Contending for the faith in this day and age...

The modern age of technological development is both good and bad, but I’m afraid the bad has outweighed the good, especially in the church. And it all boils down to this one big debate that still rages on…the essentials and non-essentials…liberty and legalism…the dreaded “gray” areas.

And the two biggest fronts in this debate are creation and homosexuality. These two areas are where the biggest assault on the church and our faith is occurring. Compromising on these two fronts is what’s destroying the church and our faith. If we can’t defend our faith on these two fronts, dogmatically, we will have no credibility in this modern age.

Christ’s last word to the church was not to spread the gospel. His last word to the church was to repent. WE are the problem! WE are the problem because WE have compromised. WE are not the chosen separated people WE were called to be. WE have allowed the world to slowly creep into our midst and corrupt us. WE, by and large, don’t like to be judged. That’s why WE leave the “old fashioned” churches and congregate in these huge mega-churches. WE know WE can hide and not be judged on what WE consider the “non-essentials”.

These are the churches who preach and teach their “freedom in Christ” so they can hide behind that and rationalize or justify their sinful behavior. These are the churches who call anyone who tries to live a Christ-like life legalists. These are the churches who continually play the “judgment” card.

These mega-churches are the churches that preach half of the truth. They preach the loving, forgiving, and unifying God. But, they leave out the other half of the truth. The righteous, holy, and jealous God. They preach about heaven and love and unity but forget to preach about sin and judgment and hell. This has led to compromising creation with evolution and compromising Biblical marriage with “gay” marriage.

If we can’t defend an actual six day twenty four hour creation or that marriage is between one man and one woman, how can we defend the Gospel and our faith at all? Are these two things “non-essentials”? Many in the modern day church claim they are. And it all starts with the way WE dress, the music WE sing, the biblical translation WE use, the Sunday evening service, the Wednesday night prayer meeting, the Thursday night visitation, drinking alcohol, smoking or chewing tobacco, and so on and so forth. And before WE know it, one day the line between the “non-essentials” and “essentials” is blurred and WE end up with churches that look more like the world than the world does. WE do these things for Christ’s sake and to please Him, not to please or satisfy people. WE don’t add or take away from scripture, WE search the scriptures and work out our salvation to please God, not man. We don’t judge brothers and sisters in Christ for what they do or don’t do. But we also don’t use our freedom in Christ to rationalize or justify what we know is sinful behavior and get in the face of others and scream, “I’m just exercising my freedom in Christ and you should stop being so legalistic and do the same!”

WE are called to be salt and light. WE are supposed to shine the light on the darkness. WE are salt rubbed into the wounds of sin. Darkness hates the light and wounds hate salt. When our churches become as dark and wounded as the world, WE have a problem. WE need to repent before WE can be any benefit to the world.

And when I write WE, it actually means I…and WE can all substitute that I for WE if compromise has crept into our lives and churches. WE need to repent and get back to being a separated and peculiar people.