remain single, and if someone is struggling with homosexual feelings, then getting married to cure that is not the answer.
I was just pointing out that joining the preisthood is very enticing for a homosexual who does not want to be out of the closet, wants the respect of family, friends, and community, and will have authority, trust, and access to young people.
That’s possible in that scenario. But unfortunately in a lot of cases, there will never be a definite test for whom someone is attracted to, so whether you have a mega church pastor coming out and doing a 180 or a priest, it doesn’t matter, because we are at the mercy of said person’s honor.
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