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Lately I've been musing about how unusual it is that Christianity has such widespread "acceptability" at all.
Some posts lately and some political commentaries seem to associate moral decline with a hatred of the Gospel but if you read the Acts, it's both the scrupulous and the unscrupulous that hate the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I think we tend to associate clean communities and safe streets with a people that are following after God and when the "low lifes" take over, then we really wake up and get concerned that God is being abandoned.
Even in the 20's-30's, when households were intact and people went to Church, the majority of Americans were white-washed tombs. Do we suppose that a true teacher of the Gospel would be welcome in a mainline Church even back then? A Presbyterian who no longer believes the Resurrection is no different than a Pharisee. They might have had a bit more self-restraint not to stone Machen but, like the Pharisees, they continued to raise respectable kids - they just didn't worship the one true God.
Don't get me wrong, I don't relish the barbarism that is beginning to manifest itself but I guess I see this as an outward manifestation of what has been in the American heart for a long time. The irony in this case in Canada is that a false shepherd is right about a moral issue but is still wrong about the Gospel and is just as hostile toward the true Gospel as those who are persecuting him for his stance on homosexuality. We might partner with the priest in lamenting that a State would shut a man up on what God's Word says about homosexuality but the Priest would side with the Pagan in hating what the nature of the Gospel is.
Also, think of the irony of this situation where the Roman Catholic Church, for centuries, tolerated widespread homosexuality in its ranks and sent their priests to "counselling" when they molested their parishioners but cast priests from their office when they married a woman!
More alarming than the State's slide to open antipathy to Christianity is the modern Evangelical himself. The Gospel has been taken for granted so long and replaced with therapy that many are shocked or hostile within Evangelical congregations when you start reminding them that the Gospel is not a Pelagian self-help program where God blesses those who deserve it.
One of the deacons came up to me yesterday and thanked me for this previous Wednesday. I taught on Hebrews 10 and he stated that his wife was blown away and had never heard about Christ's once-for-all sacrifice. She was amazed and over-awed by it.
She's been an "Evangelical" for over 30 years and has never heard the News about Christ's Sacrifice for sin. It both delighted me to hear this News had dawned upon her and broke my heart at the same time.
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