Compromised Holiness; Compromised Impact

Every Wednesday we’ll post something to do with doctrine and recovery. Hope it helps.

Compromised Holiness; Compromised Impact

“Do as I say, not as I do” is a message no responsible parent gives a child, for obvious reasons. You can’t expect kids to respect, much less obey, mothers and fathers who blatantly disregard the standards they impose on others. Granted, no one perfectly lives up to every ideal they teach, but in healthy families, parents will generally live in consistency with the values and boundaries they promote in the home. To do anything less would be to sacrifice credibility and, in the end, the ability to influence.

So it is with the church, which is commissioned not only to promote Biblical standards, but to live by the standards it promotes. To do less would be, as with parents who ‘say but don’t do’, an abdication of credibility and influence. And here we should admit, with all due grief, that many believers have fallen short. Way short.

While a large percentage of the Christian population maintains the right position on sexual morality – i.e., that any sexual contact apart from heterosexual marriage falls short of God’s will – within that population, there’s a scandalously high number of believers who are, in essence, ‘saying but not doing.’

Some bleak statistics: 37% of pastors surveyed by Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal admitted that cyberporn use was, for them, a “current struggle.” (Christianity Today, Leadership Survey, December 2001); and 4 in 10 pastors had visited a porn site. (Christianity Today, Leadership Survey, December 2001) Considering that nearly half these pastors admitted using pornography, Jane Austin’s comments on clergy and country are sobering:

“It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.” Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

But the problem extends much further. A poll by Focus on the Family suggested that 17.8% of all “born again” Christian adults in America have visited sexually-oriented websites. (Zogby survey conducted for Focus on the Family, 2000) 63% of men attending a marriage seminar in 2000 admitted to struggling with porn in the past year (two-thirds of whom were church leadership and 10% of whom were pastors (Pastor’s Family Bulletin, Focus on the Family, 3/2000) and Today’s Christian Woman magazine found that 34% of its female readership admitted that they had intentionally sought out pornography on the Internet (From “A Woman’ Struggle, Too” AFA Journal March 2004) Pollster George Barna found the divorce rate among Christians to be essentially the same as among non-believers (“Born Again Christians Just As Likely to Divorce As Are Non-Christians” cited on The Barna Update)

and Regis Nicoll nicely summed up the inconsistency of condemning homosexual sin while winking at such appalling, widespread moral lapses when he wrote:

“ — while evangelical Christians are known for their high view of Scripture, their acceptance of certain behaviors at odds with that standard has not gone unnoticed”. As Robert Hart writes, [Christians] have become more and more accepting of sexual relations that fall far below Christian belief in chastity, to the point where many churches accept unmarried couples, as long as they are not homosexual.” (All Things Examined—Regis Nicoll from BREAKPOINT website The Mercy of Intolerance, January 4, 2008)

Jesus expressed a particular hatred for hypocrisy. His strongest denunciations, in fact, were reserved for religious leaders who preached one ethic and lived another. (See, for example, Matthew Chapter 23) That is not to say He didn’t also speak against a number of vices, both sexual and non-sexual, and his teaching on morality throughout the gospels is strict and unwavering. But His revulsion towards hypocrisy among the religious is clear, and is echoed in Paul’s rhetorical questions to those who congratulate themselves for simply holding God’s standards in high regard:

“You, therefore, who teaches another, do you not teach yourself? You who say, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ do you commit adultery?” (Romans 2:21-22)

And when describing the credibility gap created by hypocrisy, he notes:

“You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” (Romans 2:23-24)

A similarly pertinent question to conservative Christians, then, might be: “You who say immorality is wrong, do you commit immoral acts? You who say marriage is sacred, do you yourselves dishonor marriage?”

Holding to the truth is critical, and commendable, but only when it is held to in our behavior as well as our profession. It’s even a good thing to fight, when necessary, for the truth. Yet the philosopher Alfred Adler reminds us that “It is always easier to fight for our principles than it is to live up to them.” To which we should add: Failure to live up to what we profess severely undermines our credibility; a credibility that can only be regained when we show harmony between what we believe and what we in do, both publicly and privately, because we cannot hope to influence a culture that sees us ignore the values we aggressively endorse. So James, pointing out the folly of knowing the truth yet disobeying it, puts it plainly:

“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” (James 1:22)

To do anything less is to, as James said, deceive ourselves.

But no one else.

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