The greater cause. . .

The decisions of a couple of churches (two of them Lutheran) to ordain women now some 54 years ago and counting were not the thoughtful choices that they were portrayed to be.  For one, illicit ordinations of women had preceded the official decision and had created a two tier ministry that was untenable.  In addition, the embrace of the ordination of women did not proceed after a period of great theological reflection nor was it cognizant of the break that this decision would make with Rome, Constantinople, and the consistent catholic practice down through the ages.  It was a judgment upon this past -- that the early Church succumbed to the pressure of the then culture against women -- and it was an intention to right what was considered a wrong.  It was not an issue of Scripture or tradition or ecumenical relationship but of justice for women as seen through the eyes of 20th century Christianity.

The same principle was at work in accepting same sex marriage, homosexuality, the plethora of genders, and a host of other things.  Nearly everyone with a brain acknowledges that some if not all of these modern day sacred truths conflicts with Scripture and the explicit word of Scripture.  Nearly everyone with a brain acknowledges that these sacred tenets of modernity conflicts with the consistent catholic tradition from the earliest of days.  Nearly everyone with a brain knows that neither Rome nor Orthodoxy is likely to change its teaching any day soon.  So justice for those who were deemed to be wrongly oppressed or suppressed has become the single rationale for why these churches made the decisions they have made.  Solidarity with these causes and the transformation of the Gospel from sin and forgiveness, death and life, into a cause for righting the presumed wrongs of the past has left these churches with more than folks with alphabet and pronoun issues related to sex and gender.  It has shifted the focus of these churches completely away from the axis of the cross, the suffering, the death, and the resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ in order to rescue and redeem humanity from their terrible choice in Eden.  Instead, the focus has been to embrace Eden's fall as progress.

Eden represents the dismissal of God's voice and the rejection of His order in favor of an appeal to desire.  That is the curse sin left in humanity (one that led to death).  But it is precisely Eden and its surrender to desire that is behind the lauding of sexual desire as the most important desire and gender choice as that which defines people most of all.  Contemporary Christianity has not simply rejected Scripture and the catholic tradition in favor of its own presumed cause of justice, it has embraced Eden as the goal.  Sure, there is complaint over how desire has been lived out and the persecution of some desires while others are honored but by and large truth and identity have been sacrificed for the sake of desire that is but one person wide and one person deep.

The world has made a judgment.  The contemporary Christians have agreed.  Eden is not the problem but how Eden was lived out.  Feeling is more true than fact.  Desire is our ultimate identity.  Sin has nothing to do with the commandments or will of God but the denial of desire.  Justice has become redemption and the only redemption worth having has been justice for the moment.  Tell me where I am wrong.