THE CHURCH TODAY 7/28/20
Everyone knows that we live in a world where more and more, truth is relative, facts are questionable and God is not real. We live in a world where the Church is pushed to the fringes of society and millions are dying without the Lord. This doctrine has been creeping up on us for 100 years or more. It comes in bits and pieces so as to not overwhelm us all at once. But its basic thought is that there is no absolute truth and, therefore one way is as good as another.
Corollaries to it say that there is no right or wrong, good or bad, God or devil, heaven or hell, because all ways are as good as others. Everything and everyone must be tolerated because we are not allowed to be “judgmental” (Oh the horror of the word!). Of course it breaks its own rules when it, invariably, sides with underdogs and minorities against whomever or whatever seems to dominate at the time. It is not so much that it loves the underdogs but that it loves its doctrine of making things even.
Churches are losing people today but most are the people on the fence anyway. Stronger Christians are growing in and with the Church, while the part-timers are just leaving. In 1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, while in a Nazi prison, wrote of just such a time. Many have seen the parallel between today and WWII (more so in Europe than in America) and are asking what are we to do?
Bonhoeffer said the Church, in times like these, must wait on God to act, because God will act. What are we to do in the mean time? Give-up and give in? Go to war against the unbelievers? Twiddle our thumbs?
Our job is not to combat the mixed-up world but to save them. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. John 3:17, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” And since Christ left the salvation of the world to His disciples (the Church) we have to do something—and this is where Bonhoeffer helps.
The Church must practice the Arcane (secret) Disciplines and serve the world, as it waits for God to act in His world. He even helps understand the secret disciplines of the Church: Of course continuing to worship together: Preaching, scripture reading, Bible study, singing the hymns of the Church and praying. These are not secret by choice but secret because the world doesn’t want them, the Church must become engrossed in them to survive.
To serve the unsaved, agnostic and atheistic world with acts of kindness is his second thought. Be Christ to the world and help everyone we meet in need. This is how the Church pushes back. And the greatest need of the world around is to know Christ. We must continue to share the Gospel with them and pray that God open their hearts to hear it and believe it. We are called upon to be faithful and God will act in this mixed up world the way He wants to act because it is still His world.
Jim
