The disease that infects the church in America is cowardice. Many Christians are afraid to stand for moral truth. The persecution we face is very light, yet we cower from it in fear. There can be no resurgence of faith in America until there is a resurgence of courage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| I think the real, the scourge, the disease, the infection in the modern church today is moral cowardice. | |
| This is our great problem. | |
| Moral cowardice. We are a church of cowards. | |
| And we can think of all the excuses that we want to explain away the problems that we're seeing. | |
| But when it comes down to it, I think if we look around us, we can see plain as day that it is cowardice. | |
| Not only cowardice, That is one of the main problems that we face, is our own cowardice. | |
| Now, in my piece yesterday, I wrote about this, and I used, by way of contrast, the story of John the Baptist, a story that I hope is still well-known and famous among Christians and non-Christians. | |
| But John the Baptist, as you probably are aware, was not afraid to call sin by its name. | |
| He wasn't afraid to call sin out, to call people to repentance. | |
| That was what he did. That was his... | |
| His mission. So when Herod invited him to the palace and confided in him and spoke with him, John told Herod the truth. | |
| He just told him the simple truth. | |
| That's all. He told Herod that divorcing his wife and taking his brother's wife was a sin. | |
| And for speaking the plain truth and nothing but the truth, he was thrown in jail and then, of course, eventually executed. | |
| And that's how his head ended up on a platter. | |
| He died because he denounced immorality. | |
| He called it out. | |
| And not just any immorality, but it was sexual immorality. | |
| And so I think most American Christians, they would look at that and they would probably say, if they were consulting with John the Baptist, or if they were around back then with the attitude they have now, They would say to John the Baptist, well, it's none of your business. | |
| Don't get involved in that. | |
| It's none of your business. Don't be so judgmental. | |
| Love is love after all. | |
| Don't you realize, John? | |
| If Herod wants to get rid of his wife and commit adultery with his brother's wife, then so what? | |
| What do you care? | |
| Live and let live. | |
| Take it easy, John. | |
| I think that's what The modern Christian would say, but that's not the view that John the Baptist took. | |
| He didn't see it that way. | |
| He looked at sin, and he saw sin as something disgusting and toxic and lethal. | |
| He saw it as something that harms not only the person who's committing the sin, but it also harms everybody else. | |
| Everybody who comes in contact with it is harmed by it. | |
| There really is no such thing as a sin that's only, that's kind of, especially a sin that other people can see, other people can witness. | |
| Those kinds of sin are never just harmful to the person doing them. | |
| They're harmful to everyone who sees it because of the effect and the scandal and the way that it might normalize the sin in a person's mind or make it seem not quite as bad. | |
| So from John's perspective, any sin had to be called out, had to be identified, had to be condemned, had to be pulled up from the roots and destroyed. | |
| And so John the Baptist was extremely, extremely intolerant. | |
| He was a man of extreme intolerance. | |
| And so it's interesting then to note that Jesus Christ said that of all the men, of all the mortal men on earth, None have been greater than John the Baptist. | |
| Jesus Christ identified John the Baptist as the greatest man. | |
| And yet, John the Baptist was very intolerant. | |
| And he was even what today we would call a doomsday preacher. | |
| Preaching hellfire, right? | |
| And yet, Jesus Christ says this was the greatest man. | |
| Which really seems like, I mean, it seems like a ringing endorsement of John's whole approach. | |
| It seems like a ringing endorsement of John's intolerant approach that Jesus Christ said, this is the greatest man. | |
| So let's look at our case then. | |
| While John the Baptist died for his defense of sexual morality, for his defense of moral truth, Christians today in America and throughout the West have given up. | |
| We've given up our defense on both fronts, and for really no reason. | |
| We're not facing any kind of real Violent persecution. | |
| But if you look at the polls, you'll see that a majority of Christians endorse same-sex marriage, divorce, fornication, and on and on. | |
| In fact, all of the most popular sins in our society, Christians are fine with them. | |
| Even abortion has the approval of wide swaths of American Christians. | |
| Look, I'm not complaining because Christians struggle with these things. | |
| That's not the point. Something like sexual immorality, that's always going to be a struggle. | |
| People have always struggled with that since the beginning of time. | |
| But that's not our problem. | |
| Our problem is actually the opposite of that. | |
| Our problem is that we aren't struggling. | |
| We don't struggle. | |
| We've simply declared that these things are okay. | |
| We've stopped struggling. | |
| There is no struggle. That the most popular sins, our favorite sins, aren't sins anymore. | |
| So there's no struggle. | |
| There's no repentance. | |
| It's one thing for us to sin and then to say, oh my God, what have I done? | |
| Forgive me. Help me. | |
| That's one thing. It's another thing to sin and say, it's fine. | |
| I'm fine. Doesn't matter. | |
| It's just, you know, whatever. | |
| This is how I want to live my life. | |
| And I'm in a personal relationship with Jesus, and in my relationship, Jesus doesn't care about this. | |
| Okay? Because I've made up my own rules in my personal relationship. | |
| It's my personal relationship. | |
| Have you noticed that? Many times when somebody, I don't want to get, this is kind of a separate topic, but When somebody cites their personal relationship with Jesus, they'll often do it in a defensive way, because their kind of lackadaisical approach to religion has been called into question. | |
| And then what they'll say, because there's nothing wrong with the concept of a personal relationship with Jesus. | |
| In fact, of course, we should all have a personal relationship with Jesus. | |
| In that our relationship, it should be an affectionate, intimate relationship that we have with Jesus. | |
| It should be marked by love and by a deep knowledge and understanding, right? | |
| So there should be a personal relationship. | |
| But if you notice, many times when people use this phrase, notice the emphasis. | |
| A lot of the time what they'll say is, well, this is my personal relationship with Jesus. | |
| This is my personal relationship with Jesus. | |
| The emphasis on my. | |
| Like, this is something that I own. | |
| It's mine. It's on my terms. | |
| I make the rules. | |
| I set the terms. And also notice that, you know, you go back to the Middle Ages, go back to medieval times. | |
| This idea of a personal relationship with Jesus, that phrase didn't exist. | |
| Nobody said that. | |
| Yet, Christians back then had a very intimate, almost mystical connection to God. | |
| Go read St. | |
| Augustine's Confessions. | |
| Read how just intimate that is. | |
| Christians today can't even conceive of God on those kinds of terms. | |
| Yet, that's how St. | |
| Augustine It was connected with God, and not through this idea of a personal relationship. | |
| There wasn't any of that. | |
| And I think that this phrase, although it speaks to a certain truth, it has led some people astray because it gives them the impression of this is a relationship that they have ownership over. | |
| Anyway, so how do we account for this? | |
| Is it ignorance? | |
| Is that all it is? People don't understand. | |
| If you talk to the average Christian and they say, yeah, whatever, gay marriage, divorce, abortion, do what you want. | |
| It's all fine. Are they really ignorant? | |
| Are they really not? | |
| They really have no understanding? | |
| Or do they really think that The biblical commands have somehow expired? | |
| Do they really think that, yeah, I mean, a thousand years ago or two thousand years ago, this stuff was immoral. | |
| It's not anymore, because times have changed somehow, and moral truths have just evolved somehow. | |
| Is that really what Christians think? | |
| Maybe some of them do. But I think most of them, if they're fooled, it's because they fooled themselves. | |
| And so I think in most cases, it's simply a case of cowardice. | |
| And I really have to wonder, has there ever been a society plagued with so many Christians who are so unwilling to defend even the most basic teachings of their faith? | |
| Has there ever been a Christian society that just cowered so completely under a threat that really is not severe at all? | |
| I mean, what are we actually worried about? | |
| What's the punishment that awaits us if we stand up and declare the truth? | |
| If we stand up and speak out forcefully for moral truth? | |
| If we draw the line and say, no, that's wrong, This is wrong. | |
| This is right. | |
| Okay. And here's the line. | |
| If we do that, what's going to happen to us? | |
| What are we worried about? All the people who are so meek and mild and quiet and refuse to say anything, what are they worried is going to happen to them? | |
| Are we worried that maybe we'll lose some friendships that were meaningless anyway? | |
| If it's a friendship that you're going to lose if you actually speak your mind, then that's not a real friendship. | |
| Who cares about that friendship? It's worthless. | |
| Let it go. So is that what we're worried about? | |
| We're going to lose some friends. Maybe things are going to be awkward in the family because some people in the family don't agree with us. | |
| We don't want to upset them. | |
| Who cares? So what? So what are we worried about? | |
| Worst case scenario, we might say, well, we lose our jobs. | |
| We'll lose our jobs if we're serious Christians, and if we speak out, then we'll lose our jobs. | |
| Well, okay. That's a more severe penalty, I suppose. | |
| But in the grand scheme of things, what does that even matter? | |
| In 50 years, most of the people watching this or listening to this right now, myself included, most of us will probably be dead in 50 or 60 years. | |
| And what's that going to matter then? | |
| You were able to hold on to a job. | |
| Who cares? You can't bring it with us into the next stage. | |
| All this financial security that we were able to attain for ourselves and hold on to by remaining silent in the face of cultural decay. | |
| Well, what good is that going to be? | |
| Is your financial security going to mean anything when you're standing before judgment day? | |
| There's something else to keep in mind here. | |
| When I highlight the fact that so many Christians are terrified of denouncing sin, the sins against marriage, sins of sexual immorality, and so forth, I'm not saying that our primary job as Christians is to oppose gay marriage or whatever. | |
| That's not my point. | |
| My point is that our culture has selected certain sins and put them up on a pedestal. | |
| And then literally thrown them a parade and said, this is wonderful. | |
| Everybody applaud it. | |
| This is the greatest thing. | |
| Let's celebrate. And when our culture is doing that, when it's literally throwing parades for sins and demanding that we celebrate and applaud certain sins, then I think we as Christians have a choice to make. | |
| We can, we have two options. | |
| We can either, number one, Go along with it and applaud politely and say, oh yes, isn't this wonderful? | |
| Yes, oh yes, yes, yes. | |
| Love is love. I can't judge. | |
| You mustn't judge. You mustn't judge. | |
| No, no judgment. | |
| Yes, yes, wonderful. So we can do that. | |
| Or the second option is that we can refuse to applaud and say, no, this isn't right. | |
| There are things that are morally true and morally untrue. | |
| And I'm going to stand with the moral truth. | |
| This isn't right. I'm not going to applaud it. | |
| This is sin. And I think choosing that latter option, which is the correct option, it's as much about opposing the particular sin itself as it is about the basic principle. | |
| The basic principle that we're going to be honest and we're going to speak the truth no matter the topic. | |
| So John the Baptist died essentially because he denounced this sin of Herod's. | |
| But it's not like denouncing the sin of Herod's marriage and divorce and adultery. | |
| It's not like that was John the Baptist's greatest mission on earth. | |
| It's not like that was the primary thing he was concerned about. | |
| And it's not as though he wanted to die over that. | |
| But it was just the truth, that's all. | |
| And so he died for the truth. | |
| It's not like he wanted to die over that particular issue, but he was willing to die over the truth, plain and simple. | |
| And when the truth is attacked, I think we have to stand up in defense of truth. | |
| It's not even really specifically defense of this issue, although it is that, but even more important, it's just a defense in principle of truth. | |
| And that is worth whatever the penalty may be for it. | |
| One other point here. | |
| I think that our refusal to denounce sin, to call out sin, that's one symptom of our cowardice, but I don't think it's the primary symptom. | |
| It's not the worst symptom. | |
| The greatest symptom, I think, is just the general fact that Christianity, that faith in America, has been kind of pushed out onto the fringes of existence. | |
| With our permission, and many times with our help, faith has just been pushed to the side. | |
| We've allowed our faith to be severed almost completely from what we consider to be normal life. | |
| And we've allowed it to be relegated to these just sort of corners of society. | |
| We have, as I put in my piece yesterday, we are a population of Christians, yet we have built for ourselves an atheist society. | |
| And now we use the secularism of society as an excuse to be secular ourselves. | |
| And so if you want proof of our cowardice, I would say that is the number one proof right there. | |
| It's not any one particular issue. | |
| It's not any one particular sin. | |
| It's just look around you in your everyday life, and there is almost no evidence of Christianity in our culture as you go about your life. | |
| We're all just walking around and living as if there is no God. | |
| And that's many things, but it is also cowardice. | |
| So we can talk all we want about the reclaiming faith in America, the resurgence of faith in America, but there's not going to be any resurgence unless there's a resurgence of courage in the church. | |
| I don't think we can. | |
| It's good for us to pray. | |
| It's good for us to ask for God's assistance. | |
| But I think if we're expecting a miracle, if we're expecting God to come in and kind of like bail us out, and to come in by divine, miraculous intervention, and to save our culture from final self-destruction, if we're waiting for that, if we're hoping for that, I think we're hoping in vain. | |
| I don't think God's going to do that. | |
| Because even if—and I could be wrong. | |
| I can't speak to what God will do and won't do. | |
| But I do know, historically speaking, when a society gets to the point where it's just rejected God and it's careening over the edge, usually that's when God says, all right, have it your way. | |
| You've made your point. | |
| You don't want me. Okay. | |
| And now your whole society is going to be destroyed because you destroyed it. | |
| Now you're going to reap what you sow. | |
| And I think the reason why God at a certain point has to say that is because even if he did come in by divine intervention and rescue us from the cliff and set us on the right path again, even if he did that, Because most of us are a bunch of cowards, we would just lose, we would quickly lose whatever was gained by divine intervention anyway. | |
| So we would have to keep on doing it over and over and over again, rescuing us from the cliff. | |
| He rescues us and then we just run right back to it and over and over and over again. | |
| So there's almost no point in a miracle until we have courage. | |
| Only courageous Christians Can maintain and defend a Christian culture. | |
| And only courageous Christians deserve to have a Christian culture. | |
| So we right now have the culture that we deserve, and it is a really terrible, awful, ugly culture. | |
| If we want to change it, we just, we got to have some guts. | |
| We got to stop being wimps, to put it more simply. | |
| That's our hope, is in having just a little bit of courage. | |
| And the good thing is, considering we're not under violent persecution, and nobody is out there threatening to kill us or whatever if we stand for our faith, the worst possible thing we could lose is our jobs, which is, I'm not downplaying that, but that's nothing compared to losing your life. | |
| Considering that, we don't really need to have a lot of courage. | |
| We don't need to have the same amount of courage that you need to have if you want to be a Christian in Afghanistan or Syria. | |
| That requires a lot of courage. | |
| That requires like this much courage. | |
| We need to have only like this much. | |
| This is how much courage we all need to have. | |
| If we all had this much courage, I think everything could change. | |
| So that's all. Just that much. | |
| Thanks for watching, everybody. Thanks for listening. |