April 30, 2023

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. (Reinhold Niebuhr.)

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When I remarked, at a family gathering, that even the Catholic Church was following the times instead of the Gospel, a smart family member cried out “Thank God!” – adding, “Things are different now – we don’t have black-and-white TV anymore.” This was to me a toying with constants of faith that don’t meet the litmus test of “progress,” a symptom of profound ignorance among those of the “liberal” persuasion.

The scope of meddling with what changes and what does not may be indicated with a few incisive questions: Who would play a game that includes the rule: all rules may be changed? Who would consciously meddle with fundamentals – the givens – of a system designed for a special function, such as powering electronic devices, or setting off a required alarm, or operating the 911 emergency system? Raising the point to the nth, who would vary the constants in math? The answer no one in their right mind would indicate that common sense still prevails, even in a world turned crazy by “liberals” who are disconnected from reality.

Provision for a system that is to continue to function effectively has been called negative feedback. This may be described as a constant looping back of givens to the initial steps of the process, to keep the system from veering off course, becoming unstable, and eventually failing. A thermostat, for example, compares the air temperature to its setting and kicks into action when there is a mismatch between the two, so as to maintain the required temperature. Such corrective action to keep a system true to its function is in most cases more complex, but no less essential.

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Which brings me to the intent of this discussion, which is to point out that fidelity to “the times” assigns one’s loyalties to variables instead of to constants. Skewing priorities this way is hardly something new. It used to be called by the alert “putting the cart before the horse,” or “throwing the baby out with the bath water” or,  in plainer words, discarding what is essential and embracing what is replaceable. Regarding the freedom to change things that affect human beings most critically, a question rises to the top of the list: is there a freedom in society to destroy itself? With regard to the Christian faith, to be specific, the unhinging of its principles from the function to maintain the health of society weakens that function and allows it to fail over time. That such has occurred in America cannot honestly be denied. It has in fact become an article of the culture war between those who follow God and those who defy God.

My opening anecdotal sample of letting the Christian faith cave-in to the times suggests how easy it is to block any constant from interfering with “progress” (however defined) by invoking “freedom,” code word for the license to destroy. With regard to Christianity, the willful and arbitrary subjugation even of the Gospel to goals that are irrelevant, inconsistent, even harmful to the faith is absurdly reckless beyond measure.

Trifling with basics is a habit among those who play with religion (and with reality) the way kids play with toys, tinkering with constants and variables ad lib in preparation for their next adventure in La-La Land. Theologist Kenneth Baker has characterized such dabbling intellectuals by saying that they “seem to be playing around in sand-boxes where they can construct their own worlds that have precious little to do with the world most people must live in, struggle in, and die in.”[i]

Theirs is a false liberalism, one that has been at play for many decades, undermining the foundations of the Christian faith, whether intentional or not. It has been a destructive activity that has made many churchgoers accept a falsified Christianity. For example, it has become common to embrace the mistaken notion that because Jesus conquered sin and because God’s love is unconditional, sin is automatically forgiven. God doesn’t make junk, the argument goes, so it stands to reason that everyone is going to heaven. (Imagine Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, and other monsters of humanity there.) This great distortion of Christian teaching removes from society the requirement for personal accountability for wrongdoing, which is a direct violation of Christ’s command to sin no more [John 5:14]. Deleting personal responsibility from one’s actions encourages the moguls of society to “take charge” and “straighten things out.” Their success is on full display in today’s America.

Ignoring Christian tenets to keep in step with the times – remember, “things are different now, we don’t have black-and-white TV anymore” – makes Christianity a lackey of the times instead of their chief advisor, a function established by Christ to keep society on the right path to material and spiritual sanity, regardless of calendar date.

Faithful Christians have been persecuted since the days that Christ walked the earth. Why such ruthless opposition? What is it about the faith established by Jesus Christ, a faith centered on love of God and truth, on family, on mothers, fathers, and children, on profound respect for human life – all of it set down for posterity by Christ’s witnesses, his disciples, in their gospels – what is it about this faith that makes even the pope mess with the Gospel in obeisance to the times and turns his back on his own church? Why the obliteration of the real Christian message to the world? Faithful followers of Christ, waiting for an explanation, are instead condemned, as they were in Imperial Rome.