Has the Church got the back bone?

‘Rise in reports of children sexually abusing children’ 

 

So went the headline on the BBC NEWSBEAT page of their web site for 23^rd May 2013  

It went on to say; “A growing number of children are being sexually abused by other children, say charities.  They say their helplines have seen a big increase in calls from young people who are being abused. freedom of information figures obtained by the NSPCC say more than 5,000 children were reported to police in England and Wales as abusers over the last three years… Some of those reported were as young as five. More than half of the offences were classified as serious and included rape.”

We encourage little girls to dress up in provocative clothes.  We use ‘celebrities’ as the life-model we wish to follow, many of whom have dubious moral behaviours.  TV before the watershed becomes ever more explicit as we continually move the goal posts of what is acceptable, and we continue to sexualise our primary school children with sex-education classes of a yet more graphic nature.  In some cases we even allow just-pubescent girls to go on the pill so that they can be safely sexualy active.  Does it not occur to anyone that such allowances sanctions early sex amongst our children?  We then become shocked to read the headline concerning child-on-child sexual abuse.  When did two and two stop making four?  Why cannot the left hand see what the right hand is doing?  In part at least I put the fault for this firmly at the door of the Christian church.

I was asked by a colleague recently whether in the light of all the moral, social and spiritual liberality going on in the country today whether I thought we had any hope as a nation any more. 

For me at least, it is without question that this nation through consecutive political leaderships of all parties has wilfully and increasingly turned its back on God. I believe the word “wilfully” is the most damning word in that statement. Abortion, easy divorce, euthanasia, sex-education in school, attempts to rewrite the basis for marriage…. All these and much more have been ways which an increasingly decadent society led by increasingly liberal, immoral leaderships over decades have led us to the place we are today.  God is not mocked, and we think we can get away with our current depravities – not so.

 

Like an incoming tide I expect the waves of God’s judgment to increase year on year, whether that be financial brokenness or natural disasters.  There maybe brief respites to allow us to reflect, the bible says:  “(God) is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. “ (2Peter 3:9) but if we do not listen to God’s repeated warnings we are indeed in big trouble.

Can the church of Christ turn things around in this country? Clearly that is a possibility under God’s divine sovereignty. But will it?  Now that is a different question.  Given the increasingly liberal and often divided stance taken by our denominations on a whole host of moral and social issues I doubt whether frankly it has the back bone for the fight!  It has been a long time since we had any true ‘leaders’; watchmen (and women) who speak up with power and conviction.  Indeed I am not sure the church wants to even hear them anyway!  Into that vacum will step cheap champions.  Remember, we have only got where we are today because the church has not stood up and said, “thus far and no further”.  Martin Luther once famously said “Here I stand, I can do no other”.  It is not a sentiment which has found resonance in the heart of the church in this country for many decades.

It all sounds rather depressing I know but frankly I cannot see a solution to our dilemma.  The odd ‘ark’ of refuge may appear as in recent stories of revival at Cwmbran in Wales but I would be surprised to see a national turn around. 

My one ray of hope is that maybe, beyond our sight, God is at work. I am heartened by God’s words to Elijah when he felt he was all alone and there was no hope; “I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him." (1 Kings 19:18) I pray that God’s “thousands” are being prepared by him to rise up.