Pick Your Side, Choose Your Path

Word-Of-The-Day: ‘ (15) <Jesus said to the Laodicean Church,> “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! (16) So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”’ (Revelation 3:15-16)

Yesterday, per a commentary I read this morning, the Catholic Church’s scheduled sermon topic was on Ephesians 5:21-32, with an optional reading of Ephesians 5:2a, 25-32, that pertains to Christians serving the Lord and each other, in God’s organization of the family unit, so to ensure a proper hierarchy within both the church and the home.  The optional reading, allegedly, provides a sermon that was not offensive to women.  I will place a disclaimer here that I don’t follow the Catholic Church or its sermon schedule all that closely; I don’t follow it at all.  However, the emphasis is not the schedule but the gist from a comment left about the decision of having an optional, ‘less offensive’ sermon option.

Ephesians 5:21 through 32 is Paul providing the commentary that both a husband and a wife should be ‘all in’ with first the Lord, and then with each other, with the man holding the ‘head of the household’ position and the woman serving and submitting to the head of the household, her husband.  The fact that the Catholic Church, or any church, would think they need to offer an ‘optional’ reading, eliminating Ephesians 5:21-24 so as not to offend women is strange and not truly Biblical, especially when those Scriptures are God’s instructions (though Paul) to submit to each other, and women to submit to their husbands as the head of the household.

There were some critiques apparently on ‘X, formerly known as Twitter’, and some Catholic blogs, including one from a person claiming to be a young priest, who stated, “Christ and the two readings spoke hard truths here, including pick a side right here and right now. And people walked away. And Christ let them. So. if you find these teachings too hard to bother with, if you’re lukewarm, if you can’t be bothered to fix your irregular marriage, or don’t want to believe this or that, it would be better if you left <the church>.

We’d be better off, you’d be better off, and you wouldn’t be living a lie. And God thinks better of the noble pagan than the lukewarm Christian <per Revelation 3:15-16>. Forcing you to believe this stuff is bad, I’m not gonna call the cops if you walk out. It’s your choice. We hope you’ll come back when you realize that salvation only lies in Christ, but until then, door is over there.”  (Items in the ‘< >’ are my additions for clarity.)

The comment got me thinking (which can be dangerous)…  The young priest is correct.  Either the Bible is perfect and without blemish and one accepts it completely without revision, or one rejects it completely if it is believed only bits and pieces are correct.  The feminist who decides Ephesians 5:21-24 are no longer applicable, the moral relativist who thinks the Ten Commandments are subjective suggestions and not set in stone (pun intended), or those who simply think Biblical doctrine is out-of-date, should leave the church.  If they don’t believe parts of the Bible, they don’t believe in God’s deity and omnipotence – so why pretend otherwise?

It would do two things; the Church could concentrate on its primary goal – the Great Commission.  If a Church has to constantly attempt to rein in its people inside the doors to follow the Truth, then it not focusing on delivering the Gospel message to those outside the doors of the Church.  There always will be the need for ‘housekeeping’, but if the flock is unruly and disobedient in following the Shepherd’s Word, how can more sheep be added? 

The second thing is it would eliminate one sin from the list of those who should leave – the sin of bearing falsehood.  If you’re stating ‘I’m a Christian, but…’, you’re not a Christian.  That’s a hard Truth that the young priest alludes toward.  The choice to be a bona fide, devout Christian is yours alone, and Jesus, being in tune with free will, allows this.  Joshua gave this choice to the Israelites when they entered Canaan, in Joshua 24:15; in paraphrase, ‘you can serve whoever you want, but me and my homies are serving the Lord’. 

Obviously, we are not going to start kicking out folks from churches (including MBC) who exhibit ‘Christian But’ traits or attitudes.  The church, however, cannot cater to or waste precious time on those who have heard the Word over and over and still hold onto a ‘pick-n-choose’ philosophy on what to obey or ignore in the Bible.  If one believes the End Times are closing in (the End Times countdown, in my opinion, started upon Jesus’ Ascension in Acts 1:6-11) the focus should be on providing the Gospel of Jesus to all people outside of the Church per the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20).   The message cannot be changed, nor should it change, to cater to ‘feelings’.  The message must cater to the Truth that the Bible contains, and the Truth must supersede feelings as feelings can lead us astray. 

The decision we all need to make today is simply, as the young priest said, ‘pick your side’.  If you pick walking a path of being a ‘noble pagan’ or a ‘Christian But’ person (they are one in the same), I personally wish you well and pray that one day you change your mind.  If you truly believe in Christ, and are committed in following Him, then be dedicated in obeying Him and all of His Word, and go find those who need to be told their sins can be forgiven by Him if they seek Him, to choose Him as their Lord and ask Him for forgiveness and Salvation.  ‘You can serve whoever you want, but me and my homies are serving the Lord’.  Who will be included as one of my homies?