Clergy Column

President Obama’s recent fly-swatting episode on national television provoked a response among some regarding the rights of animals. Shortly afterwards I heard the comment that there seems to be those who are more concerned for the rights of insects than for the right to life for unborn children.

That comment made me pause. Could that actually be true? I think so.

The current moral state of affairs in our country is the direct result of the absence of biblical teaching in tens of thousands of church pulpits across the land. There is a serious lack of faith in the Scriptures on the part of the men and women speaking in those pulpits.

Entire denominations have taken official positions that demonstrate near total disregard for what the Bible says about numerous moral topics. Unpalatable teachings from irrefutably clear passages are systematically explained away in favor of “tolerance” for the very things the Bible, and God, condemn.

For example, nearly every conceivable sexual sin is largely tolerated today and considered not “sinful.” However, the Bible states, “Because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each

woman her own husband.”

In other words, marriage is between men and women and helps prevent sexual immorality. But multitudes of historically Christian pulpits and congregations are more concerned about acceptance of such sinfulness than the avoidance of it.

Thus our national moral confusion. Tens of millions of church goers, and the vast majority of non-churchgoers in America exhibit very little if any confidence that God actually means what the Bible actually says. Another example: The divorce rate among Evangelical Christians is equal to or greater than that of the general population, approximately 50 percent. This is true in spite of the clear instruction of Christ, commonly repeated at Christian weddings:

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

It is God who joins people together in marriage. Therefore no one has the right to separate them. Hard words in a day of instant gratification and the pursuit of happiness at all costs.

But is it not reasonable to expect Christians, the presumed followers of Christ, to have a lower divorce rate than the non-Christian national average? Why is this not the case? Because thousands of pulpits and millions of congregants ignore the authority of the Bible.

Such anti-biblical thinking is killing America as we have known it, and crucifying American Christianity. Unless our pulpits soon rediscover the word of God and preach it as such, worse things than the right to life for flies and the continued slaughter of the innocents are in store.

The Rev. Keith Doster is the pastor of Grace Fellowship of Pine Grove Mills. He can be contacted at info@gracefellowshippgm.org