To Christians

A PLEA TO PASTORS AND CHRISTIAN LEADERS

by Linda Harvey

The conflict in our culture over homosexuality is heating up at an astonishing pace. The battle now needs to be waged on many fronts simultaneously: in the media, in our schools, in the courts, on campus, and within the medical profession. Most tragically of all, the battle over sexuality threatens to divide Christianity as nothing has since the Reformation.

It is in this last arena where I entered the fight to begin with, and where I believe our central focus should be. We are in a fight to determine who we are created to be. God is our Creator, so the battlefield always ends up at the foot of the cross.

So why isn't this issue of immediate concern to more confessing Christians? Homosexual activists and their allies are, in case one hasn't noticed, the torch-carriers for a movement to destroy biblically-oriented Christianity and its positive influence on our culture. They won't be able to reinvent Christianity, of course. Christ's authentic Church of true believers will remain steadfast even if we're stripped of all we have in this world. But they could destroy our culture. The bigger point is, how will Christians account to God for how we responded to this challenge, and the people whose souls, health and lives could have been salvaged?

I am increasingly convinced that much of the Church will have a lot of explaining to do. Why did most pastors allow evil to be "sold" to our young people with barely a whimper of protest? Why did you allow this tragic behavior to become a chic cause celebre in the media without trying to take a stand against it? Why did you let seminaries teach this blasphemy? Why did you spend little or no time in the pulpit dealing with this and all the related sexuality issues - promiscuity, pornography, adultery, fornication - sins that are tearing apart the families and personal lives of even Bible-confessing Christians? Why did you constantly decry "political involvement" when this is a deeply moral issue, one for which there are ready arguments to be made in the public square had more Christian leaders been willing to make them?

And the big question is: why do you let the world define what's right to do? What will be "accepted" or not? What is "hate" or not? This defense of inaction completely undermines who Christ is and what God is able to do. Such cowardice should make us tremble. For God would not only be with us if we tried to talk some sense into the world, He is just as able to judge each Christian and the society we live in for our disloyalty and cold-heartedness. I believe right now, He is doing just exactly that.

The moral decline in our world--the violent images that are the daily bread of our children, the school shootings, the acceptable treason of our elected leaders--will not stop until the Church is willing to be politically incorrect and cry out loudly in protest to proclaim what is good, instead of meekly retreating in the face of evil. With all the hope that is in the Gospel, why do so many remain silent?

We win the argument in the end, of course. Homosexuality will eventually be seen for the lie it is, a lie against all that God created a person to be; a lie about how people are best to love and relate to one another; a lie of omission about the health hazards involved, the sinful origins of homosexual desire and the real possibility of change. It will be seen for a lie that invalidated the authenticity of Scripture for many, leading them to believe in false gods and goddesses, creating worship of a "Jesus" that does not exist. They will realize that the defenders of homosexuality were wolves masked by this false worship, leading many of Christ's sheep to be fed in fields fertile with enticing poison.

But it will be too late for America as we know it when "experts" and "authorities"--and even the Church's leaders--finally realize their error. My fear is that we've already crossed a line where Pandora's box cannot be closed. These practices are well-established already in the lives of many teens and young adults, and we are soon to live in a society of sexual barbarians where all types of unspeakable practices are accepted.

Violence, as in Sodom and Gomorrah, accompanies widespread sexual license, already evident in the millions of abortions performed each year. Why are we surprised when violence emerges from behind the closed doors of clinics, and into our schools and eventually, our streets and homes? Decline will be swift and painful and Christians will not escape the trauma in this world. We can look forward to eternity, which in all its glory will be a blessed aftermath. But tribulation here and now is coming unless we turn our society around. Only Christians can do this, for we are the only ones willing to stick it out.

Or so one would think.

There aren't many folks in this fight, but this is why we are. It simply represents the essence of who people are, and who Christ is. We don't know how much impact we can have, but we know we are called to try. It would be encouraging to have more Christians join us.

"Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables."
(2 Timothy 4:2-4 NKJV)