Today, I unfollowed a page I used to really enjoy. It was a page designed specifically to minister to clergy members. The problem I had was that it was following, posting about, and advocating for “Progressive Christianity.” I take personal offense to this term, as well as deconstructing faith, and every other term that is similar. For those who are unaware of these movements, usually it’s done by people who have been hurt by congregations or members of congregations, or they are utterly rejecting the faith traditions in Christianity that they come from. Much of this has to do with sexual things, but others also come from advocating for and accepting things that are contrary, not only to “Church tradition,” but to Scripture itself. These movements seek to re-interpret scripture to fit “modern sensibilities.” While this is a simple explanation, it is, in a nutshell, what it’s all about.
Proverbs 3:5-7 is clear on this issue. It states, plainly and clearly:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your flesh
and refreshment to your bones.
Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” God says, through Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (55:8-9). So if Scripture tells us this, we ought to understand for ourselves that our thoughts can lead us astray, and our ways are different than God’s ways. I’m not going to follow my heart or my feelings. I am going to follow Christ, and take Him at His word. Therefore, what the Scripture says, I will trust, and what my heart says, I will compare to Scripture, and if I am wrong, seek correction through said Scriptures. Christ lived, died and rose again to make me new. How can I live in any other way?
Luke 5:33-39
And they said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.” And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”
Ephesians 4:17-32
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
