Over the last year I've been aware of several different incidences of sexual immorality within different churches. In one situation a new immigrant was living with a girl friend here while his wife was still back in his home country. He told his pastor that the woman was only a roommate. The pastor believed him and was willing to baptize him as a new believer. The crazy thing about this story is that the pastor knew that they were sharing a bed together.
In another situation a friend of mine told me that her sister had become a Christian. When I asked her if she had moved out from her boyfriend's place (and his bed) she tried to assure me that her sister wasn't having sex. This girl had even been caught with birth control on hand and had come up with some excuse as to why she had them. This story is really hard for me to swallow.
Also, my best friend (besides my husband) became pregnant while engaged. Her church's response was to remove her from her role as a Sunday school teacher. She was fairly sure in the situation that the reason that she was removed was because it would upset the parents if she was to remain the position. Nothing else was done or said about the pregnancy.
In the situations where people were claiming to be abstinent I recognize that it is a theoretical possibility. It just seems either very naive to believe that or very wishful. I think that we need to have more nerve to face people when they present us with these tales.
I think that this lack of concern about sexual immorality is just a symptom of an underlying problem. I think that the underlying problem is that most of the church as we know it is afraid to deal with sin in any substantial way. What I mean by this is that we are unwilling to purge the rebellious that are among us and those in roles of preaching are often unwilling to speak against sin that is common in our society. Consider, when was the last time that you heard a sermon about greed, sexual immorality, obeying traffic laws or downloading mp3's? So much of the focus of sermons seems to be about the different blessings that God offers us who believe.
When I've confronted people with sin it's often been excused on the basis that no body is perfect. While I acknowledge that that is true, our standard is perfection. God commands us to be perfect. I recognize that nobody can achieve this standard but we shouldn't except this as an excuse for not trying in ourselves or in others.
I think that the heart of this issue has to do with how we view God's holiness. When we view God as our chum who helps us we tend to forget that he is a holy God that despises sin. We need to remember our place before him. We are wretched, pitiful little worms that were forgiven only because God had mercy on us and was willing to suffer in our place. When I remember this I am more willing and able to acknowledge that my sin spits in the face of that gift. No amount of sin is too small to ignore. It's repulsive to God and it should be to us as well.
One thing that annoys me to no end is fact that Christian humanitarian agencies often ignore the plight of the unborn. I care passionately about the poor, exploited and marginalized of the world but I cannot separate the unborn from that class of people. World Vision has a justice arm of their organization that holds the URL "seekjustice.org". Their slogan is "seeking justice for the world's poor and marginalized people". I've searched their site up and down and there is not a word about the unborn. This is supposedly a Christian organization. You can email to complain about this at seekjustice@worldvision.org. This is not the only organization that I've seen like this. I haven't found one organization that is both defending the unborn and helping the poor and oppressed that have survived to birth. I think that the way that the church is largely ignoring this holocaust is causing the unborn to continue to die and will result in God's judgment. Consider the following verse:
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot! So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth! Rev 3:15,16 NET
So to turn this more personal, I'm going to ask you what you are doing to help the unborn. If you just hold a pro-life position and do nothing to help the unborn then you are no better then a German during the Jewish holocaust that watched his neighbours being led away to concentration camps and did nothing but remain personally opposed to it.
Short answer: I think so. I just read a blog entry over on Thin~Spaces that summed up most of my concerns with the emerging church. I hope that it is the community focused element of the emerging church that takes root and not the artistic and culture focused aspects. My dream for a church is to have community of believers that is seeking to radically and actively surrender all areas of our lives for the cause of Christ together. I'll try to unpack that. I want a group of believers that I can come to and share my struggles to surrender with; a group that will understand why I'm giving things up; a group that will help me give up more. I want to be in a group where our focus is on the poor and needy and not on our service style. I want to be in a group where people will seek to spend less of the their resources on themselves and more on those in need. Whether that is people within our group or outside or whether it requires time or money I desire a group that is seeking to love others more and love themselves less. I guess you could say that I desire a group of Christians who are willing and are actively trying to do all that they can for Jesus.
I try to make most of my blog entries relevant to those who read it but just had to share what happened recently. My city government is purposing to put a drug rehabilitation facility for those with mental illnesses into my neighbourhood. The centre would have 39 single occupancy suites and would have at least one staff person on at all times. Also, in order to qualify to move in the applicant must be drug and alcohol free for the previous two months and have no violent crimes or sexual offenses on their criminal record.
On Monday night the city and the organization that would be running the centre held a second meeting with the neighbour. The first meeting had around 1000 people attend but I wasn't there. The meeting on Monday had about 600 people. I attended the second meeting because the first was huge mess. The community was all riled up and mob mentality was on a high.
The mess at the first meeting made me angry. These people need homes. I don't understand what the community was afraid of. They were claiming that part of why this was a bad location was that it was near a high school and an elementary school. What do they think the people at facility are going to do? There are other similar facilities around the city. Why aren't they agitated about those facilities. It's just a whole lot of selfishness running around.
Anyways, on Monday evening during the question and answers/feedback part of the presentation I got up and spoke my mind on the issue. I was the first to speak in favour of the facility so I think that I caused quite a stir. When I left the microphone I got followed out by the camera man from our local media. They did an interview of me. My rebuke of the community made the 11 o'clock news as well as the morning news yesterday. I don't know if it hit the evening news last night. I also got quoted in The Vancouver Sun and The Province. You can read the articles if you follow the links. I feel like a celebrity! I know that that doesn't matter. Really, I'm just happy that I was able to be an advocate for marginalized people.
I'm totally tired of the monopoly that US politics has had in the blog world recently but I thought that I would add my two bits anyways. Sorry if I cause any fellow non-Americans to commit suicide because they have to endure another Bush vs Kerry blog entry. I just couldn't resist.
I'd like to challenge the belief that Bush is actually pro-life. I know that he signed the bill to ban partial birth abortion but he has made no other efforts to protect the unborn. Do you think that perhaps the bill signing was a campaign strategy? Bush also believes that abortion should be legal in cases of rape and incest. That's not pro-life that's confused.
The other thing to consider is that if Bush was truly pro-life, would he be supportive of the war on Iraq? Abortion is wrong because it is the murder of innocent people. War is wrong because it is the murder of innocent people (unless you can conjure up a situation where the innocent weren't being killed alongside the guilty). If you think that the war is justified because of the evil of Iraq then I could argue that it would be right for Iraq to invade the US based on the evil of the genocide of it's unborn children.
I'm not advocating that you vote for Kerry either. I think that if their is no pro-life candidate then a person should spoil their ballot. I can' see any good reason to do the "lesser of two evils" sort of vote. I will not in any way support of candidate that believes that the murder of the innocent is justified.
I read an interesting article on the Tall Skinny Kiwi blog. It's about some of the issue with house churches. I'm not sure that I agree with all of it but it worth the read anyways. Christdot had a discussion going on the article a little over a week ago. You can check that out here.
My husband and I have been passionate advocates for the unborn for a while. Recently Joel has looked into the issues surrounding oral contraceptives(oc's). We have come to believe that hormonal birth control does in fact cause early abortions. Joel has put together a web page that includes links to some evidence for this claim as well as some commentary on the issue.
As you think about this issue please try to separate what the consequences to you of believing this from whether this is right or wrong. Try to follow the following argument. Assuming life starts at conception and oc's do stop implantation of a fetus at least some of the time then does it not follow that hbc is stopping a life? If it only occurs 1 out of 100 ovulations that means that the odds are that for every 100 ovulations while using oc's a human life is lost. This is not something that I am willing to do. If you or your spouse is currently using oc's I recognize that this is probably hitting a few nerves. This is a very personal decision but is not an issue worth taking lightly. Thanks for hearing me out.