News-Record.com

Yes, we should all regret that our ANCESTORS did terrible things – as did all races and groups! Africans killed, enslaved and sold their own people at the same time Arabs and Europeans were doing the same. All nations and peoples could spend centuries “apologizing” for past transgressions of many kinds. God does not call us to make our own atonement for sins, but to accept HIS full and true atonement in Christ. Enough has been said and done regarding slavery and other mistreatments of history. It’s time to go on, forgiven by Christ, and working to bring about a godly social order for EVERYONE.

All this institutional apologizing and wringing of hands is not about biblical atonement, but about guilt as spirituality. Since the ECUSA has virtually gutted the Gospel of its true call for repentance and the necessity of the new birth; substituting instead, liberal political and social actions - often unbiblical ones at that. All this intense feeling good about themselves at conventions and anti-war rallies merely enables alienated upper-class religious liberals to relax with peace (for a while) in their big upper-class homes, while letting the true work of the Gospel and teaching of the Word of God go undone. This is the new “still in their sins” self-atonement of liberalism. Rather than repenting of their sin and unbelief, they are simply trying to justify it by making loud, public and pontificating statements and apologies. It is pure and simple religion-ISM. A biblical Church, like the SBC, calls sin sin, while offering legitimate acceptance by the Christian community following repentance.

But don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying we shouldn’t recognize social evils, but the answer is not corporate guilt rallies, but solid biblical answers and the preaching, not of the social, liberation “gospel, ” but of the Gospel of grace, that doesn’t languish in the past, but redeems the future.

P.S. !! The racial civil rights movement was based on a legitimate biblical imperative to right social injustice and inequity (the Exodus, and Jesus NT imperatives); the championing of obvious, biblically-defined sin is far removed from ANYTHING biblical or Christian. In fact, the Church should be preaching against this sin and working tirelessly to keep it from becoming a social norm. This should not entail violence or hatred toward individual gays, any more than toward prostitutes, drug addicts, adulterers or politicians – all of whom are the objects of God’s redeeming grace through the Gospel. Allowing this grievous sin to flourish in our society will only provoke God’s judgment and corrupt the spiritual fabric of our culture.