Accepting what the Bible condemns

Social media is one of those things that I can’t quite figure out if I like or not. I never intended to be a part of it, was adamantly against it, but wound up joining it because I found myself in a place where there wasn’t much of an option. Now that I’m on it, I’ve discovered that it not only lets me stay in touch with far off family members but it also gives me an outlet for sharing the things I believe in.

And sometimes…

It gives me ideas for things to blog about. That is the case with this post. Someone I really don’t know put something on their social media page that caught my attention. It was one of those articles that could have been so good but wasn’t. Still…I didn’t know what exactly it was about or what the beliefs of the author were when I started reading. I made it all the way through the article but found my interest fading out after the first couple of paragraphs. Why is it that so many so-called ‘Christian’ articles can manage to make the first couple of paragraphs sound good, like maybe they’ll be Biblically sound, only to fall over a cliff about three paragraphs in? At that point some of them really sound like they’re making up stories than trying to convey Biblical truth. Such was the case with this article.

My attention was snagged with the headline. It was about Christians accepting what the Bible condemns. That should have been good, right?

Should have been was the operative description because in truth it wasn’t good. I wanted it to be though. I wanted it to be one of those articles that you start reading and you find you can not only identify with what the author is saying but that you’re encouraged and edified at the same time. That’s what I wanted. It wasn’t what I got.

Now I find myself thinking on the original question, the title of the article.

Why do Christians accept what the Bible condemnss?

Why do Christians accept what the Christ died for?

The answer is we don’t. There are Christians and then there are ‘Christians’. There are true regenerate followers of Christ that have been transformed by the Lord into what He wants them to be and then there are those that claim to follow Christ while following the world instead.

According to the article I read 70% of Americans are ‘Christians’. I can’t seem to find an accurate number on just what percentage of Americans claim to be Christians. Everything I read seems to give a different number. Since the article I just read gave a percentage of 70%, and because that is the lowest number I’ve seen, I’m going to use that number for this post.

So…70% of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Presumably that means they believe in the Bible and what it teaches. Why then, do so many Americans openly support things which the Bible clearly says is wrong? Why do these ‘Christians’ accept and even promote what the Bible clearly teaches against?

Because they aren’t Christians. They’re ‘Christians’, or professing ‘Christians’, and there’s a big difference.

I know very few regenerate Christians but the one’s I do know would no more promote the things the article spoke of than they would deny Christ.

The article I read said that nearly ¾ of the ‘Christians’ polled said that sex outside marriage was okay and that being homosexual was okay.

Sexual immorality is clearly spoken against in the Bible. Over and over again. How then can a ‘Christian’ be okay with it in any form?

After giving those statistics the article went on to say that many of the Christians didn’t know their Bible.

I have to ask…does a person have to be well read Biblically to know that the Bible opposes sexual immorality? It’s kind of like lying and murder. Most people seem to understand, seem to have absorbed through our culture, that God is against those things, that Christians aren’t supposed to do them.

The summer before I went into the second grade my mother enrolled me in a Christian school. After I was enrolled but before school started a friend told me to say something that wasn’t bad but wasn’t nice either…maybe it was the word stupid…I really don’t remember exactly what it was but know it wasn’t what I knew to be a bad word. I told that friend that I couldn’t say that because I was about to go to a Christian school and saying things like that would be wrong.

No one had told me I wasn’t allowed to talk like that. No one had said that saying such a word went against God or the Bible. I just inherently knew it to be true. In my seven year old mind that was something that Christians didn’t do.

Everyone I’ve ever been around seemed to inherently know that sexual sin was wrong from a Christian perspective. They may have been okay with it, may have participated in it, may have promoted it, but when it came right down to it they understood that it was wrong.

And yet a poll said that almost ¾ of those questioned were okay with it.

And the person writing the article wrote their responses off as the fact that most ‘Christians’ don’t know their Bibles.

It doesn’t take knowing your Bible to know that sexual sin goes against Christianity. That’s something we just seem to absorb.

But it gets worse. I think I could more easily accept the first excuse than the second.

Christians are rejecting Biblical morals.

What?!!!!!!

Really?

A ‘Christian’ that rejects Biblical morals is rejecting the God they claim to follow. That wasn’t a new revelation for me. I’ve known it was happening for some time. I’ve seen it in people I know. What got me was the way it was written off as an easy explanation by the author of this article. The author as easily wrote off the fact that ‘Christians’ are doing these things as the ‘Christians’ that are accepting what the Bible condemnss. The author didn’t reject unacceptable explanations, they accepted them as fact and being the reason that ‘Christians’ are accepting that which is Biblically wrong. Never once did the author question whether or not the ‘christians’ were in fact Christians. Never once did they wonder if maybe some of these people may not be what they thought they were, what they claimed to be.

Can you reject the morals of the Bible and still be a Christian? Can you reject the rules the Lord put into place for us and still belong to Christ?

The Bible tells us…

Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! 2 Corinthians 13:5