I received in the mail at church the Dutchess County Focus, which is a free element published out of the Poughkeepsie Journal. The May 31 edition shared a number of events celebrating and promoting the LGBTQ community (and for those of you not acronym savvy that’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer). These articles made me pause as two inner voices started to come out inside my head. I’m going to call the first “Cultural Christian” and the second “Biblical Christian.”
Cultural Christian started telling me what a shame it is that our nation is continuing to embrace an unbiblical lifestyle. It’s not that we’re being told to tolerate them and they will tolerate us. We’re being told that we must embrace this lifestyle as positive. Yet, it’s not difficult from our perspective to see what kind of damage this is doing to our world. We understand it’s unnatural and it violates Scriptural teaching on God’s ordained pattern for marriage. And we start to rage about how we’re losing foothold in our nation. We’re seeing the Biblical patterns being eroded and destroyed. We say things like “we’re a Christian nation” and “the Founders would be appalled.” But, let me respond to the Cultural Christian voice in my head and say, I guess if all we’ve been standing for is Cultural Christianity, a loose allegiance to some kind of Judeo-Christian ethic as the foundation for our society, then I guess we have sort of failed. We must not have been doing a good job if this is where we’re at in today’s society.
Then Biblical Christian begins to speak to me and says, perhaps the failure is that we’ve been trying to teach Cultural Christianity AS Biblical Christianity in our society and it’s then no wonder we’ve failed. Instead of focusing on living and preaching the Gospel, we’ve been living and preaching a moralism that frankly, has no solid answers for the world around us. So, when the foundations of pure and simple moralism fall around us, we shouldn’t be surprised that we start to see people “doing what was right in their own eyes.” We’ve not been teaching and preaching the Gospel of Christ, we’ve been preaching and teaching the Law. Is it any wonder people are no longer embracing our Judeo-Christian ethic? It had at it’s core, “do this” with never any hope of “doing it” apart from Christ.
So, Cultural Christianity, in some ways, should die. If all we have is some kind of moral law that we’re trying to teach people how to live by without giving them the hope of the Gospel, well, we should be ashamed. What we need to do is perhaps stop decrying how things are changing all around us and start actively living and teaching Biblical Christianity. A Christianity that acknowledges ALL OF US are sinners who are destined for judgment and Hell. Our only hope is Jesus Christ and He crucified and resurrected, and then, and only then, can we begin to live in a way pleasing to God. If we take serious the call to teach and preach the Gospel to ALL people, then, as they get saved, they WILL live differently. And we may one day begin to say, that our nation reflects a Christian nation, not simply because of shared cultural mores, but because of a shared family of true Christians seeking to please God.
So, when we read about the celebration of LGBTQ events in our community, let’s not shake our heads in disgust, but think how can we be involved with these people, and love them, and care for them, and above all, show and tell them the love of Jesus and the hope of the Gospel. The only hope for change in them, in us, in our nation, is the Gospel.
Working out Salvation with Fear and Trembling 