This is a response to a Christian sermon preaching on the subtleties of modern day Babylon and how enticing Paganism, including Atheism and Secular Humanism, is to our youth because it emphasizes trust in self and self identity and personal understanding over God. How fear of speaking out and hurting feelings and being called a bigot silences Christians from declaring the Ultimate Truth, which gets lost in a subjective sea of personal truths. The Preacher denounced how the world accepts all religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism in its pursuit of “tolerance.” He began by saying it was God who defined marriage as one man and one woman.
How seductive it is to make apostate Christians feel victimized while emboldening them to vilify everyone who sees things differently. Are you addressing the doctrines that have been added to the faith because of tradition that are not found in the Law of God? The Torah is an affirmatively stated legal code, with thou shalt and thou shalt not removing ambiguity. Thou shalt only marry one wife is not found, and it cannot merely be inferred because God made Adam and Eve, a mere human interpretation that should not be enforced in place of the Law of God. The Torah allows polygamy, which was practiced in both Old and New Testament times, and it is expressly commanded in the case a man’s brother dies without an heir. Twisting the scriptures to imply one man, one woman is God’s definition of marriage is placing your own wisdom above God.
God’s people were always a minority living in a pagan world, a world of promise, since Peter’s vision meant that the pagan Gentiles were no longer to be viewed as unclean, but were to be preached to and invited to make a covenant with God. You have it right that we do not need to live in a time of comfort and peace where the Law of God rules. That is not why we are sent here, but we are sent to a world where Satan rules so that we can be tried and tested and have opportunities to grow through trials and service. You think Paganism is attractive? God’s good news is attractive and inspiring, but because it became corrupted by the doctrines of men, which “have a form of Godliness, but deny the power thereof,” it’s watered down version has put people off and made anything look like a better alternative.
Control your temptation to include your personal biases in your faith and then police your neighbors instead of teaching and inspiring. In other words, humble yourself and admit you do not know all things, as this is only a means of worshiping yourself or your interpretation of God under the name of God. Christians use threats and guilt to shame people into compliance. Jesus, on the other hand, railed only against the religious authorities that imposed their own interpretations on people, and he told those whom he served to go and sin no more without telling them everything they needed to repent of, leaving them to study Torah and figure it out for themselves with the Holy Spirit, to “work out their own salvation with fear and trembling,” or in another translation, with both reverence and anxiousness, which is infinitely more powerful than being told what to do and what not to do by mortals, well-intentioned as they may be.
Jesus did not even announce that he was the Son of God to everyone, but he waited for Peter to discover it by revelation, and said he was blessed because the information came from God and not man. God is power, not force. He inspires change, but He does not remove people’s agency. He never said to go infiltrate the government and force everyone to live by THE truth. Everyone has the word of God, but He said he would send people the Holy Spirit to “teach them the truth of all things.” He said “My sheep hear my voice.” If they are not his sheep, what do they need to hear his voice for? This is why he spoke in parable, so that those with ears to hear may hear, in other words, when the spirit teaches them. He said he came not to condemn, but to save.
The proud who have adopted a false Christianity as a means to serve their moral vanity leave nothing to the imagination. As the unprofitable servants we are, we need to inspire and share possibility and have faith that God the Spirit will work a change in people’s hearts, not us, not our political conniving. We are supposed to believe and have faith and not fear, and to serve and that is all.
A world of sin is a world of opportunity to serve and help find lost sheep. People are just mad because being outnumbered isn’t comfortable, but we aren’t here to be comfortable, for our kingdom is not of this world. Christians are mad because they think our rights are being violated. We have no rights but to serve and suffer in the name of God and return to him with nothing in our pockets, to hear him say “Well done thou good and faithful servant,” and you can do that just fine in the fiery furnace where they throw you, and say as you go, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Christianity that does not follow the example of Christ is just another form of paganism, which is why it cannot compete with other forms of paganism. In fact it is worse, because it is harder than ever to be inspired by the true God with so many impostors being called the names of God and Jesus by people who never heard Him and were never called by Him and will be cast off for working inequity, jealous because many of those they deemed sinners will be called in to the feast to sit in seats that were originally offered to them.
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