If we were wrong. . .

We live at a time in which a large number of people believe the church was wrong about infant baptism, wrong about the presence of Christ in the Supper, wrong about the truthfulness of Scripture, wrong about marriage, sex, and life, and wrong about Jesus and His claims.  In other words, there are many who think themselves Christian but who believe that for the majority of its history, the church did not get right many things are among the most celebrated causes today.  That surely includes the idea that sacraments are at best symbols and nothing more and that Scriptures is either wrong or we understand it wrongly when it comes to the historicity of even major stories.  It also includes the definition of marriage, of who can marry, of the purposes of marriage, and of the intricacies of gender diversity as the world today defines them.  And yet these who think the church wrong, have not abandoned Christianity as much as attempted to redefine it away from doctrine and onto a simple yet noble ethic of love (love that really means tolerance, acceptance, and the celebration of whatever feels good).

What is striking, however, is that few seem to be bothered by the fact that God is so weak or distracted as to sit on the sidelines of the church's errors and not intervene to correct them (at least until the present day when it seems things changed).  If it was wrong, what kind of God sits by powerlessly as infants and small children are routinely baptized and told that by this baptism they died with Christ and rose with Him to new and everlasting life?  If it was wrong, what kind of God is impotent to prevent the church from believing and teaching that in Holy Communion Christ's real flesh and real blood is real food?  If it was so wrong, what kind of God watches while people in His name and the church He established confused myth with history and fable with fact?  If it was wrong, what kind of God tolerates the persecution of homosexuality and the diversity of genders until 2,000 years later secular society compels the church to change?

A church which could be so wrong, for so long, on matters as fundamental as Baptism of the Lord's Supper, the historicity of the events in Scripture, and the shape of the most basic human social relationship raises as many questions about its God as it does about itself.