Sometimes, I think people get the wrong impression about me and about the rest of us at Stand Firm. People might think we are gloomy, cranky, and downright cantankerous about the advances of gay marriage and gender multiplication and general inclusion in church and society. They might think our daily prayer offices consist of imprecatory psalms and the Commination. But they couldn’t be more wrong. (Well, I do like imprecatory psalms.) Heck, at times we are downright gay — I mean — giddy about it.
Sure, we would rather our countries and most churches not be in a rush to get gayified and crispy-fried like Sodom and Gomorrah. (Remember God promised not to re-flood the World. He didn’t say anything about not nuking it.) But life is getting so much simpler now. And we have our LBGQTIWHATEVER+ activist friends to thank. Let me count the ways.
1. It is becoming more clear which churches are orthodox.
When you move, isn’t it difficult to find out which churches are orthodox and which not? Well, you can pretty much know the TEC and UCC churches are heretics, but other than that, finding a new church can be difficult. Once it took me months!
But now it is becoming so much simpler. With all the pressure to submit and affirm and celebrate! all things gay and trans, soon you can be pretty sure those churches that refuse to submit are actual orthodox Christians with actual backbones . . . or Westboro Baptist. Don’t join that one.
Oh. You are looking for a supposed “third way” of being “inclusive” that also includes orthodoxy? It’s a mirage. There is no third way. See 2. I told you our inclusive friends are making life simpler! Speaking of which…
2. It is becoming more clear which churches to leave.
Neuhaus’ Law – “Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed” – is not in the Bible, but it ought to be. Those of us old and therefore cynical have seen it all before. First, comes the wails from the willfully sinful for tolerance. So far, so good, I guess. Heck, I’m pretty sinful as you can tell from this article, so I need some tolerance, too.
Then immediately come the calls for “dialogue,” “conversation,” even “holy listening” (I love that one.). At that point, you can start packing your bags and get ready to move Grandma’s ashes if the response is other than, “We have listened, and the answer is NO.”
Be aware that the answer has to be “NO” as in “never, not ever. Do you understand? Then let me make it clear. NO!” Well, if you are Anglican, maybe the answer can be slightly nicer than that. But if the answer is “Not today but let’s keep having this lovely holy conversation. Have I mentioned how much I value dialogue? Let’s have a listening process!” then the next step will surely be that orthodoxy on the contended issues and eventually everything else will become optional.
And I don’t want to see any pious papist smirks from you in the Church of Rome. Because your church is definitely in the “dialogue” phase. Apostasy isn’t just for Protestants, you know.*
What was I saying before I got worked up over popery again? Oh, yes. At the point of optionality, where orthodoxy is optional, you can go ahead and leave because what comes next is heterodoxy is affirmed and becomes the standard. Yeah, there will be tolerance provisions for bigots who disagree. Yeah, right. In about ten or fifteen years, the church leaders will say, “Remember those tolerance provisions? We lied. Submit, bigots!”
Richard John Neuhaus – God rest his soul – wanted to save you all the trouble and simplify your life. So if orthodoxy on marriage or anything else becomes optional in your church, you may go ahead and exercise the option to leave. Before long you won’t have any other option anyway, not if you’re one of those bigoted actual Christians.
3a. Communists, the woke, The Episcopal Church, the Democrat Party, Californians, (Yes, I’m probably repeating myself.) Wheaton College, George Soros, the Deep State, the World Economic Forum, and the FBI won’t like you — the bright side.
Now one may wonder why it would be a good thing for all the nice people listed above not to like your church. Aren’t we all for church growth? How is there a bright side to this?
Well, too often when these sorts of people come to your church, they do not come to repent and become conformed to Christ’s image. They come to conform your church to their image.
The past few years, controlling the mainline denominations has become boring and that those “white evangelicals” did not vote for Hillary in 2016 was oh so very upsetting. So the holy woke and other activist heretics stepped up their infiltration of the more orthodox denominations that were actually still Christian, such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the Anglican Church in North America.
“So, again, what is the bright side?” you may ask. The bright side is if your denomination stands firm and keeps standing firm and, instead of a listening process, has a reality check process and says, “The Bible is right, and somebody’s wrong” in the areas of gender, sex and marriage and wokeness for that matter, the above crowd will not be able to tolerate you for long. They will eventually leave off their infiltration in appalled frustration and will flee, probably flouncing on Twitter as they do so, of course. You will become as odious to them as Westboro Baptist and the KKK. So their infiltration will be much less of a problem.
(This may be one reason overt wokeness seems to be lessening within ACNA, by the way. To their credit, our bishops have reemphasized that we are not budging on marriage and won’t be revoicing about homosexual identity and practice either. That some of the most woke among us have left is not a coincidence.)
Well, one day the FBI might infiltrate your church anyway to try to invent a crime. Wrong thought is so much more important to stamp out than murder and human trafficking, don’t you know. Just be nice to them and give them cake. Or, if you’re really lucky, maybe some activists will interrupt a service or two and have a conniption. But the very young and very old have conniptions in services, too. And there’s nothing wrong with having your worship livened up every once in a while.
3b. Communists, the woke, The Episcopal Church, the Democrat Party, Californians, (Yes, I am definitely repeating myself.) the United Way, George Soros, the Deep State, the World Economic Forum, and the FBI won’t like you — the not-so bright side.
But, yes, there is a not so bright side. All that talk about tolerance years ago and all the talk about diversity and inclusion today? They are lies. Well, to be more accurate, diversity and inclusion do not extend to those who openly disagree with “diversity” and “inclusion.” It’s kinda like that nice Episcopalian lady who years ago asked an orthodox gentleman at a General Convention, “Why don’t you leave so we can be inclusive?” The difference is now we are not just being driven out of an apostatizing church; we are being driven out of society.
Yes, if you are so odious as to think God has not changed his definitions of sin nor marriage, nor has he invented 99 genders, and you still dare to agree with God, the DEI establishment really do see you as bigots to be driven out of society. And the driving out is well under way in case you haven’t noticed.
In a way, that’s good, too. I’m old enough to remember when American Christians could reasonably think persecution was something that happened to Christians in exotic lands. Now it’s becoming as American as organic apple pie.
And persecution can be very clarifying; it does make life simpler in a way. The choices between loving Christ and loving the world become clearer. Knowing how faithful you and your church are is easier when faithfulness comes with a price. And all those verses that say, “Blessed are the persecuted” and “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” don’t seem hypothetical or inapplicable anymore.
So, yes, our totalitarian inclusive friends are making life simpler for us bigoted actual Christians. (Oh. You don’t yet see they are totalitarians? You will!) Of course, we are not the only targets of the inclusive. Totalitarians target everyone including themselves eventually.
So I do hold out hope that as more and more Americans see they are targeted, that enough of them act like Americans and put the DEI cabal in its place for a time at least. But I am not holding my breath on that. We aren’t as American as we used to be, and totalitarians can be rather relentless. And, to steal something from Jemar Tisby, totalitarian evil doesn’t go away, it just changes form and tactics . . . until Jesus returns, of course.
That’s another way our inclusive friends simplify things for us. Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. When the world is going mad, that becomes more obvious.
So have a nice day!
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*I hope I have not offended my traditional Roman Catholic friends by being a bit over the top. I know you are in a difficult situation and pray for you frequently. Please pray for us Anglicans. We need it.
