Love as Suicide: The Role of Enablers in the Episcopal Church
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Copyright 2003 by William Meisheid (8-05-03)
The English word love carries such broad and imprecise meanings that it can almost be massaged into whatever you want it to be. Fortunately, for us, God's Word is not so indistinct. The three Greek and two Hebrew words translated love in the Bible are specific in their meanings. But the vagueness of the English language is only half our problem. Contrary to its obvious emotional power, love, as an emotion, is not meant to rule our decision-making, only inform it.
Paul makes that explicitly clear in Philippians 1:9-11 where he says "And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
It could not be much clearer: knowledge and discernment, sincere and blameless, filled with the fruit of righteousness. Love, though called to grow to great heights has specific limits. It is fire contained within a hearth, not set free to burn anything in its path.
In the current crisis over homosexuality in the Episcopal church words of "love" and accusations of being "unloving" get thrown around like projectiles from a cluster bomb, indiscriminately attacking anything within reach. If you stand for knowledge and discernment, striving for righteousness, you are unloving, since to do so means rejecting the homosexual agenda. Over and over we hear that the only loving and acceptable thing is embracing those who are "different".
It is a no win situation in our current climate of political correctness. Acquiesce or be labeled. There are a lot of labels to go around: homophobic, unloving, cruel, unjust, narrow-minded, bigoted, and of course the dreaded "conservative" or the even worse "right wing". Don't appeal to scripture, especially to Paul in Galatians 1:6-9 "Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!”
Heaven forbid we should ever suggest eternal condemnation might await those changing the established rules of the faith. After all, was not Paul a closet homosexual who became vindictive in his frustration at being unable to express himself? Ha! What if he was just right and true? What if God really meant what he said through Paul? One thing I do know, when emotions rule rather than just empower we have a firestorm waiting to happen.
The extravagances of the 60's and 70's taught us hard lessons about tough love, love that was surprisingly guided by knowledge and discernment, not enablement. It appears we have forgotten those hard lessons. Instead, the Episcopal Church has become one of the chief enablers of what God has always called wrong, even abominable if you want to accurate. It has brought fluffy thinking and emotional mushiness into the sanctuary as a replacement for true theology. Sin no longer exists. Not quite true, one sin still exists, the sin of making someone uncomfortable, more commonly called intolerance, and all this discussion of sin, tough love, righteousness, and other historic biblical concepts makes people uncomfortable and labels anyone holding these positions as intolerant.
As a result, I think it is not for naught that Jesus asked in Luke 18 "...when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" It appears "the faith once-delivered unto the saints" is indeed hard to find in the Episcopal Church.