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Originally Posted by Kim G  Quote:
Originally Posted by BobVigneault I make the distinction between those who are sinners and those who form a militant movement to radically change society. Preaching 'love the sinner' will not stop the cultural slide toward making vice a virtue and decency a joke. | Once again then, I would ask: Quote: |
Do we see a biblical precedent for churches taking the battle over specific sins to the public? I seem to remember that when the Apostles were given opportunities to speak, they proclaimed the salvation of God from sin, not a specific condemnation over one sin they found particularly offensive.
| I really would like to know. How can we influence the public? How can we change culture? Isn't it only as Christ is preached and magnified that the cultural slide toward vice will abate? Without a moral compass, there is no definite belief in what virtue and decency is. |
Maybe a more direct way to put it is this - we can only influence the public, influence culture, insofar as our members experience life change, and our members are also part of the public, and part of the culture. We will not be able to dictate behavioral change in "billboard" fashion - that is, as though we can put church signs on the side of the road with condemnations of this or that sin, and expect the public to change thereby. It just doesn't work that way - the broader world can only be changed through the Spirit- and Word-induced change in the people of the church who are also in the world.
So ... the pulpits need to be full of men who embrace the gospel and preach the whole counsel of God, and pray for the work of the Spirit within - I don't think programs that try to "influence culture" in any kind of direct way (i.e. tackling issues head-on instead of through the organic processes of human interaction by the Body of Christ) can be expected to be successful ultimately.
__________________
Todd K. Pedlar
member, First Congregational Church, (CCCC) Cresco, IA
http://semperubi.rtrc.net
"Many men, after a long conversion, see more of the workings of sin in their hearts than ever they did before or at their first conversion. Now, such men have not an increase of sin, but an increase of illumination and light"
(Christopher Love)
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