The tough stance on morality

As I was praying this morning, I felt God put this on my heart, and I think it’s kind of a culmination of what he’s been teaching me a lot lately. In many of my recent Bible studies and writings, I have spoken about the American church’s obsession with morality, how it seems to be the focus of most churches and is the crux of the American believer. Most Christians, and therefore the majority of the American population, believe that Christianity is about being moral, about being a good person. And like I said before, yeah, that’s part of it. But this culture does something to people that is very harmful, and it’s a specific product of people taking a hard stance on morality. Church leaders or just people in general take a tough stance in their speeches, publications, and lifestyles, and contribute to an endless cycle in the Christian world that always drives the unbeliever back to the subject of morality. The appeal of Christianity is not morality. The appeal is not that if you are a Christian you will be a better and more moral person than everyone else.

That is not the attraction because that is not what matters to God. He cares about our love, our undying and unrelenting devotion to our relationship with him. God has been making me more and more of the opinion that moral issues that do not directly harm others are completely irrelevant to the progress of Christianity and, on a larger scale, to the progress of the world. Just don’t take it out of context. You see, there is a definite line on the leniency of morality that God has drawn. It is as simple as this. Those who are outside the Church, not the kingdom of God who are lost, should never be the object of our judgment. No matter what bad and terrible things they do, we must never make it a matter of morality. God calls us to make it a matter of Love. Remember that God told us: “Three things last forever, faith, hope and love, and of these the greatest is love.” Notice that he did not say our morality or our ability not to sin. We will never, NEVER see America become a Christian nation again until the day the church takes absolutely no stand on morality as it applies to the outside world. When the world sees that the church doesn’t care at all who you are, where you’re from, what terrible things you’ve done, then and only then will we see a revival. At that time, the church will realize that the most powerful and important thing we can do is love the lost with our actions, not with our words and judgments. Only then will Christians accept drug addicts into their homes. Only then will they take the homeless man to buy some alcohol with the money they lent him. Only then will we spread the seeds of God’s love in every interaction we have with the lost.

However, as I mentioned earlier, there is a definite line in the sand. You cross that line the moment you accept Christ as your savior and become a member of the body of Christ. At that time, you are freed from your ignorance and are immediately subject to the judgment of the body of Christ (the church and fellow believers). Within the church, we must hold each other accountable without mercy, always encouraging and encouraging one another in our relationship with Christ. However, when I say ruthlessly, I also don’t want it to be misunderstood. I don’t mean to be ruthless like those who beat each other up for our sins. It is more of a visual image of our efforts. We must tenaciously and unceasingly love God and build our relationship with him.

However, let’s bring this discussion back to judgment and morality, because we should end where we started. I have admitted that we submit to judgment once we enter the body of Christ, yet even among fellow Christians with whom we have a common understanding, we can still act out our judgments and our stance on morality incorrectly. Again, if the appeal of being a member of the body of Christ is that you are ultimately subject to judgment and a moral life, then there is no appeal. Our God is of such a caliber that I cannot accept that his love is unattractive. His love is succulent, overwhelming and addictive in every way. Within the Church, morality must be a means to an end, not an end in itself. By this I mean that our moral life is basic, comes naturally and effortlessly to our relationship with God, and should rarely be the focus of our love for him. If we think of morality and judgment in this way, then really our judgments are not judgments in the typical way we think of them, pointing out what you’re doing wrong and helping to define sin for each other. Rather, our judgments within the church should come in the form of how we can help our brothers and sisters fall even more madly in love with God. Our sins are the product of us stumbling in the shallow waters of our love for God. If we help each other dive deeper into his love, there’s no way we can stumble, just drunk. We do this by encouraging one another to participate in church events, volunteering to help those in need, joining study groups, etc. Thus we judge, leading each other to the love of him, not leading each other to the definition of our sins.