Haven't we already read this news before?

Presbyterian Church Votes To Allow Gay Marriages

I guess God didn't get a vote....

These sort of news articles have become so common place that they are blurring together. I can't keep track of which "mainline church" has taken the next step in "inclusion" of sinful behavior anymore in their race to the bottom.

What does this mean for the church? We share a cultural assumption that we are all basically on the same team even though groups like the PC-USA and ELCA have been talking about something very different for a very long time. Standing for the opposite of Scripture and tossing the name "Jesus" into your website occasionally doesn't work for mormonism and it doesn't work for "mainline" denominations. As the church we need to "come out from among them". That is not an advocacy of disunity in the church, it is a call for the church to disentangle itself from those who advocate for what the Bible condemns. We can't have "meaningful dialogue" with those who would rather give a damning approval to someone rather than risk their reputation to tell them a hard truth.

What is the end game here for those stampeding back to the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah? What will happen when the novelty of being permitted to "marry" wears off and is no longer the cause du jour? Will these so-called progressives find a new cause to champion? Full inclusion for polygamists? Joyful embrace of serial adulterers and fornicators (although that already seems to have happened)? More likely they will simply fade away into nothingness, a cultural relic that served a purpose and is no longer needed.

When a faith can mean anything you want it to mean, it stops meaning anything at all and that my friends is the definition of meaningless. If you think people will keep investing time on Sunday morning and money in offering plates for something that they and everyone else knows is meaningless you are fooling yourself. You only need to look to Europe to see that lived out, where cathedrals are the tombs of dead religion, good only for tourists. The ultimate goal here is not "inclusion", it is the undermining of a Gospel that makes claims that are unpalatable. I don't think "LGBT" advocates really care about getting married in the eyes of a God they feel free to remake in their own image at will. They simply don't want anyone else to think that what they do in their bedroom is sinful and evil. Many sincere but tragically wrong religious people have happily helped them on the way to this goal and are no  longer useful.

It is time we keep the oil in our lamps and prepare for a world that looks a lot more like what we should expect as followers of Christ, a world where we will see, as we have so many times in the history of the church, God's people beset on all sides and no where more so than by the most religious people of the culture. Wake up church, the world has changed and we are in danger of being caught unaware. Perhaps we already have.