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a healthy church...transformingLIFE

Tasmanian Anglican

October 2003

 

What do you think?

by

 

 

Current scandals in the church and deep divisions over moral issues are leaving many people perplexed and anxious.

What is happening? Why are we in such a state? There are several suggestions I have heard which together make sense to me.

Satan and the Bride

Jesus has commissioned his church to proclaim his kingdom message here on earth. The church is to be a pure bride for Christ. If Satan can attack the purity of the church, its message is cast into doubt. We must live 'The Way of Christ' as well as teach it.

As our 'Missionary Diocese' seeks to call every Tasmanian to faith in Jesus, we become a big target for the Devil, whose agents will always be living in the church. He is using them - they are expendable to him, simply tools to bring disrepute on the virtue of the Bride and damage the message of the Bridegroom - Jesus.

Legacy of liberalism

This term is used by Peter Corney to describe the destructive remnants of the desire of some to alter the fundamentals of the gospel, and weaken the moral standards of the gospel of Christ. We cannot discard or disregard the Bible without doing serious damage to the Church. The liberal may see it as strengthening the Church to set aside at least parts of this ' 2000 year old book', but facts now show that to do so weakens both the Church and the society in which it lives. A Bishop in Canada who is promoting same-sex marriages said 'We have been for far too long a church of the Spirit and the book, from now on we will be a church of the Spirit and the street'. He is saying that what the street says, we will do. Thinking like this in our own diocese has left us with the legacy we are now inheriting.

Demands of society and media

Society and the media are double-minded in morality. They promote, and find acceptable, entertainment and public standards, which are in any Biblical sense immoral. Anyone who criticises this however, is attacked as narrow and intolerant. At the same time, when society does a reality check, it doesn't like what emerges in real life, and seems to want to do away with morality without the loss of community standards. When the church bows to the demands of society and loses its way, it quickly finds itself being pilloried by a people who are confused by the fact that the results of immorality are not what they thought they would be. In the Bible we have a clear and workable framework for living, and yet we have been timid about promoting it clearly because we are surrounded by a society which on the surface doesn't agree with us. So it is that we join them in their surprise and anxiety when things go badly astray.

Lack of vigilance

We have much to be embarrassed about in our lack of vigilance. As Christians we want to forgive everyone everything, so we are a soft target as evil people find the Church to be a safe haven. We like to accept people as repentant sinners, and are unwilling to see them as consistently evil. St Paul says we must accept immoral conduct in the world, but not in the Church. We have thought that if we say nothing it will all be OK. Today this is no longer the case: full disclosure and a high level of moral integrity is demanded. Our processes now actually enforce vigilance, and indeed they must. In almost every parish I have been in I have seen cases of moral failure which have probably been dealt with too gently. Those days are now over.

In the new protocol for dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct there is a real possibility of wrongful accusation (either mistakenly or maliciously). It is important that we keep the whole process in prayer. If we are vigilant and open, if we don't succumb to the pressures of society, and if we are wary of suggestions that we re-interpret the Bible to make it more palatable, then the process will be workable and the Church will stand firm against the wiles of evil. The guilty will be revealed and the innocent protected…as it should be.