John Zmirak, The Stream, 4/16/23
Love me, love my fentanyl habit.
If you’re really a Christian, you’ll accept and embrace my lifestyle, which includes playing Russian roulette.
If your church really wants to reach out and offer the Gospel to white racialists, you ought to allow us to wear our Klan hoods and serve as greeters at your church.
Do any of those claims rankle with you? Good. They’re meant to.
But now I can make it all better. For all those unfashionable, socially unpopular sins above, plug in “gay” or “transgender” sins and their outward trappings.
We Have No King But Caesar!
Suddenly you have the official policy of most Mainline Protestant churches. And today’s Vatican. And a growing number of evangelical churches.
Why? Because such policies are not about reaching out to people with the Gospel at all. They’re not aimed at tenderly helping the sinner to escape from his soul-destroying lifestyle, as Jesus did with tax collectors and prostitutes. Such outreaches may have started out that way, with some of the churchmen involved. Possibly, though I’m dubious. If a pastor in 1950s Alabama had allowed men to wear their Klan hoods at Sunday services, what would you assume his motivation was … a humble outreach to sinners? Or something darker?
Now plug in the sins that today, in our place and time, are linked with powerful elites, and applauded by the culture. Why treat church officials who collaborate with Caesar and Mammon today any differently from those who colluded 70 years ago?
Those who surrender timeless, apostolic, biblical moral teachings in order to “get along” with the Zeitgeist aren’t acting like Jesus at all. Not in any way. We might call their behavior “biblical,” insofar as they are imitating Caiaphas, and affirming along with him and the other Sadducees (collaborators with Pilate): “We have no king but Caesar!”
That’s what God thinks of your rainbow-flag church … that it’s no better than a segregation chapel in the 1950s South. Or one of the “German Christian” churches that the Third Reich encouraged.
The Sound of Eyes Slowly Rolling
I think more people should make this argument inside their churches. Not that it will do any good, at first. Instead what they’ll hear back from the “affirm and welcome” crowd will be the sound of eyes slowly rolling. Then patronizing replies like this: “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no comparison between people’s sexual orientation and racism. That’s absurd.”
Don’t cave in, shut up, or back down. Stay calm, and keep asking, “Why?” Press the person you’re arguing with hard enough, and eventually he’ll admit that he believes same-sex intercourse, sex change operations, and hormonal sterilization for temporarily confused kids … aren’t wrong. At least, not wrong in the icky, tacky, ugly and universally condemned way that racist actions are.
Keep pressing to find out in what way these new, fashionable sex sins are wrong, and eventually your “affirming” friend will admit that he doesn’t really condemn them. The actions, I mean. But if he’s clever, he’ll switch gears and start muttering proof texts such as “Judge not, lest you be judged.”
You should respond, “Does that apply to racists, too? To Nazis?”
“No, of course not!” will be the answer. Because those people really are sinners, and their actions are really wrong. But sexual sins are complicated and nuanced, because … reasons.
Dead Churches Are Whited Sepulchers
To Continue Reading and Watch Video, “Let’s Learn From the Silence of the German Church Before the Holocaust” Click on Title Below
Why We Need to Talk About Satan
Your problem is that like most heretical evangelicals, you’ve chosen not to follow Christ. I shall pray for you.
Yes, we must hate the sin and love the sinner but we must be mindful that the sinner may love evil, sin, and Satan and hate both God and you, and regard you as their enemy whom they wish to destroy. God does not want their condemnation and neither do we. As such, we are not their actual enemy, only Satan is.
Evil-doers must be stopped, sometimes by force when necessary, but they should be given every opportunity to repent, such as with incarceration for law-breaking. Breaking moral laws by teaching heresy should have its consequences too.
God hates sin and so must we. It’s for us repentant sinners to bring the unrepentant sinners to God’s True Light and His forgiveness. Acquiescing with unrepentant sinners won’t do that.