Gospel to a fallen culture
May 8, 2006

As I was driving home last night, there was a program on the radio where they presented the top 10 items preferred by shoplifters. The study showed that the first place goes to two items actually: CDs [music] and…get ready for this…underwear. Surprised? I said, what? 1.3 million undergarments and CDs were shoplifted last year in the US! Can you believe that? If you think that’s ridiculous, how about this – the most shoplifted book is…the Bible!

Now that got me into thinking, because I do not see any apparent reason somebody would steal a Bible – I don’t think they stole it to read it, I don’t think they stole it to give it as a gift, I don’t think it’s because they wanted to resell it and make some money. They are so inexpensive that you could get a good one for a couple of bucks.

This sad reality pushed my brain into a soul-searching mode. What’s my position when it comes to the Bible? When was the last time I let the Word of God speak to me? This is more than just reading it, it’s letting the Spirit teach and guide you, letting the Word change your life for good and for God!

The rhetoric of many churches today goes like this – there is something wrong with our society, this is a fallen culture. We’ve kicked God out of our personal and public lives and, as a consequence we’ve plunged head first into the deep abyss of immorality and more tragically, amorality. That’s why we have so much violence, racism, crime, hate, etc. It’s because we have turned our backs on God. The solution, they say – nothing new under the sun here, there have been many reconstructivist approaches in the past – is to restore American society on Biblical principles again, and of course that means Judeo-Christian foundations.

You might say – what’s wrong with that? Well, nothing at first sight. The danger comes when this all becomes a political push – legislating morality. And that takes us not only to a point where religion becomes law – and there are many states today that for instance have plenty of blue laws that are simply not reinforced to their full potential momentarily – but also to a point where the definer of morality, which undoubtedly will be the church, will once again mix its ecclesiastical powers with governmental authority to a degree that has produced disaster after disaster at any given time in history, whenever that had occurred. Separation of church and State has always been the only guarantee of freedom of worship and liberty for all.

Recent attempts to legislate morality – found in the rhetoric of many who do politics religiously and religion politically – banning unfortunate realities like abortion, homosexuality, stem cell research, etc. and even the more recent Ten Commandments Day that called for the restructuring of our society and culture based on Biblical principles and the Law of God – all of these are destined to be failures. Why? Simply because morality cannot be legislated – it’s an oxymoron. Moreover, the push for the uplifting of the Ten Commandments is based on an anti-Biblical, misleading and false understanding of for instance the fourth commandment that calls for the observance of the Lord’s Day, the Sabbath, which is described in terms of Sunday observance! Nowhere in the Bible that is ever the case. Both the Old and the New Testament describe and prescribe Saturday worship as being the way to go, as it was the practice of the people of God thousands of years before the Jewish people, starting in the Garden of Eden, continuing with the patriarchs and than the people of Israel, down through the generations, in Jesus time who, as His custom was, went to church on Saturday, the apostles and so on. God even had his people in the Dark Ages who kept His Law as given in the Scriptures, directly from the mouth of God, and not as it was interpreted for them by ecclesiastical authority. There are millions of people even today who decide to treasure and apply the Law of God in their lives as it was given thousands of years before, on Mount Sinai, unaltered, unchanged, unmodified, uninterpreted by anyone else than the Holy Spirit.

Any attempt to legislate morality will end in failure, for we either let the Holy Spirit work in us the change, the transformation needed that will take us from a life of sin to a life of continuous obedience by choice and by faith, or if that is not the case, we’ll simply try hard to impose our own views on others and will be destined to live unhappy lives, for there will always be people that will choose to disobey God and show no interest in a relationship with Him.

We need to go back to the Bible, live it out the way Jesus did and the impact that will have on society and culture will be so great that no enforced law will ever even come close to being able to produce the same results.

When He created us, God gave us the power and the freedom of choice. Let us use that and my hope is we’ll decide to choose Him today.

Pastor Edi Ciobanu