In this self service society where personal edification trumps all, there has been a revamping of Christianity going on in the last decade so sweeping that one can scarcely recognize the Christianity in the Bible in certain denominations.
The deadly sins as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, and other issues of immorality have been repackaged to fit with the lifestyle of the 21st century ethics. Many things are no longer wrong, but merely a case of situational ethics where the relativism of the day allows for any type of behavior…..when it’s convenient.
What’s really shocking is how the Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit and the Bible have been revamped into entities that should accept any type of behavior since “God loves everybody”. The expectations of God in the Bible have been replaced with a new standard where God should endorse whatever we humans put before Him because “we’re only human”.
http://suite101.com/article/is-christianity-evolving-a158981
The divorce figures in the Christian church are exceeding that of the secular world. God’s standard for purity has been replaced with a Home Town Buffet human frailties that need to be accepted rather than confessed as the Bible expresses in 1 John 1:9; “if we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us of all righteousness.”
That’s a tough uncompromising standard for many people clinging to moral relativism to accept. Typically people will rewrite their own doctrine that lowers the moral imperative of the Bible. You just can’t expect one to be perfect, can you?
However what many claiming Bible knowledge leaves out is the stipulation that God gives when He states, “be thou perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect”. Something is clearly off the mark, but it isn’t what God has put to standard that is the problem.
Many quality gurus are aware of the “lower standards drives lower performance”. In Phil Crosby’s “Quality is Free”, the expectation of “zero defects” is expected on some jobs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Crosby
“What?”…some anxious folks typically say. Expecting humans to be perfect? Impossible!!
However there are jobs where making one error is not tolerated. Let’s toy with 99% efficiency, something that appears to be high. That is unless you are talking about handling newborn babies in the hospital nursery. One nurse drops 1 child out of a hundred, would that be considered acceptable? It is 99% efficient, isn’t it?
Or how about filling out prescriptions at a pharmacy? Would getting 99 out of a hundred be satisfactory? Or having a railroad crossing working 99% of the time? We humans can deliver perfection when it is expected, we just tend to ignore that zero defects can be accomplished.
God knows that too. But the best part is God allows u-turns and hearts that repent at wrongdoing. One is required to confess, be honestly sorrowful of the sin, and promise to work hard not to repeat the sin in the future. That is the basis for true forgiveness from God and restitution back into good standing. God’s Spirit empowers the individual to combat the temptations of sin. That is the perfection God is looking for.
Christians are not perfect, just forgiven; a standard that ever beckons sinners to turn from their evil nature and be reconciled back into perfect standing with God. That is what God expects of His children, to be sinless through the blood of Jesus who died on the cross.
So instead of rewriting the Bible or the character of the Triune God so that our sorrowful standards can be approved in our own eyes, hold fast to the standard that elevates the human condition to the heights expected and acceptable to God by the standards God conveys in the Bible.
It’s the only righteousness that really counts.
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