Are Christians Redefining Sin in the Name of Love?

Redefining biblical doctrine to suit what we personally think is loving, gracious, or kind is wrong. Christians are called to love others. They are also called to kill sin in their lives and support fellow believers in godliness with all gentleness and compassion, not to give in to sin and pronounce it as good.
Many Christians today seek to love those who feel judged by the words they find in the Bible. People search the Scriptures in an attempt to prove that certain beliefs they want to hold—or certain actions they want to keep doing—are okay in God’s sight. Lifestyles Christians previously and universally viewed as sinful according to the Bible are now increasingly tolerated, accepted, and even celebrated.
Yet, things that make us feel good are not always good for us. In her Gospel Coalition article, “Love Your Neighbor Enough to Speak Truth,” Rosaria Butterfield writes:
The supernatural power that comes with being born again means that where I once had a single desire—one that says if it feels good, it must be who I really am—I now have twin desires that war within me: “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Gal. 5:17). And this war doesn’t end until Glory.
The Christian life is a struggle, because now there is new spiritual life where there was once just the flesh. This flesh, which God originally made good, is now corrupted because of Adam’s disobedience and fall in the garden of Eden (Gen. 2:16–17; 3:1–19). The Holy Spirit now indwells all believers and is doing the work of sanctification in their lives. This is a lifelong process of dying to the flesh and living unto God.
It is not easy to give up the things in life that we love, but if they are opposed to God’s will, this is what Christ calls us to do:
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matt. 10:37–38)
Love and keeping Jesus’ commands go together. Jesus told his disciples:
You Might also like
-
The 7 Most Outrageous Moments of the World Economic Forum 2024
The 2024 World Economic Forum became a coming-out party, displaying the WEF’s love of paganism. WEF concluded its Wednesday forum on “Climate and Nature” by inviting a shaman to carry out a pagan ritual for the healing of the planet, because “the healing is spiritual.” The moderator, Gim Huay Neo, closed the discussion by inviting “a very special guest,” Chieftess Putanny Yawanawá of Brazil’s Yawanawá tribe, whose “cultural and spiritual identities” let them “protect and steward the lands… over thousands of years.” Neo continued, “We know that in order for us to look forward and build this future, we also need to look back and harness the wisdom of our ancestors.”
Although legacy media apologists insist the World Economic Forum (WEF) “has no authority to enforce” its mandates, the WEF claims it unites “the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.”
The WEF’s most recent conference left no doubt that the world should resist being shaped by the secular-progressive, globalist agenda on display, included taking part in a pagan ritual, advocating for a universal and biometric ID and a global tax, “public-private” government censorship of the internet, and reining in elected officials’ ability to deliver for their voters.
The World Economic Forum held its 54th meeting in Davos, Switzerland, from January 15-19, 2024. Its speeches included Al Gore tying climate change ideology to the Bible, John Kerry’s daughter rambling incoherently, and John Kerry boasting that “no one politician anywhere in the world can undo” efforts to impose the WEF’s agenda. Here are some of the conference’s most significant moments.
1. A Pagan Ritual
The 2024 World Economic Forum became a coming-out party, displaying the WEF’s love of paganism. WEF concluded its Wednesday forum on “Climate and Nature” by inviting a shaman to carry out a pagan ritual for the healing of the planet, because “the healing is spiritual.”
The moderator, Gim Huay Neo, closed the discussion by inviting “a very special guest,” Chieftess Putanny Yawanawá of Brazil’s Yawanawá tribe, whose “cultural and spiritual identities” let them “protect and steward the lands… over thousands of years.” Neo continued, “We know that in order for us to look forward and build this future, we also need to look back and harness the wisdom of our ancestors.”
None of the panellists, who represent the power and wealth created by Western civilisation, were descended from the Yawanawá tribe. Nor do most Americans have any desire to live like the Yawanawá tribe, whose entire population consists of about 1,200 people in 12 villages.
Chieftess Putanny began her healing ritual by saying she represented “the voice of all the forest people” and “the voice of the forest.” She then asked the crowd of elite secularists to “hold hands and unite our hearts, unite our thoughts in the same direction for healing of the planet. And the healing is spiritual.” She then rubbed her hands together, chanted an incantation, and proceeded to breathe on the foreheads of the panellists. Some of the WEF’s secular elitists, not knowing how to react, briefly broke out into applause.
The recipients of the shaman’s spirit included Klaus Schwab’s wife, Hilde Schwab; the president of the World Bank Group, Ajay S. Banga; the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva; the CEO of IKEA, Jesper Brodin; billionaire André Hoffmann; the moderator, Neo; and one figure of particular importance to evangelical Christians.
“Fun little cameo for Southern Baptists. See the second person on this panel, having a pagan ritual performed over her? That is Dr Katharine Hayhoe, who promotes climate alarmism among evangelicals,” noted evangelical investigative journalist Megan Basham.
She noted the president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Danny Akin, “has promoted [Hayhoe] to students” of the ministry school. Hayhoe spoke at a 2021 SEBTS conference on “The Goodness of Creation and Human Responsibility,” where she said she embraced climate change because of her faith, and was interviewed on the seminary’s “Christ and Culture” podcast.
(Interestingly, Al Gore would also tie climate alarmism to the Bible at the WEF on Wednesday, insisting, “Every night on the television news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.”)
Some may have thought it over the top when Larry Taunton, who attended WEF 2024, referred to its attendees as “members of a godless, secular cult” on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” last Thursday. But those who watched this pagan ritual can hardly find a more fitting illustration of Jesus’s words, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of!” (Luke 9:55). Most Americans do not want anyone possessed of such a spirit making their laws, writing their HR regulations, or teaching their children.
2. A Digital ID to Track Your Whole Life
One of the elitists’ central conceits is that they have the right to surveil every aspect of their subjects’ lives, for their own good. One invaluable tool in the effort is a mandatory identification card that puts as much information as possible at the government’s fingerprints — as noted during WEF’s Thursday panel on “financial inclusion.”
Queen Máxima of the Netherlands (whose grandfather, Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, co-founded the Bilderberg Group in 1954) urged governments to adopt a “ubiquitous” ID card that is “digital” and “biometric.” Such an ID can not only provide surveillance over the financial industry, she said: “It’s also good for school enrolment,” and to see “who actually got a vaccination,” as well as facilitating the redistribution of wealth to see that welfare recipients and other favoured classes “get your subsidies from the government.”
The WEF has discussed digital IDs and apps for years. In 2022, Alibaba Group President J. Michael Evans announced that he was developing new technology “for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint.” This device would monitor “where are they travelling, how are they travelling, what are they eating, what are they consuming on the platform.”
Of course, if the individual can measure his or her carbon footprint, so can the government — which can then microtarget and micromanage individuals’ lives. “We don’t have it operational yet,” Evans said two years ago, “but this is something that we’re working on.”
For his part, former President Donald Trump vowed this month he’d “never allow the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency,” or CBDC. “Such a currency would give the federal government absolute control of your money,” a proposition he called a tool of “government tyranny” and “a dangerous threat to freedom.” (He credited his position, which he adopted the day after the Iowa Caucus, to Vivek Ramaswamy.)
3. A Global Tax
True global governance requires money and authority — and the WEF discussed measures that would expand both at your expense. One speaker at the 2024 World Economic Forum advised that global bodies impose, not one, but two global taxes on the entire world.
“Let’s start taxing carbon,” advised Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard at Friday’s WEF panel on “global risks.” She added that governments should enact “not just [a] carbon tax. The UN General Assembly has adopted a resolution … on the necessity to have a global tax regime, so that actually we can raise the money required for all [the UN’s proposed] changes. … Let’s tax the corporate interests.”
The Biden administration took the first step toward such a tax in 2021, when it supported a “Global Minimum Tax.” The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) agreed to an outline on a 15% tax, which would allow foreign nations to tax US-based corporations. According to the OECD’s latest update, 55 nations have begun adopting the putatively voluntary guidelines, “with the rules coming into effect in 2024.”
President Joe Biden has also taken advice from carbon tax advocates. The Obama-Biden administration’s science czar, John Holdren — who wrote a book outlining an Orwellian global regime, including forced abortions for Americans with discredited climate alarmist Paul Ehrlich — “worked closely with the Biden campaign,” according to The New York Times.
Read More
Related Posts: -
The Evangelistic Shift
Once the issue of trans identities arose, an openness to traditional Christian accounts became more costly….The social costs for progressive non-Christians of simply expressing an openness to or curiosity about traditional forms of Christian belief became much higher.
When I first started writing online in the early 2010s, most of what you might term the evangelistic openness I saw in media culture was coming from the political or cultural center-left.
A columnist at the New York Times came to faith.
A religion writer from Vox did as well.
Additionally, there were editors at both Vox and the New Yorker who were part of PCA or ACNA congregations. A number of other prominent writers in elite media seemed open to faith.
I remember hearing one such figure, now at the Times with quite a large platform, interview all three of Rod Dreher, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Patrick Deneen within about a 12 month stretch in the late 2010s. Hearing some of his questions, particularly in his conversation with Dougherty, had me genuinely wondering if he was close to conversion.
This was also, of course, the tail end of Tim Keller’s ministry at Redeemer. Given Keller’s success as a church planter and ecosystem builder in New York and given New York’s significance culturally, much of this era may well be tied up in Keller’s presence and Redeemer’s ministry.
Yet if you look around today, something has shifted: To my eyes there is very little evangelistic openness in the center-left world. There are still plenty of Christians to be found, but virtually all of them that come to mind for me are not adult converts and came from Christian backgrounds.
But if you look at the right or the reactionary ends of the political horseshoe where right and left begin to converge, the picture is quite different: Jordan Peterson’s wife is now Catholic. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a one-time new atheist who did events with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, is a Christian. So is Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw.
Meanwhile, figures like Tom Holland and Douglas Murray and Bari Weiss all seem, to varying degrees, interested in Christian faith in a way that goes beyond mere intellectual curiosity.
Moreover, as younger Americans politically polarize by gender, with men tending toward the right and women toward the left, those trends seem to also align with young men going to church in growing numbers even as young women continue to dechurch.
It would be a mistake to suggest this is happening because Christianity itself is “right wing.” In the first place, defining “right wing” is itself a fraught project—is it the “right wing” politics of Dwight Eisenhower or Mussolini? The politics of Reagan or George W. Bush or the politics of Orban or Meloni? Or should we range further afield—what about the “right wing” of D’Annunzio or Disraeli? “Right wing” conceals as much as it reveals in such conversations.
In the second place, one can easily think of any number of political positions one could plausibly assign to the right that do not align at all with historic Christianity. (Matthew Rose’s A World After Liberalism is the essential book to read on this.)
So what accounts for this shift and how should Christians respond?
The answer to the first question might be surprisingly simple: The shift dates back to the growing awareness, acceptance, and promotion of transgender sexual identities in mainstream American culture. This shift, dating to the mid 2010s and probably peaking in the early 2020s, did two things that fundamentally changed the evangelistic landscape for Christians in America. (I know some will argue that the real shift has to do with “wokeness” more than it does trans issues specifically. I don’t find this altogether persuasive both because I think one can disambiguate the different parts of the “woke” package and because I think issues of sexuality strike at the vitals of Christian belief and practice in uniquely complicated and challenging ways.)
The Mid 2010s Evangelistic Shift
First, as acceptance of transgender identities became a litmus test for the American left, the conflict between left wing political ideology and Christianity was redefined and intensified. A left wing media figure in 2015 might be able to signal friendliness to conservative post-liberals, for example, both as a sign of sincere desire to understand the appeal of Donald Trump and as an openness to alternative theories of American social collapse. Social breakdown was, after all, a long-standing concern of many on the American left dating back decades and certainly well-established by the early 2000s when works like Nickel and Dimed and Bowling Alone hit American bookstores.
But once the issue of trans identities arose, an openness to traditional Christian accounts became more costly: Christianity was no longer seen as a plausible conversation partner with left-wing political concerns around public justice. Instead, it became regarded as a threat to the lives of transgender individuals that made it impossible for trans people to publicly exist as their authentic selves. The social costs for progressive non-Christians of simply expressing an openness to or curiosity about traditional forms of Christian belief became much higher, in other words.
Read MoreRelated Posts:
.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{align-content:start;}:where(.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap) > .wp-block-kadence-column{justify-content:start;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);row-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);padding-top:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);padding-bottom:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd{background-color:#dddddd;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-layout-overlay{opacity:0.30;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}
.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col,.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-sm, 1rem);}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col > .aligncenter{width:100%;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{opacity:0.3;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18{position:relative;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning. -
Dead Men Talking – Part 6
Written by David S. Steele |
Sunday, July 2, 2023
May you learn from them, be inspired by them, and be challenged by them. When you run across a new name, dig in and learn something new about one of the great heroes of the Christian faith. But ultimately, my encouragement is this: Follow the dead guys to the cross. The cross is where they want us to go! Dead men are talking.The heroes of church history can rightly inspire us, motivate us, challenge us, and fuel our resolve for living the Christian life. But in the final analysis, these godly people remind us about the power of the gospel, and in so doing, lead us to the cross of Christ. “For in the cross of Christ, as in a splendid theater,” Calvin says, “the incomparable goodness of God is set before the whole world. The glory of God shines, indeed, in all creatures high and below, but never more brightly than in the cross.” Nothing would please the French Reformer more than when followers of Christ stand humbly at the foot of the cross.
Every one of the dead guys we have learned about over the last several days lived a long time ago; a time when everything was different. Cultures were different. Clothing styles were different. Technology was virtually non-existent, at least by our standards. There was no internet, no television or radio. No motor cars or airplanes. Almost everything was different.
Read More
Related Posts: