Who is to blame for the mess our country is in?
This week I read about the United Methodist’s in their quadrennial General Conference earlier this month, they sidestepped making any decision on the issue of sodomites in their denomination. Some defend that decision as a means to avoid a schism in their group. Before the Conference 111 LGBT leaders, I won’t call them pastors, came out and revealed to the world they were so wholly committed to this abomination that they want everyone to know it. And of course they demanded that the United Methodist change its book of church discipline so that sodomy is no longer a sin and that sodomite unmarraige ceremonies be incorporated into the practice of the churches and insist those in leadership not be disciplined for their immoral abomination. It is interesting to see that those defending the decision do so on the grounds that they are seeking to avoid schism, while those virulently opposed to it are the sodomites. They demand a change be made right now to force all United Methodists to support their abomination. Oddly absent in all this, is that no one is stating what the Scripture clearly commands.
The Apostle Paul addresses the unwillingness to discipline church members in 1 Corinthians 5:1-7
“It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you. For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.”
So we ask today, where is the mourning, where is the Biblical judgment, the removing declared devotees of abomination from every position of leadership of the United Methodists, the 111 self declared LGBT? It is obvious there is no stomach for church discipline.
Paul is clear that when a member or especially a leader sins, he needs to be publicly rebuked so that others will be warned away from the same sin.
So when we ask the question whose to blame for the mess in our county, the most often stated response is that it is Politicians. And while they bear a great responsibility, it goes deeper than that. I believe President James Garfield’s had it right in his 1876 Speech on the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence when he declared,
“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature… If the NEXT CENTENNIAL does not find us a great nation… it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”[1]
So is it ultimately not the politicians but the citizens. But that begs the question, who is to inform the citizens of the righteous standard to which President Garfield referred? If the citizen’s don’t control the political forces by a righteous moral standard who is behind that failure? I would contend that it is the pulpits of America – it is there that the telling rejection of the righteous standard of God has first taken place. The United Methodists are but one of numerous examples in our land of pulpits which refuse to be salt and light, and refuse to uphold the righteous moral standard of God’s Holy Law.
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