Holy Kool-Aid, spiritual poison

For many years, a solid declaration of truth has been commonly understood in both the churched and unchurched populations of America. God is real. Evil exists. Absolutes are not only knowable, but expected to be followed.

Moral clarity was the basic understanding that our rule of law was even built on some of these very principles. For all those years, the church stood as the voice of that declaration of truth, and in the process played an important role in helping keep America on track.

The very need for the existence of a religious community is based upon the premise that there must be some entity within a society that helps direct moral issues in the public debate. In the biblical record, the men of faith – the prophets – were those who told the people when they were getting off track from what or how God had instructed them to live. In the New Testament, after Christ’s ascension, it was the church – huddled in homes across the Roman Empire – that grew to have the largest impact on the world, eventually taking the message of Christ to every corner of the globe.

In the West, the understanding of basic moral absolutes has determined our systems of law and government. But moral absolutes are now a thing of the past, and it is the church – not the government – that is chief in leading society off the cliff. This last week was the perfect example.

On a recent edition of “The O’Reilly Factor,” the debate centered around the Episcopal Church’s decision to submit the name of 56-year-old Gene Robinson for nomination of bishop for New Hampshire.

Robinson’s advocate on the program was Rev. Mary June Nestler, dean of the Claremont School of Theology. Nestler’s defense of Robinson went like this:

• I’m not going to get into the biblical arguments.

• Christians are an extraordinarily diverse body of diverse human beings, and we read the Scriptures differently, we interpret them differently.

• In the Episcopal Church, our interpretation of the Scriptures is culturally informed, it’s historically informed, our traditions help us a great deal, and we are looking now at a very different understanding of what it means to be a human person embodied with sexual orientation, a very different understanding than anything Saint Paul could have imagined, certainly anything different – anything unlike what Saint Paul knew.

• What it means to be sexual persons of – our understanding of sexual orientation – it’s not even a concept people in the first century had, and I do strongly believe, as do many in the Episcopal Church, that one’s sexual orientation is part of the created order, and God made us good.

Those words are from a “dean” of a “theological” school. I will say this: Though she is ignorant, she is consistently ignorant.

Her positions on those four points alone reflect a complete lack of knowledge of what the biblical text says. But since her starting point is to “not get into the biblical arguments,” she assumes she covers herself. But a question of logic here: Why would a “Christian leader” choose not to refer to the Bible? It would be like a rabbi saying the Torah was unimportant, or a Muslim saying the Koran was wrong.

She says that Christians are diverse and read and interpret the scriptures differently. On some minor doctrinal things the answer would be true, but on the fundamental constructs of Christianity – interpretation that varies too much ceases to be Christian by nature. It is the very essence of the commonly shared beliefs of Christians that classify them as such.

Dean Nestler’s true ignorance in her arguments stem lastly from her assertion that the biblical text does not deal with “such modern day sexuality.” “Sexuality” that is so modern that the Apostle Paul would have been purely befuddled at how to handle it. She is yet wrong again … (stop the broken record).

The biblical text deals with nearly every form of sexual expression that is championed today. It deals with marriage, pre-marital sex, adultery (extra-marital sex), group sex, sex with children, sex with relatives, sex with animals, gender-specific sexuality (transsexuals), men with men, women with women – there is even an episode that Paul refers to directly in addressing the behavior of a man who was being sexually active with his stepmother. Yet in the discussion of this wide array of sexual expression, only one sexual behavior is condoned and said to be good in scripture: one man, one woman, and a lifetime vow before God.

In Illinois this week, the Methodists issued a statement incorrectly stating that God validates all forms of sexual expression. “Loving, monogamous, intimate [sexual] relationships between persons, of the same or opposite gender, are an expression of God’s love.” So to the Methodists pre-marital sex, adultery – even pedophilia – are now acceptable as long as its “consensual.”

Two weeks ago, the Chicago Sun-Times carried a story about a lunatic that is even now claiming that Jesus himself participated in homo-erotic behavior. And not to be outdone in the “we are wackier than you” category, a Canadian court has ordered its marriage licenses be made available for homosexually active couples.

Ms. Nestler and the Chicago-based Methodists believe that they cover themselves by saying “all men are good” and “God created a person’s orientation.”

Yet, the Bible does not stand on the belief that men were created “good.” The Bible is clear in that man is born sinful and in that sinful state, every single man is in need of redemption.

And, oh yes, by all means, let’s bow at the alter of “orientation.” Because heaven forbid if a thought, or inclination, or desire ever pop into our head. I mean that automatically means we are obligated – nay, even enslaved – to act upon it.

This is a new great excuse for the adulterer and porn users among us. “Hey, I was only acting on my inclination to sleep with your best friend, honey, and I took pictures of her because I couldn’t help it – that’s what I desired to do.”

How completely ridiculous.

One of the major reasons the church exists today is to serve as a “prophetic voice” to the world around it. I don’t mean Benny Hinn – “I’m going to say I’m healing you, but all I want is the offering” – kind of prophetic. I don’t even mean “I’m going to predict what is going to happen next Tuesday at noon” kind of prophetic. But one of the primary functions of the prophet was to call society to the moral order that God had established. Our prophets of today, be they the scandalous homosexual priests of the Catholic tradition, or the feminist lefty uneducated types in the mainline denominations, have lost all moral ground to make that call to society.

For atheists who claim no faith or religious tradition, there is no religious standard by which they can be held to. But for those who claim Christ’s name, then reject the very substance that he taught, the New Testament book of James says “watch out” – especially those who teach.

For the New Hampshire Episcopal bishop-elect, he broke a vow he made before God to love and cherish his wife, for rich or poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as they both shall live. Yet for the sexual intimacy of another man, he abandoned his wife and his daughters (who were 4 and 7 at the time). Yet Dean Nestler sings his praises as a man of integrity with Bill O’Reilly.

It is not the godless among us today who are leading the moral collapse in American culture. Rather it is the spiritual leaders who are applying spiritual poisons to the spiritually dead but believe the whole time they are at the Sunday church picnic drinking holy Kool-Aid.

But then again, what do I know … I’ve actually read my Bible, and what’s worse is I actually believe it!