Rampant Immorality… Christian Punishment?

Posted by Lorren on November 19, 2008

I was listening to the Way Of The Master Podcast earlier today, and I heard an interesting quote… I think it was from Jon Piper, but I could be wrong. It was along the lines of “somebody said that if we allow abortion and gay marriage, then God will punish us… but abortion and gay marriage are the punishment.” That got me to thinking.

The Bible says that “if my people, which are called by my name, shall repent, and turn away from our sins, then I will hear them, and heal their land.” I’m paraphrasing from memory here. He said this to the people of Israel. If you remember your Bible, the Israelites never completely drove the foreigners out of their land. The foreigners had their own gods and own way of life… perhaps they were fornicators and practiced infanticide, that wouldn’t really be unbelievable. God didn’t ask for everybody in the borders of Israel to repent and pray, he asked his people to do so.

So perhaps the problems with our society today lies with the Christians. We can’t blame non-Christians for wanting gay marriage… they don’t know any better. All they know is that they love each other, and they don’t see their feelings to be any different than that of a husband and wife. There really is no good reason that will change their minds… they don’t believe in our Bible. Many don’t believe in sin. You can’t force someone to your way of thinking.

But what about us Christians? Are we any better? God told us that we are to repent and pray… are we doing that? Do we live holy, repentant lifestyles? Or are we a lot like our lost friends?

Christians often like to talk the talk, but forget to walk the walk. We say adultery is bad, but do we watch it on television? Do we go to movies and laugh about it? Are we okay when people blaspheme the Lord on television or in the movies? Does everything that we watch pass the Philippians 4:8 test (whatsoever things are good, lovely, pure, holy, think on these things)? No? I can be guilty of this too, but if Christians stopped watching and listening to television, music, movies, and magazines that glorify this stuff, some of these media companies would go out of business.

What about gossip? Do we gossip about our friends? Do we gossip about celebrities? Most of us like a good train wreck, but how does that make us look to our lost friends? Does that set a good example to baby Christians that we might know?

How do we educate our kids? Do we send them to schools where homosexuality is taught as normal and abstinence is an alternative lifestyle? Are our children’s friends good influences? There are Christian schools out there (some are better than others) and there is the homeschooling option. We don’t have to send our kids out to the wolves when they’re still trying to figure out their own belief system.

Tomorrow I’m teaching my daughter about Richard Allen, who was born a slave and then became a preacher. While he was still a slave, he told all the other Christian slaves on the plantation that they needed to do their best as they worked, because they weren’t working for their master any more, they were working for the Lord. Do we give 100% at the workplace? Christians should be the hardest working, most honest, and should have the most integrity at the workplace.

Are we selfish? Materialistic? Do we love God more than anything, or do we want to fit in more than anything? Is our goal in life to serve God, or did we get saved because we wanted “fire insurance”?

I’m guilty of many of these points myself, and none of us can truly live up to God’s standards. But shouldn’t we try our best to serve God all the time in every way? We should do our best to follow God, even if it means that we are different. God said that he would heal the land if his people repented and prayed. Perhaps if we all did that, we’d start to see changes.