The Road to Nowhere?

Albert Mohler's latest blogpost: The Road To Nowhere? Middle Church clearly shows that the religious "left" in this country want to compromise the truth in order to advance their agenda.

Mohler states:

As it turns out, one does not have to be very conservative in order to be considered part of the "far religious right" as identified by Bob Edgar. Interestingly for one whose own organization pushes so many political agendas, he claims to speak for those "faithful people" who do not, at least always, "connect their spiritual values with political issues."

As Edgar sees it, there are two different churches in the United States--one based on love and the other grounded in fear. As Edgar asserts, "fear, fundamentalism, and the FOX Broadcasting Company must not be allowed to set the agenda for our nation."

Well then. As children we are wisely advised by parents to learn the art of compromise. This is good advice for children playing in the sandbox. However, it is disastrous advice when it comes to matters of truth. Compromise works when truth is not at issue. But the very character of the National Council of Churches and the larger ecumenical movement is one of constant compromise at the expense of truth.

That is what we are seeing on the leftist, Christian blogs. Everything from abortion to homosexuality is simply waved away as not being sin, and instead, embraced as a twisted kind of "moral value."

Mohler writes:

For example, Edgar could have offered a careful, exegetical, historical, and theological engagement with moral issues. Instead he offers irresponsible generalizations such as this: "The Bible mentions abortion not once, homosexuality only twice, and poverty or peace more than two thousand times. Yet somehow abortion and homosexuality have become the litmus test of faith in public life today."

How can an intelligent reader, armed with even the slightest knowledge of the Bible and the Christian tradition, take such a statement seriously? The Bible does not mention abortion only in the sense that it does not make direct reference to the practice of surgical abortion as is common today. The Bible speaks clearly to the sanctity of human life and to the priority of protecting unborn life. Furthermore, to state that the Bible mentions homosexuality "only twice" indicates that Edgar has redefined homosexuality as something other than that which the Bible addresses in numerous passages.

There can be no doubt that the Bible's consistent judgment is that homosexual acts are inherently immoral and sinful. The Christian church in all of its major branches has understood this for two thousand years. This has been a true ecumenical consensus until recent years when some more liberal churches in the West have abandoned the Christian tradition in order to endorse homosexual practice.

Thus, it is an act of intellectual dishonesty for Edgar to claim to speak for "classic historical Christianity."

That's the crux of the matter, people. The Christian religious left are guilty of intellectual dishonesty when they endorse such things as abortion and homosexuality.

I have had conversations with religious leftists, and they don't mind the compromise that they have made away from what the Bible explicitly teaches about homosexual behavior. To say (as the author of the book in Mohler's blogpost does) that since homosexuality is mentioned only twice (which is a lie), then it shouldn't be as important as poverty or peace, shows downright ignorance of what the Bible conveys on all these topics. Plus, the fact that homosexual "marriage" and the relentless gay agenda indoctrination in public schools is one of the most divisive cultural issues of our time separates it from subjects like the need to combat poverty, a subject with which most Christians would agree upon.

I think that Bob Edgar's views reflect the thinking of most who see nothing wrong with being a "gay-behavior affirming" Christian.

Mohler writes:

In an amazing passage, Edgar asserts: "People of faith must be able to conduct a respectful and open conversation about all aspects of sexuality including homosexuality. God has a lot to say on all these topics, and if we skip the listening and rush straight to the judging--an enterprise in which we're not supposed to be involved anyway--we can't hope to make serious progress in our discussion."

Statements like this must leave us wondering if this author actually means to be taken seriously. His book is filled with moral judgments--judgments about ecology, justice, racism, and a host of other issues. But when it comes to sexuality, Edgar offers the facile suggestion that moral judgment is "an enterprise in which we're not supposed to be involved anyway."

In other words, when Edgar makes moral judgments, he's not being judgmental. But when others moral judgments, they are being judgmental. The Bible does not say that we are not to make moral judgments, or that we are not to judge moral behavior. Indeed, the Bible makes absolutely no sense if that is the case. The Bible--in both Old and New Testaments--is filled with moral judgment and with advisement on how we are to make such judgments. Of course, the judgments we are to make concern behavior, not the heart. We are expressly forbidden to judge another's heart. That distinction is missing from Edgar's analysis.

This is spiritual and moral relativism at work in the mind of Bob Edgar. Read the entire article and you will spot them...hard to miss.

Mohler states:

Nevertheless, conservative Christians did not decide to make abortion, homosexuality, and stem cell research front-line issues. It is nothing less than intellectual dishonesty to suggest that evangelicals prompted the national debate on those issues. On all of these fronts, evangelicals are simply calling on the Christian church to stand by its historic convictions and moral wisdom.