By Angus Harley

Is there anything that is really wrong, I mean ‘wrong’ wrong? One would naturally think so. But if we measure this question by events, opinions, and attitudes today, can we be certain? I remember about teaching ethics to a class. One female, a professing ‘witch’, argued very calmly for the position that we shouldn’t blame the Nazis for gassing the Jews, for, ‘What would we have done in their position?’ She added, equally calmly, ‘You just don’t know what you would have done.’ To this I said, ‘Yes, I do know what I would have done, for I wouldn’t have become a Nazi in the first place!’ Given where we are at today, one would think that I got it wrong. Apparently, burning to a crisp Jewish children and adults is ‘just deserts’. ‘Would we do anything different in the shoes of the ‘oppressed’ who rebelled?’ The answer, once again, is, ‘I wouldn’t be in their shoes to begin with!’ But maybe I’m wrong. Indeed, is there anything that is actually ‘wrong’ wrong? Is it not all a matter of being in someone’s shoes, or appreciating his or her ‘personal journey’, to give the Christianized form of the same principle?

Take, for example, what happened in church this last Sunday. As usual, the prayer requests were dominated by women speaking for an extended period about illnesses of some kind. (It is an elderly church, with two under-18s.) There was a very brief spiritual request, ‘Pray for the church and the peace of Jerusalem’- a prayer that the same person states in the exact same form every weekend. Every week the pastor very intensely looks at, and listens to, those requesting and writes down their comments, interjecting a concerned grunt here and there. The elephant in the room is there is no praise of God or his Son’s cross in prayer. There’s no call for the Gospel to go forward. No wrestling in prayer for spiritual matters. What about the persecuted? One senses that the church is literally getting ready to die! Is this not wrong? But, then again, am I being too harsh, too particular, majoring on minors? Is it not enough to pray? Isn’t it good to pray about physical issues and the mundane features of life? No doubt! I do it every day. Yet, when every prayer-meeting is dominated by matters that are clearly secondary to the NT view of prayer and the kingdom of God, then is this wrong? Since when was the church a hospital, or hospice for the dying? Don’t get me wrong, we must care for those who are dying and are sick. But are these things to dominate? The Gospel does not spare us illness and death. Which is more important, the body or the soul? Is my aim to try to preserve my life as a Christian, or prepare for the world to come? Was I wrong to think that the prayer-meeting was just ‘wrong’?

My negative opinion of the prayer meeting is not shared by the church itself. The assembly’s teaching is dominated by the idea of one’s personal path to following Jesus. Who am I to question the place of any disciple on his/her own, unique, path? Why would I ‘deny’ compassion and mercy to individuals? Shouldn’t I empathize with all the sick? The pastor does. One sister’s personal journey led to the following prayer request. At great length, she stated her moral quandary, as she was asking for prayer because she did not know what to say to her friend about which church to attend. You see, her friend is going to a church with a woman pastor, and to the requester, this was ‘confusing’. But far more confusing- her description, not mine- was that this pastor was a lesbian married to another woman. So, she didn’t know what to tell her friend, and was confused as to know what to do. After all, she had made bad judgment calls in the past, and it wasn’t right for her to judge whether a lesbian pastor is right or wrong. Right? (The requester was one of the more ‘spiritual’ members of the church.) Of course, the pastor intervened and guided her, telling her that the bible is keen to condemn such depraved behavior. He went on to advise her to tell her friend to go to a good evangelical church with a male pastor. Except, this never happened. Rather, the pastor looked at her very concernedly, took notes, and moved on. After all, who are we to judge someone’s ‘walk with the Lord’, whether it be a fellow evangelical, or some lesbian pastor? Sympathy, concern, non-judgment, are the watchwords of the Christian’s path.

It was some months earlier that I listened to the same pastor talk very proudly about a certain ‘Christian’ actor’s love for Jesus. It turns out that this Christian was a rabid Roman Catholic who was a big believer in Mary, bowing at her shrine, and who signed off on all the features of the RC view of merit and salvation. I spoke to the pastor afterward. He smiled, listened patiently, and then proceeded to preach in summary form the same sermon he’d already given. I pressed him on the divisiveness of the Gospel. He said that the actor believed in the cross, so what more was to say? To the pastor, there’s so many grey areas, and we’re not meant to press them, the pastor argued. We shouldn’t judge, for every Christian is doing his thing, on her path for the Lord. Heck, the apostle Paul pressed too strongly different issues, and sometimes got it wrong, I was told. Well, if a pastor says it, it must be true, and I’m wrong. Right?

As to this last Sunday’s sermon, you might be able to guess what it was about. The sermon was about ‘roads’- roads and paths that one travels as a Christian and the obstacles and dangers involved. There it was again: the personal journey. Who am I to challenge such preaching and its all-positive, non-judgmental, individualistic nature?

At least such self-doubt and self-denunciations are now par for the course in modern evangelicalism. The only one to be judged is the one who judges others! To be ‘wrong’ wrong is to judge others.

Coupled with this is an artificially limited Gospel. That local church was ‘bible-based’. But in reality, the bible was only a starting point of the believer’s journey. The bible as God’s authoritative word was subordinated to the ‘Gospel’ of the cross artificially conceived and personal pilgrimages. As long as one believes in the cross and resurrection, one is good to start one’s own, unique, pilgrimage. Anything above these foundational ‘truths’ are ‘grey areas’, a ’matter of opinion’, ‘confusing’, and ‘difficult to judge’. In that church, sure, the lips pay service to the ‘bible only’ and preaching the full ramifications of the cross, but the practice is quite the opposite.

The end or terminus of a church that pursues merely ‘the cross’- as artificially separated- and merely one’s personal journey is death. The Gospel does not come in a vacuum. It addresses all kinds of sins, idolatry, and perverse behavior. Paul does not agree with the woman or pastor. He chastised Peter, who had already accepted the Gospel, for directly undermining this same Gospel by eating only with the Jews (Gal.2). Peter writes of false teachers who lived depraved lives and thereby denied the Lord (2 Pet.2:1-3). When all is said and done, brothers and sisters, wrong is ‘wrong’, so that avoiding, or keeping silent about, this fact is itself ‘wrong’!