The President and the Pill: Declaring War on the Church

Last week, the White House announced that the final rule on the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) mandates coverage of birth control even if the employer happens to be a religious institution that objects to it.  This will be a particular issue for the Roman Catholic Church which employs 1,000's in its 600 hospitals (Catholics and non-Catholics alike), and does not offer such coverage to any of  them.

Ironically, the Catholic Church was one of Obama’s strongest allies in his health care initiatives. But now they are angry.  The Obama administration has no plans to reverse its decision even though the Bishops have signaled their intention to defy the law rather than to violate their conscience.

What is the significance of this for us? Well, beyond the obvious First Amendment issue, it is an example of the secularization of America. Secularization neutralizes religious ideas and institutions until they have lost their social and moral significance, and have no influence on society. (Europe has been secularized.)  Scripture says the true Church will decline in influence at the last days, as apostasy increases.  Who can argue that the Church no longer has the influence it once did. The Obama ruling is a test of that influence; we should pay attention to how this plays out.  Something is going on here between the President and the Church that is more important than the pill.

You Can’t Make Me Like You!

The upsurge in violence since the U.S. military left Iraq reminds me that our coerced peace was like a mother who says to her fighting children: “Tell each other you’re sorry and make up.” Of course forcing the Shiite and Sunni Muslims to reconcile after centuries of hatred was not realistic.  And as soon as the “adults” were gone, the Shiite Prime Minister accused his Sunni Vice President of treason and ordered him arrested.  The sectarian violence that followed resulted in 60 deaths throughout Baghdad.

If forcing someone to love you is a contradiction, how can God command us to “love one another?” Isn’t that coercion? Well it would be, if it were beyond our ability to do so. But when Christ takes up residence in our hearts, we become lovers by way of our new nature, "the Holy Spirit filling our hearts with His love" (Ro. 5:5). This is what sets us apart from the world. For born again believers, the command to love one another is not the "have to" of external compulsion but the "want to" of internal desire.

It occurs to me that perhaps we are not so different from our fellow citizens across the globe.  In light of worsening division between the secular culture and conservative Christians, we could be facing our own version of Sunni-Shiite hostility before long, in which case we need not only to love one another, we need to love our enemies.

Customizing Christianity

“I believe in God. I believe the Bible is a good book. And then I believe whatever I want.” And this is how Christian pollster George Barna describes the  American religious ethic in his latest book “Futurecast.”  From 1991 to the present, the percentage of self-proclaimed, born-again Christians who are “unchurched” has gone from 24% to a whopping 37%. One woman who still calls herself a Christian tells how she drifted away from a mainline Protestant church and found peace in the Baha’i tradition along with Native American healing practices.

The bottom line is captured in Barna’s statement, “America is headed for 310 million people with 310 million religions”—customizing Christianity to fit our personal needs. It appears that the state of Christianity in America is not unlike that of Israel during the time of the judges. “In those days there was no king in Israel but every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6). Or worse, like Israel’s response to Jeremiah’s cry for repentance: "Don't waste your breath. We will continue to live as we want to…" (18:12). Can such an attitude come from a true believer? Let the Bible speak for itself.

“Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused… Even though there is a path before each person that seems right [the way of a fool seems right to him], it ends in death” (Romans 1:21; Proverbs 12:15; 14:12).

Look What's been Thrown under the Bus

Syncretism, the idea that all religions can be fused into one, is being replaced by Pluralism, a more pragmatic approach because it acknowledges differences but sees them as irrelevant. Pluralism is the ‘equal rights’ of religion. Pluralism promotes tolerance, without which no one in the 21st century will survive.

Pluralism puts Jesus on an equal footing with Buddha, Confucius, and Muhammad. But pluralism requires that we make Christianity more tolerant. Thus, any Scripture that insists on its own primacy must be revised, redacted, reinterpreted or just ignored. Sadly, though, in watering down the Bible, we lose our moral authority to speak out against the new cultural norms of our 21st century—leaving a moral vacuum. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, so eloquently wrote in his blog, “This is what happens when the Bible is thrown under the bus.”

Some are wondering how we should contend for the authority of the Scriptures without appearing intolerant. Why are we even trying to? It’s time to reclaim the authority and supremacy of the Bible and throw pluralism under the bus!

Beware of the "New" Cross

Listen to the words of A. W. Tozer, spoken over 50 years ago:
The new cross says “come and get.” And a selfish human … will use the Cross for his own benefits, whereas the old rugged Cross says, “Come and give.” … God has intended that this Christian life shall be based on this one principle: The new life is lived not unto self, but unto God. Whereas the old Cross was meant by God to be the symbol of death and detachment from the old Adam life, this new substitute cross does not intend to slay the sinner but just redirect him. It gears him to a cleaner, jollier way of living and saves his self-center and ambition. To the self-assertive it says: “Come and assert yourself in the Lord.” To the religious egotist, it says: “Come and do your boasting in the Lord.” To the thrill seeker it says: “Come and enjoy the thrill of Christian fellowship.” The modern message is slanted in the direction of the current vogue, thereby catering to human taste and reasoning.

[The new cross] lets Adam live without interference. His life motivation is unchanged; he still lives for his own pleasure, only now he takes delight in singing choruses and watching religious movies instead of singing bawdy songs and drinking hard liquor. The accent is still on enjoyment, though the fun is now on a higher [moral] plane.

Beware of Cross-less Teaching

Now, because we are celebrating Easter weekend, I must comment here about a current trend in the Evangelical church: a popularized version of Christian teaching that offers abundant life without the cross. This teaching says: “Believe in yourself! Follow your dreams and fulfill your destiny.” We must be leery of any teaching that is not founded on this principle: the cross is God’s means for fulfillment. This “new” gospel allows one to find fulfillment in one’s desires, never questioning one’s motive. This “new” teaching (it’s not really new; it began in the Garden of Eden!) says you can be “like” God and do anything. Beware of such cross-less teaching! The Bible says in the latter days people will be “lovers of self.”