Ethics & Public Affairs

At the close of his ministry, Paul looked back across the years and offered a critique. His final appraisal was: "I kept the faith."

His words articulate the challenge we face. The culture is busy bashing the faith. From manifold bully pulpits, Hollywood and TV infiltrate the nation's ethos with their anti-Christian bias. Look at their fictional villains or morally debauched characters wearing crosses. The message is: "these rogues are Christians."

Listen to "gangsta" rap "music" - its repulsive lyrics, its brutal themes, its misogyny. Then in your nausea remember the audience is children and youths.

Social and legal processes are geared up to abolish marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The culture and likely the courts will re-define it to include same-sex marriage.

If that occurs, marriage will ultimately be replaced by whatever multiple sexual configurations couples or groups desire.

I fear for the future of religious liberty. The nation is experiencing rapid growth of religious traditions that have no experience with or faith in religious freedom. Islam is now the second largest religion in America exceeding Judaism. In Islamic countries, separation of mosque and state is an alien concept. Religious liberty, as we know it, does not exist.

But the challenge to keeping the faith addresses more than external threats. Our seduction by and naivetÈ about politics is crippling our commitment to the cause of religious liberty.

We speak prolifically of the moral state of the nation. But our silence about the moral state of the church is deafening.

Charles Colson observes: "In recent years the church has suffered the same collapse of character that is widespread in the culture." Don't downplay Colson's statement as if it were homiletic hyperbole. It is not.

The latest research into moral values of Christians was posted last month. Of respondents who say they are born again:

• Half said cohabitation is morally acceptable;
• 35% said extra-marital sexual relations are acceptable;
• A third said abortion is acceptable;
• One out of five said homosexual relationships are acceptable.

On the basis of these responses, the researcher concluded: "most people associated with the Christian faith do not seem to have embraced biblical moral standards."

Further, in New Testament relational ethics, professed Christians show no difference or only marginal difference from non-Christians.

Born again Christians are just as likely to divorce as non-Christians. Add to divorce, the divisions, bitter rhetoric and irreconcilability existing universally among American religious denominations.

Attach the schisms and hostile refusals to forgive and be reconciled existing within congregations. To proclaim to the world, "Be reconciled to God," while we ourselves are estranged from each other is a self-defeating exercise in futility.

I love what Jesus said: "If you are offering your gift at the altar and remember your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar. First go and be reconciled with your brother; then come and offer your gift."

This Sunday, how many preachers would remain in the pulpit, how many members would remain in the pews, how many deacons would be left to pass the offering plates if this reconciliation command of the Lord were actually obeyed?

The church can lose wealth, property, esteem, even members and lose little that deters its saving mission. But if the church loses character, all are lost.

How will the challenges to the faith play out? None of us knows.

But even if the future is not to my liking, I am not going to shut my Bible and put it on a shelf. The Bible will still be the Word of God, inspired by the Spirit of God, the truth of God without any mixture of error.

The gospel will still be the power of God unto salvation, the power that transforms the most pious hypocrite or corrupt sinner into a child of the living God.

We will still be ambassadors of Christ, the Christ whom God "highly exalted and gave the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, on earth and under the earth and every tongue should confess, 'Jesus Christ is Lord!' '" And "the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever." Hallelujah!

So, never give up. Keep the faith.