Blatant Immorality in the Church

BLATANT IMMORALITY

IN THE CHURCH

I Tim.6: ⁶ But godliness with contentment is great gain.

⁷ For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
⁸ And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.
⁹ But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
¹⁰ For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

The western evangelical church has conveniently outlined moral absolutes in sexual terms and avoided outlining them in terms of money. It has been a clever diversion to emphatically point to the cultural deviations from Biblical standards of morality in the sexual realm while engaging and enjoying the deviations from Biblical standards in the realm of money. It continues to be most self serving to allow yourself the widest breach of Biblical truths while exacting justice for those miscreants who breach the Biblical truths that you do not breach. In common parlance that is called hypocrisy.

But Jesus and the New Testament as a whole has much to say about wealth, money, and the allurement of material things. Sometimes we treat sexual commands as absolutes while we treat commands concerning money as suggestions or guidelines. Of course there is a convenient reason for such a double minded view of Scripture. When Scripture deals with sins that we ourselves are not committing then we stand firmly upon their literal meanings including energetically applying them to those who are observably committing those sins. But when Scripture ventures into our own lives and practices we often treat them gingerly and with kid gloves and rarely do we take them literally or with the same energy as we did the others.

And so it is with money. We in America live in a culture consumed and driven by money. The system is designed to accommodate the rich while the poor sometimes get some help that is just enough to soothe consciences. But even the poor are enslaved by the love of money. The love of money runs over America like lava from a volcano and the populace swim eagerly in it with hopes of increasing in their wealth. And the church by and large swim right along with them.

In fact, a large portion of the church believes and teaches that it is God’s will to prosper His people through their tithes and offerings. And that teaching is not just within the so called “prosperity” crowd, it is also taught among your run of the mill evangelicals. Subtly, cleverly, and with an ingenious cut and paste approach to Scripture, the western church has made room for whetting their beaks in the cesspool of greed and avarice while still claiming to “believe the Bible”. When evangelicals suggest that God has blessed America they mean primarily in the realm of wealth. Even preachers use the term “American exceptionalism” to indicate a level of superiority somehow given by God and always tethered to money.

The “love of money” is not an emotion, it is a practice that emanates from a lustful heart. And what kind of practices exhibit a love of money? There are many, but here are a few:

When we borrow money to fulfill our lusts.

When we save up sums of money for our own use.

When we are allured by advertisements.

When we seek financial gain.

When we believe all financial gains come from God.

When we believe all financial setbacks do not come from God.

When we worry about money.

When we do not live in moderation.

Money is a colossal stumbling block to believers in the west, but because we blend in so nicely we are blind to our compromise. And because we define morality almost exclusively in sexual terms we remain ambivalent and ignorant to the many ways in which we grieve the Spirit as it pertains to greed, avarice, and all things related to money. Sin is most profound and damaging when it is not only unrecognized as sin, but when it is embraced and practiced as a benign part of a believer’s life. And even more spiritually crippling is when sin is defined as the blessings of God. When that has gained entrance into the church then all spiritual power has been lost.

Money, when loved and used selfishly, represents humanism. It openly implies that we not only devalue the eternal, but even more grievous we do not actually believe in the eternal regardless of our doctrinal lip service. If you read the New Testament through in several sittings, and if you write down the verses that pertain to sins about money, you will find an amazing collection that compare in volume and in magnitude to the verses dealing with sexual immorality. The first great sin in the early church resulted in two deaths. It was lying to the Holy Spirit about money.

We have rewritten God’s Word in order to accommodate our western lifestyles. All of us. And because we view money through western and capitalist prisms we feel no conviction about borrowing great sums of money when we feel we need to move up materially. In fact, churches borrow millions of dollars from the fallen banking system because they can no longer bear packed auditoriums which Chinese believers could only dream about. So what are we to say about our brand of Christianity? We must admit it has bowed to the surrounding culture.

So the next time your hear a preacher speak out forcefully about homosexuality (he dare not say much about divorce) see if he addresses the sin of greed and avarice or the love of money. You will see that the church has used sexual sins to provide a diversion to her many sins concerning money. Of course if the preacher dares step into that realm he runs the risk of compromising his own “salary package”. But as long as the evangelical community lives well within the accepted parameters set by the culture we will continue to practice a redundant expression of the religion called Christianity without the power promised and displayed in the Book of Acts as well as in many revivals throughout church history.

But we can always continue to castigate the gay community or the pro-choice crowd. Or we can support and participate in a fallen political system which wastes obscene amounts of money just to change faces every four years. Either way, we can employ windows and not mirrors.