Oddly enough, these same Christian jurisdictions and their leaders do not seem to be complaining about the diminishing size of the Christian population within these jurisdictions. They do not seem to be as concerned by the increasing number of those who are no shows on Sunday morning. They do not seem to be worried about the lack of repentance for real sins or the desire to be forgiven by the real blood of Christ. They do not seem to be at all disheartened by the growing irrelevance of doctrine and doctrinal unity (much less practice). We hear all kinds of talk about the need to awaken within the faithful (and those who have cashed out) a yearning for the new world order envisioned by such folk but we hear little talk about any yearning for or guidance to their eternal salvation.
It does not seem to take long before we forget what Christianity is really about in order to surge ahead with what we think it should be about. That is certainly the hallmark of a lost Christianity, confused about what Christianity is or what the Church should be about. And that is exactly where we live. The only real life in Christianity seems to be where people are still talking about Scripture as truth without error, the Gospel of sin forgiven by the death of Jesus on a cross, and the Gospel of new life bestowed in Baptism and sustained by the Eucharist to the resurrection and the life eternal. There are dying and dead churches all around us except where this faithful Christian Gospel is the voice and the means of grace are faithfully offered for the purposes for which Christ instituted them. These are the only real pockets of life within Western Christianity and, indeed, across the world's stage.
As one commenter put it, the Church is daily being stolen from the faithful and their God by those who have betrayed the Gospel and nobody seems to be concerned. That is the problem facing Christianity in the West. The concern and therefore the agenda of these churches is misplaced and so the one Gospel the Church was established to proclaim has been cast aside in favor of the gospel everyone seems to be parroting. If only these leaders actually listened to the voice of Scripture, they might just learn why there is so little energy or momentum in these progressive churches. They have kept forms as decor without honoring the substance of that Gospel. We are all tempted by this and we are all in danger of squandering the very treasure God has given us. It is not a now or never proposition but an everyday battle that will not subside until Christ comes in His glory to mercifully end our delusion and take back what is His.
1 comment:
Thanks, as always, Pastor Peters for your thoughts and bloggings! This particular blog brought back to mind my New York years, when I was doing graduate work at Union Theological Seminary, New York. This was 1986 to 1990, which now sounds like ancient history. Anyway, no nostalgia here, just remembering that there were no students there, besides myself, who weren't "progressive" and to a greater or lesser extent in favor of the "social gospel." There were still some old classic liberals, of the school of Reinhold Niebuhr (who taught there) or Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who studied there), protected by tenure, but the younger faculty were ALL in the cohort of what people today call the "woke agenda" (I don't think that term is helpful, by the way). That was 35 years ago. All the old classic liberals are retired or deceased. The younger faculty and their students are now in control of all the mainline denominations, their seminaries, their universities and colleges, and all the Ivy League divinity and religious schools. It is as big a revolution in religion and academia as occurred in the Rationalist takeover of the German universities in the 18th century (Christian Wolf, et.al.). And to tell the truth, this "progressive Christianity" is not Christian, but another gospel, i.e., the Social Gospel with some new appendices to make it seem new. Thanks again for your blogging!
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