Recently, I noticed an online post of a local church that read: “Everyone is welcome! No exceptions. Period.”
Really? Everyone?
What about Cardi B, the “artist” with a number-one hit three years ago titled “W.A.P.” I can’t tell you what the letters stand for, much less share the lyrics.
They are too obscene. Depraved.
Would she be welcome to come attend that church? To sing at it? To influence other believers in her views on sexuality?
In 2020, when the song came out, it was the number-one hit on Billboard’s Hot 100. It had 732 million streams in that year alone. It received multiple awards and was praised for the “sex-positive” message of the lyrics as well as for the “empowering” message on sexuality for women. To date, the official YouTube video for the song, with obscene images added to the obscene lyrics, has been viewed over 500 million times.
The song was a direct, intentional, frontal assault on the virtue of purity.
Would she be welcome? Would the people who love the song be welcome?
What about Admiral Rachel Levine, the man who pretends to be a woman and who is the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services? At one time, he was married. He has two children from that marriage. He’s now divorced and serves as the number one proponent in the Biden Administration for “gender-affirming care” for children.
That is, Levine says we all should affirm the view of any child who announces that he or she was born in the wrong body, that he is really a she or she is really a he.
Levine claims that “gender-affirming care” is overwhelmingly preferred by the medical community. This doesn’t mean simply affirming the child verbally. Levine means providing puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and even cosmetic surgery for children.
What Levine says is not true. Gender-affirming care is not overwhelmingly preferred. Nor is such care supported by existing scientific evidence. It is more wishful thinking, more fantasy, than fact.
Levine directly denies God’s creation order, “male and female, He created them.”
Would he be welcome in that church to spread his views among the sheep? Would Levine’s acolytes be welcome? What about the doctors who prescribe hormone therapy and the surgeons who remove healthy organs from the confused youth?
Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple. Would the welcoming churches let them back in? No exceptions, right?
Where does Matthew 18:15-17 fit in with the welcoming attitude?
“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
(Wouldn’t treating them as “a pagan or a tax collector” mean throwing them out?)
There has been a lot written in recent years about how the church should stay out of politics. They should not take sides in elections. They should not support one candidate over another. Andy Stanley is one of these voices. In his book “Not In It to Win It,” he says Jesus did not expect his followers to agree with each other on everything. Instead, Jesus called us to love others unconditionally.
I wonder how the American pastors in the 1770s, the pastors who openly spoke out against King George III from the pulpit, would have reacted to Stanley’s views.
Stanley sounds like the leaders of the German church who justified their silence in the face of Hitler’s increasing persecution of Jews, the Roma, of anyone who disagreed with him. It is not the church’s job to govern but to submit to the authorities over them, they said.
In some ways, what is happening to the churches today seems worse than what happened in the German churches of the 1930s. Our churches are not just remaining silent on cultural and political trends that go against biblical teaching.
Our churches are inviting these biblically alien ideologies into our churches. Major denominations have embraced same-sex marriage, endorsed transgender identities, adopted silence on abortion, and ignored the depraved sex education being taught to today’s youth.
People who hold these views are being invited into our churches without any challenge to their worldview, without calling them out, without teaching them to confess and repent.
Grace without repentance is not the gospel message, is it?
Do I have this wrong?
We are all recipients of God’s unconditional love. But are we also granted unconditional membership in His Church? I don’t think so. We are all sinners, and all are welcome to become members, but aren’t there conditions to that membership? (See John 3:16; Luke 9:23; Acts 17:30; 2 Peter 3:9; Galatians 2:20-12; and Romans 6:8)
As Christians, we are called to love everyone, even our enemies, even Cardi B, even Admiral Levine. But those who refuse to submit to what the Bible teaches, those who stubbornly remain unteachable, still remain our enemies.
But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Peter 2:1
