Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For June 23, 2021

 June 6

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost quotation of an article by Kyle Borg on the coming persecution of the Church in America. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Article by Kyle Borg:

https://gentlereformation.com/2021/05/07/preparing-for-the-stewardship-of-persecution/

The article cited pays attention to what is necessary persecution for righteousness sake and what isn't. And none of that discussion appears above.

But in neither article is there a recognition for how we Christians have merited unnecessary persecution because of the Church's history of persecuting others. Therefore, whenever the big persecution of the Church arrives, we will have to distinguish between what is unnecessary persecution due to our mistreatment of others from what is necessary persecution because people oppose the Gospel and not just what the Gospel has been wrongly associated with by us Christians.

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June 12

To R. Scott Clark and his article that quotes Cart Trueman's article that strongly condemns Pride Month and how it reflects poorly on the West. In that article, Trueman compares what he regards as disgraceful pride in hedoniism with the ordination of a seminary graduate who had served in the Armed forces. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Carl Trueman's article can be found here

    https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/06/pitiful-pride

As I read Trueman's article on the First Things website, I was strongly reminded of the parable of the two men praying from Luke 18:9-14 (see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+18%3A9-14&version=NIV   ).

As the parable puts it, in the one corner we have the religious professional who not only brags about his own righteousness, he thanks God that he is not like that champion sinner, the tax collector. The tax collector could only beg for mercy because he was so aware of his sins. 

So which person did Trueman resemble in is article? Our judging of others in comparison with confessing our own sins is a barometer for how aware we are of our own sins and how much we are looking to and for God's mercy in Christ.

In I Cor 5, Paul ends the chapter by stating that his concern is with the purity of the Church, not the purity of society. He is only concerned with disciplining those in the Church, not those in society. 

Society has both believers and unbelievers. So why should we focus so much on the sinners in society? Is it because it distracts us from our own sinfulness or is it so we, either as individuals or as the Church, feel superior to those outside the Church?

But Trueman's article also reminds me of how the authoritarian personality is described. The authoritarian personality shows hostility to those who think differently and who break convention. It is fixated on power and, in another way, on violence and sex (see https://www.psychologistworld.com/influence-personality/authoritarian-personality).

Certainly the LGBT lifestyle and pride are contrary to the Scriptures. But we have to decide whether our response to  the LGBT community will be governed more by a penchant for authoritarianism and/or self righteousness or will our response be guided by the scriptures and how they guide us to have love for sinners and a strong awareness of our own standing before God as sinners.