One of those, “Wish I had said this, in this way, but there’s no way I could have improved on this statement by Russell Moore –
I think sometimes pastors and leaders simply take whatever they find objectionable in the culture and rail against it. They sometimes use the language of decline, where we’re in the worst situation we’ve ever been in before, and these very dire terms—which is not true. If you look at every generation of the Church you see older people complaining that the next generation is just going to pieces. That’s always been the case in every history of the Church. It’s fear-mongering. It’s easy to stand up and rail against other people’s sins in a way that can cause your congregation, or your Bible study group, or whatever it is that you have responsibility over, to think “Man he is really hard against sin,” when in reality, we’re just hard against other people’s sins, and we don’t have the courage to address the sins that are going on right in front of us. (emphasis added)
Gary again: preaching about THEIR sins is always going to be easier and less likely to get you fired than preaching about OUR sins. This may be why I have heard:
- plenty of warnings against gay marriage, but little about the abuse that happens in Christian marriages;
- a lot of denunciations of hateful Islamists, but little condemnation of Christians who hate the haters;
- a lot about those lazy people on welfare, but little about Christians who spend every spare minute and dollar on their own recreation.
The Bible is a sharp sword, and meant to slice into Our consciences as well as Theirs.
Full article “Engaging the Culture in the New Year,” HERE. Russell Moore was for a while in the news, because he spoke harshly against Christian supporters of Donald Trump, but he is consistently one of the best evangelical spokespersons out there on public ethics.
Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission
