Monday, April 08, 2019

One Christianity and Alternative Forms of Christianity: What Has Happened?

Two term Democrat mayor of South Bend, IN, and presidential hopeful, Pete Buttigieg, made the news this last week talking about "faith," calling his own same-sex marriage "conservative" and something that "moves me closer to God."  Furthermore, he called Mike Pence, "cheerleader of the porn star presidency," and continuing, said:
I'm reluctant to comment on another person's faith, but I would say it is hard to look at this president's actions and believe that they're the actions of somebody who believes in God. . . . I just don't understand how you can be as worshipful of your own self as he is and be prepared to humble yourself before God. I've never seen him humble himself before anyone.
Then today he went further toward Mike Pence:
If you got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me -- your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.
What does Buttigieg hope to accomplish by talking about his own "Christianity" as a homosexual?  Both his and Donald Trump's are not actual Christianity.  Neither.  Buttigieg knows that at least millennial evangelicals could vote for him.  He's attempting to pick off professing evangelicals.  I'm saying this is the condition of evangelicalism today, and the leaders are afraid of a mass exodus of sympathetic to homosexuality.

Hailey Bieber in an interview this last week said her purpose is to 'represent Jesus' in the modeling industry.  In the linked article, she recognizes the contradiction, but this is a similar if not identical alternative form of Christianity as Buttigieg.

For all of Christian history these two above presentations would be in outright, diametric incongruity with the Bible and Christianity, and yet this is where a kind of professing Christianity is today.  Just like there is one truth, there is only one Christianity, the one Christ requires true churches to keep.  What has happened?  A lot.  So many things that it is difficult to put a finger on just one thing.

Today many represent the incongruity in a philosophical way as postmodernism.  It is a helpful category.  Premoderns thought truth came from God, so we know with certainty truth by faith through revelation.  Distinguished from them, moderns said we know by human reasoning or discovery, opting for rationalism.  Postmoderns conclude truth was a social construct, more of just a personal theory, our truth is our truth, so my truth is as good as any other truth.  Modernism was a machine that failed, trampling everyone into the dirt, not turning out well for whatever its basis might be.  With postmodernism, no definite terms, boundaries, or absolute truths exist.  Since everything is in error anyway, and it's not safe to trust conclusions, nothing is absolute, except what the postmodern wants.

The philosophical explanation brings categories and the story of demise.  It chronicles transitions, but it wasn't the cause for permissible multiple massive variations in Christianity.  Judgment begins in the house of God.  2 Peter and Jude provide a biblical explication.

Buttigieg says same sex marriage moved him closer to God and that a hypothetical rejection by Mike Pence, who hasn't said anything to or about Buttigieg that I have heard or read, is a quarrel with Buttigieg's "creator."   Buttigieg doesn't go to scripture at all to defend his claim.  The Bible repudiates homosexuality in no uncertain terms, let alone same sex marriage, based upon God's design as Creator.  God created male and female.  A man leaves father and mother and cleaves to his wife by God's design.  Buttigieg is not arguing from scripture, and apparently he thinks this won't matter to his audience, especially millennial evangelicals based upon his polling.  He gives the following evidence for God "creating" him "gay":
If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. . . .  [I] would have done anything to not be gay, when I started to half way realize what it meant that I felt the way I did. . . . If you had offered me a pill to make me straight, I would have swallowed it before I could get a sip of water.
Buttigieg puts his own feelings on par with revelation from God.  He believes God created him homosexual because he has feelings he says that he really doesn't want to have, even though they in the end make him a better man.  Scripture says just the opposite.  James 1:14 in a classic passage on sin says that "every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed."  Buttigieg's sin originates in his desires.  This isn't God communicating to him, but his own flesh.

A lot of sin is based on feelings someone wishes that he didn't have.  He doesn't want to lie.  He does.  He doesn't want  to react in selfish, angry way.  He does.  He doesn't want to mouth off.  He does.  Postmoderns can say that God said something to them without any evidence, but their own feelings.  Their churches accept this.  Nothing in the Bible or the history of Christian theology matches this view.  It's an man-made and man-centered invention.

Buttigieg's talk isn't Christian.  There aren't several Christianities and you don't get to choose the one you want.  Again, 2 Peter and Jude both expose and foresee this perversion of Christianity.  Jude 1:3-4:
 3 Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. 4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Don't skip the verses.  Go back and read them.  Churches must contend for the faith.  Why?  Ungodly men infiltrate churches, "turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ."  The emphasis in Jude and 2 Peter 2 is the denial of the Lordship of Christ.  Men like Buttigieg want to do what he want to do, which is lasciviousness, and so he uses his feelings to allow for it.  This is turning the grace of God into lasciviousness and denying Jesus as Lord.  Buttigieg becomes lord, does what he wants, not what Jesus wants, and then justifies it.

The way the Lord Jesus Christ rules lives is through scripture through His churches.  Rather than submit to scripture, we see men elevate their feelings above.  This is worshiping the creature rather than the Creator (Rom 1:25).   Very often today churches are embarrassed about scripture.  They don't like what it says.  They don't want to expect or require what it says.  It's easier to accept what people want to do.  This acceptance is their new love.  It isn't love.  It's better to call it sentimentalism, if not just lust.  They say they love each other and they feel love for one another, but their professed love contradicts scripture.

Churches and godly leaders of churches must contend for the faith, which is the one Christianity.  There are no alternatives.  I read someone recently who called the alternatives "the great omission" in contrast to the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20.  The great commission says "teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you," but the alternative Christianity omits this, in so doing, "denying the Lord that bought them" (2 Peter 2:1).

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