0403 Reinterpreted Christianity
American popular culture is riddled with moral confusion. Part of the responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of what could be called, Reinterpreted Christianity which is propagated by men and women of spiritual position who should know better. One would expect that a person involved in Christian service whose name is prefaced with “Prof.” or “Dr.” or “Rev.” would be a reliable referencer of the Bible. Sadly that is not the case. By abandoning the plain sense of the text and teaching accordingly in a public forum, they cripple the authority of the one moral masterpiece which has influenced America the most.
Reinterpretive Christianity’s contribution to our society’s moral meandering is not a recent phenomenon. It began over one hundred years ago when religious academicians began taking potshots at sixteen hundred years of Biblical scholarship. Believing that the biblical text was not what it had appeared to have been over the previous eighteen centuries since its completion, they began to reinterpret Scripture according to the presumptions of “higher” theory. Intellectual descendents of those first Bible revisionists are still hard at work unwittingly adding to the deterioration of the Judeo-Christian ethic they claim to be clarifying and/or improving.
Why be concerned about what many would probably consider pointless Christian in-fighting? The answer is really quite obvious. One side or the other must eventually win the heart of America. Whoever wins gets our future as well as, most importantly, the future of our children and grandchildren. In a nation which has been firmly rooted in the Judeo-Christian ethic (along with the rest of western civilization), and in which the Bible is held in great respect, even if it is seldom read, misguided leadership by Bible revisionists has done, and still does, inestimable damage in cultural life. As the struggle continues for an understanding of what constitutes public decency, there is a created longing in all of us for bedrock standards – final answers if you will. By leading fellow citizens to believe that some biblical passages are trustworthy and others are not, liberalized Christianity only generates more uncertainty. Worse yet, it throws answer-seekers into the arms of subjective sociology and anthropology.
The most disturbing fruits of reinterpreted Christianity are now felt in the war being waged to protect the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage. Thanks to the efforts of “higher” critical teaching, there exists a pervasive assumption that the sacred Text is nothing more than a collection of ancient religious insights and second-hand stories with God as the supreme consort and managing editor. They are certainly not God’s personally communicated thoughts and they almost certainly are not historically dependable. Above all, troublesome passages are suspect if they do not meet the criteria of a refurbished gospel of open-ended tolerance and spiritual abundance for all humanity preached by a completely reconstructed “historical Jesus”. The outcomes are tragic. In the debate over so-called same-sex marriage, any scriptural prohibitions against homosexuality are marginalized as the product of the Biblical author’s personal passions. If one is publicly promoting a sexual lifestyle that profanes the very design of God’s own image in those He personally created, no problem. If marriage, the most sacred of all human relationships, must be shelved, so much the better for self-fulfillment and no-strings-attached self-gratification.
For revisionists, the same fate must also fall to any Scripture which would appear to question a woman’s “right to choose” death for her unborn child. If a human life has begun from rape, is damaged or just gets in the way, the “right” of choice must reign supreme. Reinterpreted Christianity fits well here too. It allows one to reject clear Biblical text as flawed, misunderstood, irrelevant, unreliable or laughably outdated which celebrates God’s personal love of new life. Indeed, what is arguably one of the most influential books of all time, is reduced to a weapon from the male-dominated ancient past being welded by present-day intellectually inferior “literalists”.
Only the Lord of Glory, the One of the Bible-as-it-stands, is able to conquer such horrors. But if the purity of the saving message left for us, the Gospel-before-revision, is not defended against emasculation (into empowerment, entitlement and abundance) in the public square, false tolerance, false diversity, disunity and hopelessness will win the day and we will ultimately lose our country’s very soul.