Right By God's Standards

The enemy would want to lull us to sleep as believers in Christ, not staying spiritual sharp, becoming complacent in our walk with the Lord. This is not the time to adopt that pattern; Romans 13 declares:
11 And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.
12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.
13 Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.
14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.

What does it mean to "walk properly," the words used in verse 13?  I believe that we are to make sure our lives are built on the foundation of the truth of Scripture, that we are personalizing the Word and applying it to our thoughts and our actions. Through the Word, our minds are renewed, and if we have sharp minds, trained by the Spirit, we can make Biblically-informed decisions that show we love Christ and are devoted to following Him.

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Perhaps you're familiar with the passage in Romans chapter 1 about proclaiming the truth of the gospel - Paul writes:
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "The just shall live by faith."
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

The Church is facing a time of challenge, as it seeks to navigate a permissive and a progressive society that is seemingly rushing to reject truth.  And, there is a tug-of-war in progress: will the Church impact the culture and proclaim truth to the extent that it results in changed lives?  Or, will the culture impact the Church and successfully infiltrate it with its ideas so that there is little difference between Biblical Christianity and social religion?

Delano Squires wrote a piece recently for The Blaze in which he called for Biblical truth to trump political ideology.  That is not to say that Christians should not attempt to influence politics - we should bring His truth to every area of our personal lives and to our culture.  But, he derided people across the political spectrum for the embrace of popular LGBTQ ideas.  He wrote about...

...an announcement from Dave Rubin, political commentator and BlazeTV host of "The Rubin Report," that he and his husband are expecting to become parents in August and October of this year.

I have no expectation that a classically liberal, gay, pro-choice former atheist who grew up in a secular Jewish household in New York would hold himself to biblical sexual ethics. The issue for a lot of Christian conservatives was the reaction from people and groups we saw as brothers in arms, who never actually claimed to be brothers in Christ.

He wrote:

For Christians who hold to a biblical worldview regarding SSMF, seeing fellow conservatives celebrate the creation of children to fulfill the desires of adults apart from God’s design for the family was a painful, but necessary reminder that conservatism and Christianity are not the same.

SSMF stands for "sex, sexuality, marriage, and family."

Squires also noted a conservative leader's tweet about transgender swimmer Lia Thomas which said, “No matter what one thinks of Lia’s ability to swim with women her story deserves our compassion. It will be interesting to hear Lia’s pov in 30 years.” (pov=point of view?)

Delano Squires offers this analysis:

The truth is that the entire country has become more accepting of every deviation from biblical teaching regarding sex, sexuality, and family. We went from tolerance and “hate the sin, love the sinner” to affirmation and “love is love” in a single generation.

The left celebrates these changes because they see the LGBTQIA+ movement as a powerful political force. The right tolerates them because non-religious conservatives are functionally libertarian when it comes to matters of personal behavior. Christian conservatives reject them because we know any society that rejects God’s design for mankind and any limitations on human behavior cannot have true freedom.

The left is motivated by political power, conservatives by constitutional rights, and Christians by biblical order.

We have a higher calling, and our allegiance to God should supersede loyalty to a political party or ideology.  Consider that you have some who would be termed the political "right" in Alabama who have been pushing unbiblical ideas such as the expansion of gambling and the continued permissiveness regarding the use of marijuana.  It's not about the letter beside your name, it's a matter of the letters to which you adhere - the Word of God.  I believe it was Jim Garlow who said that it's not about right or left, but right or wrong.

Recently, Mark Devine, who teaches at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, lamented how, in an effort to win more "progressive" communities, the Church ended up co-opted by the ideologies of those communities. Writing for The Federalist, Devine states:

What counts as winsomeness in any community is determined by that community, not by those looking to be found winsome to them. In blue communities, partisan political preferences proved increasingly non-negotiable.

Since 2014, the so-called Overton Window has repeatedly lurched left and altered blue community sensibilities in the process. Named for the late policy analyst Joseph P. Overton, this “window” designates the range of politically acceptable views held within a given community at a given time.

This resulted, according to Devine, in an "accommodation" of progressive ideas and "un-winsomeness to the un-woke."  So, one particular evangelical leader who had called for a winsome witness to more liberal communities ended up taking more liberal positions, such as:

...charging conservatives with living by fear, of making an idol of conservative political loyalties, and of his recent commendation of conservative-bashing comedian Stephen Cobert’s musings on how his faith influences his work.

The article seems to illustrate how the Church has been pulled by the culture, in this case, communities that it purports to reach.  Our aim is rooted in the power of the gospel, which can change individual hearts and impact culture for good.

The warning is clear - we have to be so grounded in Scripture that we are not pulled in the direction of the communities we are called to reach.  We don't have to water down the clear message of the gospel in order to make it more palatable to the cultures to which we are sent. 

We also have to realize that those that many Christians consider cultural allies do not necessarily share our values in all areas.  And, there are those that we consider to be theological allies that may not be rooted in the historic traditions of the Christian faith.  That is why discernment is necessary and the knowledge of Scripture is key.  While there will be disagreement even among Christians among some issues, we have to make sure that we don't depart from the basic, "first-tier" premises upon which our faith foundation is built.

While we can affirm and respect our fellow human beings, we also recognize that we should be standing for truth. In an age in which the teachings of Scripture are being distorted, our beliefs should reflect a serious contention for its message.