Why call your religion Christian if you don’t want to obey Christ? – Attempts at Honesty

If you are going to go against the plain reading of Scripture and two thousand years of tradition on the core issues of Christianity, then why bother to claim your religion as Christian?

I understand that those who identify more closely with current cultural norms have conflict with traditional Christianity. The most obvious example of this is the current protest against the definition of marriage as a one-man-one-woman relationship. Yet this is the traditional view of Christianity and the stated position of the Church’s founder, Jesus Christ.

Now, if you do not want to submit to the teaching of the church,  no-one is forcing you to attend or otherwise associate with any Christian church or organization. You are free to choose whatever expression of religious devotion that appeals to you. But, if you choose to embrace Christianity, please know that Christians are called to be obedient to Jesus Christ and we do not have the freedom to pick and choose which Scriptural commands we will obey.

Christianity has operated within the boundaries established by Scripture since its foundation. We may argue over some of the lesser points, but there is a core of belief that all Christian groups share. That core of belief is what C. S. Lewis referred to as Mere Christianity.

To operate outside these core beliefs, the belief system then ceases to be Christian. One of these core beliefs is that marriage is the foundation upon which society is built. Marriage is an institution established by God and designed by God to join one man to one woman. If you doubt this, please check the first two chapters of Genesis.

You will also notice in Genesis 1 and 2 that marriage was established before man sinned. Marriage was God’s plan from the beginning. The fact that we have tarnished the institution through divorce and infidelity does not reduce the importance that God places upon marriage. Nor does our inability to do marriage well provide just cause for the redefinition of it.

Jesus told us in John 14:15, “if you love me, keep my commandments.” While none of us keeps them perfectly, we should at least have the stated desire to keep them and should be working to grow in obedience to them. If you do not want to submit to the demands of Scripture, then why claim to be Christian? Feel free to call your end product whatever you want, but it will not be Christianity.

Perhaps I do not understand the intensity of the difficulty that same sex attraction must present. It is never easy to be told that what you want is contrary to what God wants for you. I do not pretend that dealing with this is easy. I am sure that it is not.

But, we are called to fight against our rebellious tendencies and submit to God, even in the areas in which it seems impossible to do so. Sexuality is at the core of our being and difficulties with sexuality are hard to overcome. Yet, difficulty does not relieve us of the responsibility to pursue the right path.

So, Episcopalians and other groups that have already compromised or are soon to do so, understand that by fighting against traditional marriage, you are fighting against the very Christ you claim to serve. It is at that point that what you pursue ceases to be Christianity and we would all be better served if you just called it something else.

God is not fooled, we are not fooled and a world that has a desperate need for the love of Jesus is not fooled. The manipulation you do to Scripture can best be compared to a bad comb-over. Only the bald guy is fooled into thinking that it looks good.