The issue resolves itself in two principles.
One, the Principle of Influence If Christians don't change the unsaved, they will soon change us. And don't we see in many churches today ideas, habits and relationships foreign to Bible teaching? In 2003, evangelical Wheaton College decided to allow student dancing on campus and faculty drinking and smoking off campus. And why? Dancing because it had been an important factor in student lives before they came to Wheaton. Drinking because a 1991 state law forbade discrimination against employees who used “lawful products.” Let’s see: dancing was allowed because it REFLECTED society; and drinking was allowed because STATE LAW said prohibiting it was discriminatory!? While we may or may not wish to make an issue of either practice, we must question the reason on which Wheaton officials made the decision. Should we EVER determine Christian decisions based on secular perspectives? Indeed, nothing is more mortally wrong than to adjust our expectations downward to the morality society accepts and practices. Two, the Principle of Purpose God did not design Christians for certain work. Before and during World War II a group of devout Christian intellectuals met weekly in Germany to discuss ways to bring moral regeneration to the nation. Whatever they suggested, however, they refused to even consider assassinating Hitler—though they had no explanation how change could come while Hitler lived. But with our respect for human life, we’re not designed to be assassins. Neither are we designed to be experts on global warming, as some evangelical leaders advertise themselves. We are qualified to tell environmentalists that the creation wants to be incinerated, not preserved. For in being burned it will be renewed as the eternal home of God’s redeemed, not simply the temporary home of fallen, mortals. We’re not designed to be economists, but we are qualified to warn people against greed and materialism that make a god of wealth and possessions. We’re not designed to be geneticists, but we are qualified to know that life begins at conception, and that homosexuality is a learned, not an inborn behavior, and therefore a sin, not an alternative lifestyle. No…we’re not made for some roles—which anyone can fill. But we’re fearfully made for others that only we can fulfill. We are made to see spiritual truth and meaning where others see only facts and statistics. And in those spiritual insights we enlighten the spiritually blind and educate the spiritually illiterate. And only we can! Fini
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