I've been playing with an idea now for a couple weeks and am really interested in feedback (I know commenting on this blog isn't of highest importance for everyone, but I'd love to get in some face to face conversations about this).
My basic premise is this--the sins the evangelical church has been most critical of are the ones that have been most strongly opposed in our nation's history. The ones we let slide (and sometimes even promote) are the correspond to the values applauded in our nation's history. I will deal with four issues here by way of example--sexuality, alcohol consumption, wealth, and pride. Because this takes some time to develop I'm just going to take one per post.
Sexuality
I recently had a friend who was asked to marry a couple who claimed to be Christians. He asked them if they were living together and they responded that they were. He told them that if they didn't live separately until the wedding that he would not do a Christian ceremony. He would still do the ceremony (and believed that they were Christians who had gotten off track in this area), but he would do the same thing he does for people who are not Christians.
Until the sexual revolution of the 1960s the United States was a fairly conservative nation in regard to sexuality. I don't pretend people weren't having affairs, premarital sex. and homosexual sex, but these were not things people broadcast. To a large extent they were looked down upon, even outside the church (and in what I'm trying to develop that is actually more important). Then the era of free love came along and blew up the conventional sensibilities of the nation in this area. At the time, many looked down on those who led and participated in the revolution that shifted how we think about sexuality. But over the years our nation's culture has come to accept and even glorify promiscuous and liberated sexuality.
But not so with the church. We would like to point to the Bible and say that we take a strong stand on issues of sexuality because it instructs us to do so--and I don't dispute that it does. However, we don't take a strong stand on all the issues the Bible speaks to, even those it speaks to strongly, so why this one? For many years we were able to stand with our nation in affirming a certain sexual ethic. Our nation has shifted but we have remained steadfast. It seems even that may be changing.
To come back to my friend. I don't think he did the wrong thing. He took a stand on an important topic. And he did it out of love because he knew the people he was dealing with. It made them do some reflecting and helped them realize they had stopped trying to please Christ above all else. So my example of him is not a negative one, I'm just asking the question, why are we so strong on this area where sin can manifest itself?
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3 comments:
I want to talk about this when we come to visit! As a member of the baby boomer generation who lived the 60s, the invention of the birth control pill had as much to do with this change as a change in values (removed fear of pregnancy). Perhaps we feel so strongly about this area because it is the one that most directly represents the intimacy that God built into us at creation. Talk more later!
I feel dense, but are you wondering why there are some sins that the church lets slide because the culture lets them slide? And are you pointing out that some other sins the church pulls out as "BAD" and "WRONG" more than others and you're wondering what causes that reaction?
Cory--that's pretty much what I'm wondering. And more specifically, is there a connection between the sins the church takes less seriously and values our nation has promoted in our history (that will become more clear when I get to wealth and pride).
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