Rss

  • youtube

The difference a day makes – Another interpretation

Posted by :admin On : November 28, 2014
0

Category: Archives, Christianity, Equality, Government, Homosexuality, Marriage

The voters of Oklahoma amended its state constitution in November 2004 to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. Following a suit filed in Tulsa County, U.S. District Judge Terrance Kern ruled the ban on same-sex marriage was a violation of the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore unconstitutional. Because the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the state’s appeal, gay marriage became legal in spite of the wishes of approximately 75% of Oklahoma’s electorate. [1]

Toby Jenkins, head of Oklahomans for Equality, hails the decision as a sunrise on a new day that ended “marriage discrimination” in Oklahoma. He cites four examples of such alleged discrimination: failure to process loan applications by same-sex couples, prohibition of same-sex couples from sharing an apartment in an assisted living center, prohibition from having a vehicle title issued in both names of a same-sex married couple legally married in another state, and prohibition of the right to request cremation of a deceased partner by the other partner in a same-sex relationship. [2]

However, the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear challenges to rulings allowing same-sex marriage in some states may be more of a go-slow approach than an endorsement of same-sex marriage. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ November 6th ruling favored those that define marriage as being between one man and one woman and almost guarantees the highest court will take up the issue at some point. The language within the Sixth Circuit’s ruling is significant, “…marriage has long been a social institution defined by relationships between men and women. So long defined, the tradition is measured in millennia, not centuries or decades. So widely shared, the tradition until recently had been adopted by all governments and major religions of the world.” [3]

In upholding the traditional view of marriage, the court’s verdict ended with these words. “When the courts do not let the people resolve new social issues like this one, they perpetuate the idea that the heroes in these change events are judges and lawyers. Better in this instance, we think, to allow change through the customary political processes, in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-minded way.” [4]

For most people in Oklahoma and America, Mr. Jenkins’ sunrise for equality is in reality a sunset for liberty. Ultimately, same-sex marriage is not just about equality, honor, and dignity for the proponents of same-sex marriage but a means to force the majority of Americans to forfeit their religious beliefs, bow to the god of equality, and embrace the consequent moral relativism which provides no means for finding truth or judging something based on the concept of right and wrong. For those that deny this reality of the LGBT agenda, just ask the president of Gordon, a Christian college that is being threatened with loss of accreditation because of the school’s longstanding policies prohibiting gay activities among students, faculty, and staff and its public opposition to hiring protections for gays and lesbians. [5] Or ask the Lexington, Kentucky, tee-shirt maker who was found to have violated the city’s Human Rights Commission’s “fairness” ordinance and was ordered to attend “diversity training” for re-education. His crime? He refused to make tee-shirts for participants in a local gay-pride parade. [6] Or ask Jennifer Keeton, a former graduate student in counseling at Augusta State University, who was threatened with expulsion unless she changed her religious beliefs that failed “to conform to professional standards” with regard to LGBT issues. [7]

For millions of others in America who oppose the LGBT same-sex agenda because they adhere to the tenets of their Christian faith, the sun is setting on religious freedom as the nation descends into a dark night of coercion and oppression.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Writ of Certiorari, The Supreme Court of the United States, Sally Howe Smith v. Mary Bishop, et.al., August 6, 2014. http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Oklahoma-Smith-petition-8-6-14.pdf (accessed November 11, 2014).
[2] Toby Jenkins, “The difference a day makes,” Tulsa World, November 9, 2014, G-6.
[3] United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 14-1341, Opinion, November 6, 2014. p.7. http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/14a0275p-06.pdf (accessed November 11, 2014).
[4] Ibid., p. 42.
[5] Matt Rocheleau, “Accrediting agency to review Gordon College,” The Boston Globe, July 11, 2014. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/11/agency-review-whether-gordon-college-antigay-stance-policies-violate-accrediting- standards/Cti63s3A4cEHLGMPRQ5NyJ/story.html (accessed October 8, 2014).
[6] Tony Perkins, “Intolerance fits liberals to a T (Shirt),” Tony Perkins’ Washington Update, October 9, 2014. http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/intolerance-fits-liberals-to-a-t-shirt (accessed October 13, 2014).
[7] Sarah Netter, “Georgia Grad Student Sues University Over Gay Sensitivity Training,” abcNews/US, July 27, 2010, http://abcnews.go. com/US/georgia-student-sues-university-lgbt-sensitivity-training/story?id=11261490 (accessed August 7, 2010).

“Workplace violence” comes to Canada

Posted by :admin On : November 21, 2014
0

Category: America, Archives, Government, Humanism, Islam, Worldview

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) defines workplace violence as “…violence or the threat of violence against workers. It can occur at or outside the workplace and can range from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and homicide, one of the leading causes of job-related deaths. However it manifests itself, workplace violence is a growing concern for employers and employees nationwide.” The OSHA website also tells us that workplace violence can strike anywhere and anyone…people in homes, pizza delivery persons, gas meter readers, psychiatric evaluators…literally anywhere work is or can be done.[1] But OSHA’s definition is so broad that it is meaningless. Almost any violence can be classified as connected to the workplace however tenuous that connection might be. Not only does OSHA mask the real reasons for much of the violence, but it magnifies the level of workplace violence by equating minor non-violent and non-criminal occurrences with violent crimes such as physical assault and murder. Effectively, a large segment of general societal violence is jury-rigged to the workplace and made the responsibility of employers. The assumptive language of OSHA’s workplace violence regulations is that all such violence is workplace related.

OSHA’s workplace violence rules were written long before November 5, 2009, when Army Major Nidal Hasan shot to death thirteen people (fourteen including the unborn child of one of the victims) and wounded thirty-two others at Fort Hood, Texas. Major Hasan committed these crimes after years of open and verbal support of Islamic jihad while serving as an Army officer. Hasan is an American-born Muslim who had exchanged emails with a leading Al-Qaeda personage in which Hasan asked if those attacking fellow soldiers were considered martyrs.[2] Hasan fired over 200 rounds in the killing spree while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” which means “Allah is the Greatest” and is the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer as prescribed by the Prophet Muhammad.

Only four days after the shootings at Fort Hood, General George Casey, Chief of Staff of the Army, appeared on several Sunday news talk shows and expressed concern regarding the speculation as to the cause or motivation behind the shootings. “We have to be careful because we can’t jump to conclusions now based on little snippets of information that have come out. As great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.” (emphasis added) Not only was the general more concerned with protecting diversity than exposing the truth regarding the attack, he deliberately switched the focus of what happened when he said that he did not think there was currently discrimination against the estimated 3,000 Muslims who served in the Army at that time. Implicit in the General’s unwarranted statement was that if Hasan had acted because of his religious beliefs, it would have been because of discrimination against Muslims within the Army.[3]

Forty-six people were killed or wounded just three days earlier on an Army base whose supreme commander was General Casey. The perpetrator was a Muslim who shouted “Allahu Akbar” and had a well-known history among his military peers and superiors of being in sympathy with and vocally supporting Islamic jihad. However, the general’s greatest concern was for discrimination against Muslims in the military and not the families of the dead and those wounded by Hasan. It is incredibly naïve for anyone to believe the general did know the complete story of Nidal Hasan within hours of the killings and not just little snippets of information.

So the United States government saw to it that Hasan’s crimes were labeled “workplace violence” as opposed to what it really was…an act of terror whose motivation was to advance the beliefs and purposes of a false religion. Workplace violence may describe the location, but it does not reveal the cause or motivation of the violence. Government leadership committed to the philosophy of humanism must at all costs defend its humanistic concepts of diversity and multiculturalism in which moral relativism rules and all belief systems are coexisting and equally valid. Thus, we can all rest well tonight because diversity has been defended and OSHA is churning out even more rules and regulations to combat “workplace violence” such as committed by Major Hasan.

Recently, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a thirty-two year old Muslim convert, shot and killed a ceremonial guard on his way to attack the Canadian House of Commons and was subsequently killed by guards. Humanism in Canada is even more advanced than in the United States, but Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had the courage to call the assault on the House of Commons a terrorist attack. However, true to liberalism’s humanistic roots, liberal leader Justin Trudeau quickly reassured the Muslim community.

And to our friends and fellow citizens in the Muslim community, Canadians know acts such as these committed in the name of Islam are an aberration of your faith. Continued mutual cooperation and respect will help prevent the influence of distorted ideological propaganda posing as religion. We will walk forward together, not apart.[4] (emphasis added)

According to Muslim tradition, the Quran was verbally spoken to Muhammad and is the mother document upon which Islam rests. One wonders how Zehaf-Bibeau’s actions are a deviation from the Islamic faith when the words of the Quran repeatedly justify his actions. Two examples of many similar verses that justify Zehaf-Bibeau’s attack are found in the Quran.

They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): but take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (from what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks.[5] [Surah 4:89. Quran]

Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): “I am with you, give firmness to the believers: I will instil [sic] terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them.[6] [Surah 8:12. Quran]

Are these verses, which are consistent with the actions of Zehaf-Bibeau, distorted ideological propaganda as Trudeau would have us believe? The Quran either does or does not define Islam and direct the actions of its followers? If they are reflective of the Quran’s instruction for conduct of the followers of Islam, the verses cannot be distorted ideological propaganda. If the verses are not reflective of proper conduct for the followers of Islam, how does a follower of Islam determine which verses of the Quran are to be followed and which must be considered distorted ideological propaganda?

The philosophy of humanism would have us believe that all belief systems are equally valid. If all belief systems are not equally valid, then the tenets of humanism are fundamentally flawed including humanistically defined concepts of diversity and multiculturalism which are embraced by General Casey and most of the leadership of the institutions of American life. When common sense and thousands of years of human experience expose the falsity of the humanistic worldview, its defenders use the power of office and meaningless language such as “workplace violence” and bogus definitions of diversity and multiculturalism to mask its failings.

Humanism’s diversity is a close kin of multiculturalism and focuses on the differences within society and not society as a whole. With emphasis on the differences, mass culture becomes nothing more than an escalating number of subcultures within an increasingly distressed political framework that attempts to satisfy the myriad of demands of the individual subcultures. There is a loss of unity through fragmentation and ultimately a loss of a society’s central cultural vision which leads to disintegration. Humanism’s impulse for diversity is a derivative of relativism and humanism’s perverted concept of equality.[7]

…the humanist multicultural agenda reveals that multiculturalism is not intended to supplement but rather to supplant Western culture that is so steeped in Christianity. The attack on Western civilization comes through a dismissal of American religious values as they intersected with and made possible the rise of the American political system…The essence of multiculturalism has its roots in the denial of absolutes, one of the cardinal doctrines of humanism, which translates into a moral relativism. Such a values-free approach, according to the humanists, makes it impossible to judge one period or era in relation to another or to say that one culture’s ethic is superior to another.[8]

The American experience since the first Europeans set foot on its eastern shores has been centered on a Christian understanding of the world. America became the greatest nation in the world because it was founded upon principles based upon that understanding.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] OSHA Fact Sheet, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 2002.
https://www.osha.gov/OshDoc/data_General_Facts/factsheet-workplace-violence .pdf (accessed November 5, 2014).
[2] Billy Kenber, “Nidal Hasan sentenced to death for Fort Hood shooting rampage,” Washington Post, August 28, 2013.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nidal-hasan-sentenced-to-death-for-fort-hood-shooting-rampage/2013/08/28/aad28de2-0ffa-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html (accessed November 5, 2014).
[3] Lindy Kyzer, “Gen. Casey on the strength of our diversity,” Army Live, U.S. Army, November 8, 2009.
http://armylive.dodlive.mil/index.php/2009/11/gen-casey-on-the-strength-of-our-diversity/ (accessed November 5, 2014).
[4] Erika Tucker, “Soldier killed in what Harper calls ‘terrorist attack’ in Ottawa,” Global News, October 22, 2014. http://globalnews.ca/news/1628313/shots-fired-at-war-memorial-in-ottawa-says-witness/ (accessed November 5, 2014).
[5] The Meaning of The Illustrious Qur-an, (Dar AHYA Us-Sunnah), p.49.
[6] Ibid., p. 98.
[7] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p 398.
[8] Ibid., pp. 189-190.

America’s malaise

Posted by :admin On : November 14, 2014
0

Category: America, Archives, Christianity, Government, Humanism, Worldview

Malaise seems an inadequate word to describe what’s happening in and to America. Synonyms for “malaise” are sickness, illness, disease, disorder, anxiety, depression, and discontent. It appears all are needed to describe America’s mood and condition. One magazine cover reads, “Is the world falling apart?” [1] Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan laments the nation’s decline in a recent column titled “Things fall apart for many public institutions.” [2] He lists numerous examples of this brokenness in recent years including the Center for Disease Control’s fumbled response in protecting Americans from an Ebola epidemic; basic security breaches in protecting the president at and away from the White House; the invasion of the southern United States by 60,000 children and young people from Central America; the Obamacare rollout debacle; the federal and state response to Hurricane Katrina in which 30,000 New Orleans residents were stranded for days; the strategic blunders by the president and civilian policy makers in handling the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; failing schools; skyrocketing national debt; deteriorating infrastructure; and political, racial, and cultural clashes. [3] And the list grows weekly.

Buchanan says that things were not always that way, and he raises the question: “What happened to us?” “Whatever happened to that can-do nation” that survived the Great Depression, armed itself and fought World War II over five years, and placed a man on the moon in ten years because we said we could do it? [4] Mr. Buchanan ends his column in dismay but offers no solutions. To Buchanan’s list we must also add the extreme societal devastation caused by the fracturing of the family structure which the late Senator Daniel Moynihan described as the he biggest change in the North Atlantic world that he observed in his forty years of government service and which happened in “an historical instant. Something that was not imaginable forty years ago had happened.” [5]

Something is profoundly wrong in America. The symptoms of the sickness are known and well-defined as shown above. The solutions put forth by politicians, bureaucrats, education professionals, scientists, sociologists and psychologists, economists and business professionals, and a host of others in the knowledge class generally treat only the symptoms with remedies that often seem to make matters worse while at the same time fail to diagnose the disease itself.

How do we determine what went wrong with America and why? To find the answer it makes sense to go back in history to a time when things were working, a time when America was unified and had confidence in the rightness of its central cultural vision? Once we find that point in time, we must ask ourselves what changed. A cursory examination of modern history in America quickly identifies that point in time as the 1960s and the emergence of the Boomer generation. What changed was a dramatic rejection by many in the Boomer generation of the values and central cultural vision of all preceding generations of Americans since their arrival as colonists in the early 1600s. A comparison of the Boomers and the Greatest Generation confirms the beginnings of America’s cultural divide.

Much has been written and said about the Greatest Generation, a term that has gained almost universal acceptance following Tom Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation. For it was this generation that grew up during the deprivations of the Great Depression, fought a world war, persisted in blocking Soviet threats and aggression in a prostrate post-war world, and built the world’s greatest peacetime economy. Following the Allied victory in 1945, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power. But unlike any other time in history, that generation acted not as victors but as a good and honorable people who poured their resources and energies into helping devastated nations and their starving peoples around the world. And, they didn’t retreat in the face of new dictators and despots as they fought the hot war in Korea and the cold war in other parts of the world, primarily against the USSR and its satellites. Following World War II, they married; went to schools, colleges, and universities in record numbers; and birthed approximately eighty million children who became known as the Baby Boomers. [6]

And through all of these deprivations, challenges, and monumental efforts, “They stayed true to their values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith.” [7] But, how do these values play out in twenty-first century America? Personal responsibility has been replaced by government responsibility for our health, wealth, happiness, and well-being. Duty is out of date and doesn’t resonate with the goal of self-actualization. It’s all about me, baby! Honor is no longer based on timeless standards and awarded on merit but is now a matter of personal opinion and popularity. And as to faith, the beliefs of the naïve and ignorant masses that still believe in the Christian God are tolerated as long as they do not share their faith in public nor practice that faith if it conflicts with the dictates of the state.

The challenge to the Judeo-Christian worldview by the Boomer elite is not a new occurrence. For hundreds of years a conflict has existed within Western civilization between those that believe in a transcendent God and those that do not. But, it was in the mid-twentieth century as each sphere of influence in American society began abandoning the Judeo-Christian central cultural vision under the onslaught of the purveyors of the humanistic worldview. The abandonment of the biblical foundations upon which the nation was built became evident as the leaders of the Boomer generation took the reins of leadership in the institutions of American life and imposed their humanistic values upon the policies, practices, and standards of those institutions. What are those humanistic values and beliefs held by many Boomers in leadership? There is no God and no life after death. Nature is all there is, and man is merely the evolutionary product of nature. Man can solve his own problems through science and reason. Freedom of expression and civil liberties are paramount in all areas of life. Happiness, freedom, and progress are the goals of mankind. The focus of life is on self and self-development. Society requires extensive social programs to achieve the goals of humanism. [8] It is obvious that these humanistic values have little in common with the Greatest Generation’s values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith.

Arguing from the Judeo-Christian worldview held by Americans from the Founders through the Greatest Generation, Christopher Badeaux describes the provision of order supplied by that worldview and the consequences of its abandonment in favor of the humanistic worldview.

The Lord made the Universe according to a set of hidden but largely discernable rules, and those rules produce specific, predictable outcomes once the rules and variables are known. Furthermore, all things are made ordered—oriented if you prefer—to not only the Lord, but also to decent and right outcomes…Our consciences and our natural inclinations are manifestations of this intrinsic order; disregarding them gives rise to disorder. Indeed, even doing things that are right and good can be taken to extremes that place one outside of that natural order. When we step outside of that order, as anyone who has lived with someone suffering through, say, anorexia or alcohol addiction can tell you, the disorder radiates outward in a spiderweb-crack pattern of pain. [9]

The problem with the humanistic worldview is that its prescriptions fail the test of what is required for a culture to survive. First, cultural unity and cohesiveness necessary for any society to survive can never be achieved through a dictatorial center of authority required by humanism. Second, humanism is inherently a false worldview because it steps outside the order of the universe. Therefore, it cannot answer the basic questions of life by which all people seek to understand the meaning and purpose of life.

With the ascendance of the humanistic worldview in society, the spiderweb-crack pattern of disorder and dysfunction radiates through every institution of American life. This is the reason our public institutions and the institution of family is falling apart, and polls consistently show that Americans believe that society is truly disordered and falling apart. Mr. Buchanan asked what changed America. Without doubt, what changed America was the humanistic leadership of the institutions of American life that abandoned the central cultural vision of the Founding Americans and every generation up to and including the Greatest Generation. It is only when Americans return to that central cultural vision whose foundation is Christianity that disorder will become order and America will began working again.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] “Is the World Falling Apart?” World, October 4, 2014, Cover.
[2] Patrick Buchanan, “Things fall apart for many public institutions,” Tulsa World, October 28, 2014, A-11; Pat Buchanan, “Things fall apart,”
Creators.com, October 14, 2014. http://www.creators.com/conservative/pat-buchanan/things-fall-apart.html (accessed October 29, 2014).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] William J. Bennett, The Broken Hearth, (New York: Doubleday, 2001), pp. 2, 85.
[6] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 9.
[7] Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation, (New York: Random House, 1998), p. xx.
[8] Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism, Eighth Edition, (Amherst, New York: Humanist Press, 1997), pp. 13-15.
[9] Christopher Badeaux, “Faith, Fear and Cormac McCarthy,” The City, Vol. 1, Issue 3, (Winter 2008), 84-85.

How we choose to deal with our sin defines our destiny

Posted by :admin On : November 7, 2014
0

Category: Archives, Christianity, God's Law v. Man's Law, Homosexuality

Bishop Edward J. Slattery, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Tulsa, recently wrote of the confusion within the Catholic Church regarding its teaching on divorce, cohabitation, and people who experience same-sex attractions (“We are not defined by our sin”). He states that much of this confusion resulted from the Vatican’s October publication of a working paper (Relatio post Disceptationem) of the Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family whose purpose was to raise awareness of significant pastoral issues concerning divorce, cohabitation, and homosexuality. The document was designed “…to raise questions and indicate perspectives that will have to be matured.” [1] [emphasis added]

One of Bishop Slattery’s concerns is that much of the confusion results from contemporary commentators and even some in the church who use language that tends to diminish the human person through emphasis on their sinful activity. This is a legitimate concern, and as the bishop states, “…activity should never be confused with identity. The human person always remains greater than what he or she does or experiences.” [2] The Bishop is correct in that the importance of man’s identity is confirmed by the inestimable value God places on man. The tremendous value of man to God is undeniable when one considers that the cost of man’s redemption from his sinful state was the sacrifice of God’s own Son on the cross. Therefore, God does not condemn man nor can the church. But man was given freewill, and with freewill man made choices that are in conflict with God’s commandments and plan for mankind and thereby condemned himself. When this happened, it was called sin and broke the relationship between God and man. It is at this point that man often attempts to justify his activity because of his identity, and the modern church is often a co-conspirator in excusing sinful activity.

From a broader perspective, it would appear that much of the confusion in the church world stems from the church’s efforts (both Catholic and Protestant) to be inclusive of people who want to be accepted by the church but also want their sinful lifestyles to be accepted too. To do so they engage in theological contortions to answer questions and give perspective that will bring “maturity” (i.e., acceptance of the sinner and the sin within the church). It is in these efforts that the Bible is ignored even though it is the ultimate source of truth and is exceptionally clear in most cases as to God’s answers and perspective with regard to both sin and the sinner.

An example of this confusion and blurring of lines with regard to sin, the pastoral teaching of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops correctly states that, “God does not love someone any less simply because he or she is homosexual. God’s love is always and everywhere offered to those who are open to receiving it.” [3] However, this truthful teaching is often perverted to mean that love is all that is necessary by those wanting the church to embrace both the sinner and his sin. To do so dismisses the admonitions of Paul to the Romans regarding homosexuality which are clear-cut and still applicable in the twenty-first century. [4] This is but one example of the great caustic of relativism seeping into the church and by which biblical truths are ignored and eroded.

To claim love is all that is necessary is to dismiss the centrality of the cross in the great meta-narrative of the Bible with regard to creation, the fall, and man’s need for redemption. Christ died for the sins of the world to obtain forgiveness for man, and every man has a choice as to whether or not he will accept that forgiveness and follow Christ. To follow Christ is to follow His commandments. But, if love is all that is necessary, then the cross becomes irrelevant, sin is a misnomer, Satan is a myth, and God does not care about how we live our lives.

Bishop Slattery rightly says, “Chastity, after all, pertains not just to our behavior but also to the state of our hearts.” [5] Acceptance of Christ is first a matter of the heart. We can’t clean up our lives before we approach Christ. Every human approaches Christ as a sinner whether he is guilty of adultery, homosexual behavior, fornication, murder, theft, or one of a thousand other sins. I am a sinner saved by grace, the unmerited favor of Christ. I have repented of my sin and have been forgiven. Not only have I repented of past sins, I have turned from my sinful ways. Homosexuals, adulterers, fornicators, and any other label the sinner wears can repent, be saved, and fellowship with God for eternity. However, to do so, they cannot stay in their sin. When the sinner accepts Christ he must put away the sin and often this “putting away” can be a difficult and continuing struggle for the new Christian. But it is the struggle to lay down one’s sin coupled with continued repentance which makes the difference, not a continuing indifference to one’s sin.

In 1937, the Confessing Church in Germany was under severe persecution from Nazi rulers and that portion of the German church aligned with Hitler. Brilliant theologian, pastor, and opponent of the Nazi regime, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a dramatic paper in which he cautioned his fellow pastors in the Confessing Church.

Anyone who turns from his sinful way at the word of proclamation and repents, receives forgiveness. Anyone who perseveres in his sin receives judgment. The church cannot loose the penitent from sin without arresting and binding the impenitent in sin…The promise of grace is not to be squandered; it needs to be protected from the godless. Grace cannot be proclaimed to anyone who does not recognize or distinguish or desire it…The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it, and it will not only trample upon the Holy, but also will tear apart those who force it on them. For its own sake, for the sake of the sinner, and for the sake of the community, the Holy is to be protected from cheap surrender. The Gospel is protected by the preaching of repentance which calls sin sin and declares the sinner guilty…The preaching of grace can only be protected by the preaching of repentance. [6]

Americans are especially averse to pain and suffering, and much of the modern church has that mindset. This is why it is difficult for some in the church to require the often painful “putting away” of sin when it welcomes the sinner into the supposed “big tent” of Christianity under the banner of love. Many in the modern church insist that the problem is not “cheap grace” but “cheap laws.” In other words, love and looking to Christ is all that matters. But grace without repentance is still cheap grace. Writing in his classic work The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer described this toxin within the church.

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church…In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin…Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. [7]

When we approach the cross with a contrite heart, our destiny is defined by how we respond to Christ’s invitation to be a part of His eternal kingdom. A person who willfully continues in his sin cannot be excused for they “…are [not] open to growing in virtue” and their heart remains unconverted. If the church does not make this distinction clear, it is guilty of misleading people as to their eternal destination.

Larry G. Johnson

[1] Edward J. Slattery, Bishop of Tulsa Diocese, “We are not defined by our sin,” Tulsa World, October 18, 2014, A17;
http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/readersforum/bishop-edward-j-slattery-we-are-not-defined-by-our/article_bb6fed60-fa34-581b-951c-5884295d6ffa.html (accessed October 20, 2014).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Gavin Newsom, et.al., Letter to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, June 10, 2014.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.sfgate.com/file/829/829-ArchbishopLetter.pdf (accessed June 23, 2014).
[4] Romans 1: 18, 24-27. RSV
[5] Slattery, A17.
[6] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 292-293.
[7] Erwin W. Lutzer, When a Nation Forgets God,” (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Publishers, 2010), pp. 117-118.