The Church In Trouble

The following is excerpted from a January 28th article by Melissa Mackenzie, an author with and publisher of The American Spectator, which was titled “The Church.”  Since the article came by email there was no link to an article, so I decided to post these excerpts.

If you believe in God and believe the Bible is God's written word, you know that God created man and woman. You believe that each person, as the Psalmist says, is fearfully and wonderfully made. Each person has intrinsic value. Each person IS a person. And if you are male or female, you were meant to be what you are. … Even if you're more masculine or feminine, you know your gender, you know your gender's biological abilities. You know that humans have worth. You know that babies are people.

This informs your cultural views. These beliefs form a foundation and structure for your ideas on marriage, family, children, euthanasia, gender and a myriad of other ideas. These beliefs are just in one specific realm. Ideas about justice and mercy and economics and using gifts, etc. flow out of Judeo-Christian philosophy, too.

But what happens when the church gets corrupted? What happens when church leadership conforms itself to the post-modern notions rather than the other way around?

…We have huge American corporations and the people who work there who are indifferent to slavery in China. We callously kill millions of unborn babies. The culture corrupts and in turn, politics becomes a confused mess. Bad policy based on false assumptions result. … All sorts of social ills like divorce and fatherlessness and crime and teen pregnancy and suicide and drug abuse stem from a de-emphasis on moral truth. The church led the way with their sin within that delegitimized their moral leadership. … 

Humans worship something. And if they do not defer to God's deity, they default to their own knowledge of good and evil. And here we are. America is a toxic brew of amazing innovation and horrific degradation. We have technology that has far outstripped our morality or ethics to deal with it. … Conversations on ethics have stopped happening; it's as if the secular world is barreling toward a future blind and dumb.

The solution is a moral foundation, something fixed and permanent, and true. The challenge, though, is that this place of truth stands in opposition to nearly everything in the wider culture and in politics. And people are afraid to stand up and state their beliefs for fear of being cancelled or worse (if you're in Finland or Canada, you may be sitting in jail.)

I don't believe the culture is as far gone as radical lefties would make it seem since they control the media and nearly every institution. But these same people have tyrannized students and citizens into silence, save a few brave souls.

And here, too, the church or synagogue fortify the people. A pastor, priest or rabbi standing for truth, showing courage, encourages (imparts courage) into those who hear him. We need more of that.

Politics is indeed downstream from culture, and the culture is downstream from belief. The only question: What beliefs drive the culture?