Purify Your Bride

Still why did God leave that as a matter of faith? There are things like the Holy Spirit which seem so clear in scripture that nobody could deny it. Why isn’t the truth about the visible body of Christ as clear as that? I guess I shall never know for sure but I have been speculating on a new answer lately. My latest theory involves the temptation infallibility has towards laziness.

When major doctrines are defined by an authoritative church there is a tendancy for people to just accept what the church says and not dig into the spiritual treasure that is behind that teaching. Once we have a dogma we can just learn that and move on. Why try and understand the process when you know where you are going to end up? The reason is that the process gives you a lot more than just the final answer. It is an encounter with God. It enriches you in ways you could never have imagined ahead of time. Still people are lazy. They like shortcuts. A dogma seems like a shortcut.

This seems to work OK as long as the faith is transmitted in a fairly controlled way. Catholic homes, schools, and churches teach the same dogmas and generation after generation accepts them because they are the only game in town. The danger is that the faith could become shallow. It might not be able to stand up to hard times. Ken talked a while back about how Moslem invasions were able to eliminate the Catholic faith so easily. Perhaps this spiritual sloth had something to do with it.

We see it today. Many Catholics are weak spiritually. We blame it on a failure of catechisis in the last generation. But it is more than that. Older Catholics often accepted the teachings of the church but were unable to defend them when challenged. They expected the clergy to do that for them. When the clergy dropped the ball the laity were unable to demand better for their kids and certainly unable to step into the gap themselves and explain why the mass media message was wrong.

The interesting thing is that many protestant churches were immune from this. Some large mainline churches like the Anglicans in England or the Lutherans in Germany did have the same dynamic going but protestant churches by and large could not get by with the lazy approach to catechsis. Why was that? Because they were in close contract with many other Christian faiths. Your church’s authority meant something to you but it meant nothing to the guys at work who went to a different denomination. You needed to be able to fight your corner. So these churches go good at that. They studied the scriptures. They learned the faith. They didn’t just get head knowledge. They got closer to God spiritually at the same time. Even when the doctrines were wrong their faith got stronger.

So when the sexual revolution comes along and mass media invades our homes guess which Christians are better able to stand up under the onslaught? The ones that have worked at understanding and deepening their faith. The vast majority of them happen to be protestants. Countries like France and Spain that had been almost totally Catholic for generations seem to have little defense againse secularism. It is in the protestant USA that you find the resisitance. You find some in Catholic countries like Ireland, Poland, and the Phillipines as well but that is another story.

My thought is that if God had not left room for protestantism the church might not be able to stand up to modernity as well as it has. Will protestantism continue to stand up generation after generation? I have my doubts. But there is no doubt that the current fight for the faith is led by protestants. Maybe God knew their internal squabbling would make them valuable fighters.

Unity around the chair of Peter is going to be needed to survive the next round. I think that is why God is calling so many protestants to convert now. The post modern attack is not just throwing sexual talk and images into people’s homes. It is questioning the truth claims of Christianity. It is centered around the lack of unity Christians have around what the truth is. That is a storm we can only weather if our house is built on the rock. In spite of the fact that protestant churches look the strongest right now their foundation is deeply flawed and they can fall quite quickly.

For me, understanding why those churches look stronger is important because you would noramlly expect the true, visible church of Jesus Christ to look stronger than bible churches. Being in the right church is part of what it takes to make a strong Christian. It is not the whole answer. It certainly won’t save us if we get lazy and don’t develop a deep, strong, personal faith.