The other side finds a way to get its people involved, to raise money. Our side is thinking about something else.
—James Dobson
Druid Hills Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia, is dealing with the issue of homosexual clergy. The Evangelical Lutheran Church must come to a conclusion on whether practicing homosexual pastor Bradley E. Schmeling of St. John’s Lutheran Church should be relieved of his pastorate because he admits that he is in a sexual relationship with another man. As one member of the Druid Hills church laments, “A lot of time and energy is being spent by governing bodies and individual churches over this issue. . . . The time should be devoted to the real mission of the church: helping the poor, the homeless, [and] the community at large.” Liberals know that conservatives grow weary fighting spiritual battles. In time, they throw up their hands and say that there are more important “spiritual things” to do. They don’t want to fight anymore, because they believe that divisions divide churches and hurt the ministry of the gospel. In reality, not to deal with these clear moral issues makes the gospel irrelevant. If sin is no longer sin, then there is no need for the cross.
Rousas J. Rushdoony has written that humanists believe in history but not in God, and Christians believe in God but not in history. The “other side,” as Dobson describes the opposition to the moral worldview of the Bible, has only this world in its redemptive sights, so they put all their efforts in the things of this world. There is no “next world.” For the humanist, this world is both heaven and hell. What a person does with his life and his environment determines his earthly future and the future of this terrestrial ball he calls “mother earth.” Man, the humanist believes, is the master of his destiny, the captain of his soul, the determiner of his fate.
Many Christians err on the other side by asserting that this life and the world in which we live count for very little. Christians have a stake in the world to come through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, and this redemptive work has made us and this world to count for something. “The earth is the LORD’s, and all that it contains” (Ps. 24:1). As “fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17), we possess, as a stewardship, this world. God’s good creation gift requires a righteous stewardship.
History is not something to be despised. History is the domain of God’s redemptive work. Until God decides to do something with us personally (through death) and the world in which we live (by creating a new heaven and a new earth), this world is the only place where we can work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
James Dobson vented his frustrations about the lack of Christian response to this world. On a Focus on the Family broadcast, Dobson “chastised Concord [California] area pastors for not fighting for the repeal” of a law that banned discrimination against people with AIDS. On his October 30, 1989, Focus on the Family broadcast, Dobson said that of 85 pastors contacted by a recent Focus on the Family guest, only three offered to help. The reason the pastors gave for not getting involved was that such activity is “too political.” Dobson said that “it’s not political. It’s everything we care about and hope for. It’s everything that Christ taught us and we are losing it,” he said. Dobson went on to say that the church was “asleep,” and that he was “weary” of coming to the microphone and saying that.