Foot dragging. . .

Strange how things are.  It seems that some Christian jurisdictions and their leaders complain that the faithful are dragging their feet when it comes to implementing the purified vision of tomorrow within the Church today.  In case you do not get it, they are frustrated by people in the pews and those who stay at home who are not jumping on board the bandwagon to accommodate every sexual desire, support every gender identity decision, right every wrong, restore every injustice, repair every inequity, and heal the climate by reducing the imprint of mankind.  They are upset because folks just do not seem to get how important these things are as the new gospel of Christianity and so the churches are lagging where their leaders think they should be forging ahead of society.

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.