There has recently been a lot of discussion around the issue of same sex marriage lately; whether it's good or bad for society, whether we should or shouldn't be bringing it back to the House for another round of talks, whether or not the sky has fallen, as some had surely predicted, since the legislation has passed...
I remember also having several relatively heated discussions at the last election as to my electoral preferences, as, for some, the election was a one horse issue, mainly having to do with sexual morality. Forget climate change, forget child care, forget education or health care: the issue was that of sexual mores.
So, having been brought back to the fore again, it just makes me shake my head.
I think the issue that really is at core is that of reactivity vs proactivity. Personally, I think that we should've been proactive twenty, thirty years ago, as it was an issue already germinating and percolating around that point in time. How much more of an impact can we make in changing and shaping culture, rather than simply reacting to it, reacting to something that was already there, and is simply doing its logical dénouement?
I am not surprised that evangelicals, especially on the fundamentalist side of things, are losing ground to some of the more loosey-goosey teaching. It really is too bad, surely, as it seems that there is a shift to what 'tickles men's ears', rather than solidly standing on the Word. However, in not being responsive to society, in keeping blinkers on and not seeing where culture is going, where it is at, how can we respond in hope and compassion? If we cannot be relevant, how can we legitimately have a voice?
I would like to shape culture, to envision and change the course the history, rather than wait for something to happen and have a tantrum that I didn't see it coming... anybody with me?
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3 comments:
I'm not sure that evangelicals have been asleep at the wheel on this issue, since the movement has been opposed to the liberalization of sex since the 60s (and likely earlier). I think the power of modern sexuality movements is there more because society has made its ultimate virtue "tolerance". Ravi Zacharias said "The only illegitimate thing in the West now is intolerance". If you ask even many Christians, they'll tell you it's wrong to judge other people, and that you have no right to criticize the choices they make. You see this behaviour even in how children treat their parents these days.
G.K. Chesterton said "Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions." Ie: a tolerant person stands up for nothing. As soon as you stand up for something, you become intolerant of its opposite. As a Bible-believing Christian, there are certain things you will end up standing for, and the World doesn't seem to understand how you can do this anymore without being a hate-monger. So tolerance is high on the minds of people these days, yet there are some things you simply have to be intolerant about because some things are right! It is not so much that people react to someone acting as Judge, but that they reject that anyone should judge anything at all. So tolerance has probably just been an excuse used to defend oneself from valid moral criticism.
I think the reason therefore why the Church has lost this battle in society (at least in the present-time) is summed up pretty much in a statement I read Elton John make on CNN. He said he would ban (organized) religion completely, because "It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate." When your whole worldview is focussed on how other people relate to you specifically, then it makes sense that he or others may come to this conclusion. It takes one facet of Church relations with the World and extrapolates it to all others. What of the inner-city work? What of the international work? What of the charities (and charitability of many churches)? Christian Counselling? Marriage seminars? Christian drug and alchohol rehabilitation? These are *all* started by organized religion, and many people apparently don't realize they exist. The issue of homosexuality is really a minor issue in the scheme of things, but it is apparently something that people like Elton John and Rosie O'Donnell consumes our every thought.
I'll be the first to admit that the Church fails immensely at properly representing Christ to the World. However, it was never God's delusion that we could replace Christ sufficiently, nor does God save/help people merely by the face of the Church. Jesus has helped hundreds of millions of people in tangible ways through the Church, and so one who can only knock it down based on how the Church relates to *them* personally is demonstrating severe narcissism and/or ignorance.
In the End of Days, there will be a lot of people who will have to answer for their holistic condemnation of the Body of Christ once God's Work has been revealed both in and out of the Church.
Wow, that's so totally not what I was on about...
Well, you said evangelicals have missed the opportunity to shape culture when these problems were in their early form 20-30 years ago, and instead they've just reacted to issues after they've happened. Has the sexual revolution really grown up in a vacuum of Church leadership though?
I think the Church *has* been engaged when it comes to encouraging personal discipline and purity. It's been propounded upon forever. The problem would seem just that people stopped listening, because sex is sexier than abstinence. The Church warned against loose sexual morals, so people made up their reasons to ignore it. Intolerance is now one of the biggest sticks evangelicals get hit with in the avoidance of having to deal with Church pro-activity.
Not saying the Church did everything it could have, but I think some of the problems would have been very hard to see coming. Freedom from oppression was a lauded value of our society, but then when God became to be seen as the oppressor, people desired freedom from God too. Tolerance, another virtue, slowly became universal tolerance which gave rise to universal legitimacy. I think people probably doubted things would come to this (over-estimating human nature perhaps) because it's hard to understand why people would reject values everyone thinks are self-evident. Heck, even the government promised they'd never endorse same-sex marriage a decade ago, but they changed their mind.
Anyways, perhaps you had some specific ideas in mind that the Church could have done to stem the slippery slope? I wrote that comment because I felt the trend-setters don't care what the Church has to say. They stopped listening to God before they stopped listening to the Church.
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