Jesus began His ministry saying, “Repent.” So did John the Baptist. It presents an important church question: What is sin? He had never been called by God.īut the homosexual schism within the UMC is bigger than what your pastor does. That church had been sent one minister, who had affairs, and another minister, who abruptly left the ministry. I used to attend a United Methodist church that was wronged again and again by the UMC hierarchy. The UMC conferences could stem that by allowing local churches the right to reject a pastor. “We’re being forced to either accept a homosexual in the pulpit or go. “It’s not that we want to leave,” a woman at that small Alabama church said. From mid July until October, the church must reflect.Įssentially, the question is contractual: Can the UMC change the rules mid-stream, forcing the local church to follow new rules, when the UMC stopped them from moving forward under the old rules? It’s a simple matter for a federal district court judge to decide. On Sunday, that superintendent informed the church that they would have to follow new rules created in June. But the first church was delayed due to the superintendent’s health issues. That congregation wanted to disaffiliate at the same time as a nearby church, and the latter church has already disaffiliated. Last Sunday, a UMC District Superintendent sent a letter to a local United Methodist church in Alabama. If two churches have a dispute over any other property matter, a secular court could easily step in, look at the contract, and decide.īans and holding onto property are not the only strategies UMC conferences are taking. What’s at stake is not doctrine, but property. Both sides can also stipulate that progressives in the UMC no longer accept Scripture’s position. For nearly 4,000 years, since the days of Moses and the Hebrews in the wilderness, the Judaeo-Christian church has stood against sexual relations between a man and a man and between a woman and a woman.īoth sides can stipulate that as a fact. The judge said, “a secular court must avoid entanglement in internal church matters or doctrinal matters by deferring to the highest ecclesiastical body…” But did the county judge miss the point that a more sophisticated judge would understand?
We may not be tempted to worship physical images, but we can nevertheless be tempted to think of God superstitiously in ways He has not revealed Himself.According to the Christian Post, when 71 churches brought suit in Florida, a county judge said it did not have the authority to rule. People are so apt to think a statute or a picture has divine power that the prophets had to use extreme language to remind people otherwise. The old covenant people of God did just that, which is one reason why we find the prophets frequently mocking those who made graven images of Yahweh or other deities (for example, Isa. The danger in worshiping or venerating images is that we will begin to impute power to those images. No matter when or where we live, we must always be on guard lest we introduce superstition into our worship. Our Creator will not have us substitute any lesser thing for Him in our worship of Him.
When people make graven images of God and worship those images-as Israel did with the golden calf-the Lord responds with condemnation (Ex. God must reveal Himself and how He is to be worshiped. In contemporary culture, we often hear people saying things such as, “To me, God is like. . .” No passage of Scripture sanctions such language. He does not allow people to come up with an idea of what He is like and then serve that figure. Rather, the chief concern in the second commandment is the creation of images for the express purpose of being worshiped.Īs we read the Scriptures, we find that the Lord is very jealous to be worshiped as He actually is. 2:13), the second commandment cannot thereby be forbidding all art in the worship setting. Since the Lord is not a God of confusion and cannot deny or contradict Himself (1 Cor. With due respect to those who hold this position, we must note that if God meant to forbid all visual art in the sanctuary, His instructions for having images of cherubim in the tabernacle would contradict this law (Ex. Some Christian thinkers have seen in this commandment a rule prohibiting all art in the sanctuary where God’s people gather for worship. Here the law prohibits creating and worshiping visible images of God. This is also true of the second commandment, which tells us not to make a “carved image” (Ex. The first commandment, in its prohibition of serving gods other than the one true God of Scripture, addresses matters of worship.
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