handy
Member
- Jun 21, 2007
- 10,028
- 99
I read an article that truly articulated where I feel the church is going wrong today and I thought I’d share it here. It was in a newsletter put out by an organization called WordAlone Network which is a grass-roots organization within the Evangelical Lutheran Church. This organization is being raised up as a direct result of the pressure that the ELCA is facing to ordain openly gay and lesbian ministers. I won’t reprint the entire article here, but you can access this same information by going to the WordAlone website at www.wordalone.org .
The article is about the WordAlone Theological Conference in which Pastor Scott Grorud, a WordAlone Network Board member and Episcopal Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison, spoke in regards to a new gospel that has crept into their denominations. I would say not only theirs, but a lot of the main-line churches of our day, especially here in America has begun to accept and promote this “different gospelâ€Â.
In the conference, Pastor Grorud quoted yet another Episcopalian, Philip Turner, former dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. Turner calls this different gospel the “theology of divine acceptance.†This would be in contrast to the biblical theology of divine redemption.
Grorud stated, “The ‘theology of divine acceptance’ distorts the very essence of Christianity and turns it into a gospel without a cross, without Christ and without conversion.â€Â
From the article:
I believe that this new gospel is something that the Church has been on a slippery slope towards assimilating for some time now. It began to raise up it’s head in the 30’s when there was a major shift among many mainline churches from accepting God’s Word as fully inspired and divine to looking at the Bible as a inspirational book. (Big difference, that!) Then, as humanism and an emphasis on self-esteem has become the norm in our society, the church more and more is embracing this “gospel without a crossâ€Â. Rather than bringing Christ’s cleansing, living water to the world, unfortunately the Church has been more like a sponge, absorbing in the world, rather than leading it to the cross.
Another issue with this “gospel†is that the message of repentance is ignored. When speaking about the homosexual issue with our pastor, I asked, “What about repentance? Yes, we are all sinners. Yes, not one person accepted as a member of the church is without sin. Yes, not one clergy person is without sin. But, there is a big difference between being a sinner who acknowledges and repents of one’s sin and being a sinner who is openly engaging in sin all the while stating, “God loves me just as I amâ€Â.
Which is my biggest problem in being told that I’m intolerant and unloving because I will never accept that unrepentant homosexuals should be allowed all the benefits and responsibilites of the Body. Repent, be saved, be baptized for the remission of your sins, and then, yes, no matter what the sin, then one can and should be fully embraced within the Body.
God is love, of course. But we need to define love as to who God is, not define God as to what a modern definition of love is. Modern “love†seems to mean no confrontation regarding sin, no exclusion of those who refuse to repent and no redemption of sinners via Christ’s blood on the Cross. Such a cross is just as much an offense today as it was in Paul’s day, but for different reasons. The Jews were offended by the cross because of the Divine Human on it. Today, the cross is looked at as Divine Child Abuse.
This really isn’t new theology. Pretty much throughout Church history, the Body has struggled with the heresy that states that man is basically good and that there is no real need for repentance or redemption. But, in late years, the Church has been losing ground, and losing it big time to this soft, lamb’s wool type gospel that tells folks God loves you just the way you are.
Yeah. So why did Christ die then?
The article is about the WordAlone Theological Conference in which Pastor Scott Grorud, a WordAlone Network Board member and Episcopal Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison, spoke in regards to a new gospel that has crept into their denominations. I would say not only theirs, but a lot of the main-line churches of our day, especially here in America has begun to accept and promote this “different gospelâ€Â.
In the conference, Pastor Grorud quoted yet another Episcopalian, Philip Turner, former dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. Turner calls this different gospel the “theology of divine acceptance.†This would be in contrast to the biblical theology of divine redemption.
Grorud stated, “The ‘theology of divine acceptance’ distorts the very essence of Christianity and turns it into a gospel without a cross, without Christ and without conversion.â€Â
From the article:
I believe that this new gospel is something that the Church has been on a slippery slope towards assimilating for some time now. It began to raise up it’s head in the 30’s when there was a major shift among many mainline churches from accepting God’s Word as fully inspired and divine to looking at the Bible as a inspirational book. (Big difference, that!) Then, as humanism and an emphasis on self-esteem has become the norm in our society, the church more and more is embracing this “gospel without a crossâ€Â. Rather than bringing Christ’s cleansing, living water to the world, unfortunately the Church has been more like a sponge, absorbing in the world, rather than leading it to the cross.
Another issue with this “gospel†is that the message of repentance is ignored. When speaking about the homosexual issue with our pastor, I asked, “What about repentance? Yes, we are all sinners. Yes, not one person accepted as a member of the church is without sin. Yes, not one clergy person is without sin. But, there is a big difference between being a sinner who acknowledges and repents of one’s sin and being a sinner who is openly engaging in sin all the while stating, “God loves me just as I amâ€Â.
Which is my biggest problem in being told that I’m intolerant and unloving because I will never accept that unrepentant homosexuals should be allowed all the benefits and responsibilites of the Body. Repent, be saved, be baptized for the remission of your sins, and then, yes, no matter what the sin, then one can and should be fully embraced within the Body.
God is love, of course. But we need to define love as to who God is, not define God as to what a modern definition of love is. Modern “love†seems to mean no confrontation regarding sin, no exclusion of those who refuse to repent and no redemption of sinners via Christ’s blood on the Cross. Such a cross is just as much an offense today as it was in Paul’s day, but for different reasons. The Jews were offended by the cross because of the Divine Human on it. Today, the cross is looked at as Divine Child Abuse.
This really isn’t new theology. Pretty much throughout Church history, the Body has struggled with the heresy that states that man is basically good and that there is no real need for repentance or redemption. But, in late years, the Church has been losing ground, and losing it big time to this soft, lamb’s wool type gospel that tells folks God loves you just the way you are.
Yeah. So why did Christ die then?
