Do you know what is being discussed in some areas today under the guise of “Christian education”? Have you any idea of the things being promoted by some of the leaders in the area of Christian education? Are you willing to face up to the fact that some of the official literature of major denominations has taken the logical step that follows a rejection of the Bible and its teachings: condoning, even advocating, immorality?
I am not referring to some church publication that is describing the loss of moral and spiritual convictions today, and offering a remedy. I am writing about church publications that contain articles and editorials calculated to destroy moral restraints and to encourage pagan sexual behavior.
Church and Society for March–April, 1970, carries a major article in which these suggestions are offered:
“[Because of the problem of losing Social Security benefits by remarriage] could not the church encourage lonely retired persons to live together or work out whatever other relationship that would provide loving companionship and sexual enjoyment?”
Again: “The church should ‘point the way with compassion and wisdom to a way of life’ that enables those who are single to express their sexuality and to establish deep and sustaining relationships with men who may or may not be married; to begin to experiment with ways in which particular members of a congregation may become an extended family—or at least take on the characteristics and functions of an extended family. Such relationships between single women and married men might or might not involve coitus. The church should also show its openness to the new forms of association.… Too long have we absolutized physical fidelity as the central point of the monogamous ideal.”
And these suggestions are baptized with this blasphemous conclusion: “To put aside fear and hypocrisy, to live as new creatures in Christ, would that the church might set forth and act out what it means to live by grace and New Testament radicalness.”
But what does the New Testament teach about this? “Immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you. Let there be no filthiness, nor silly talk, nor levity, which are not fitting; but instead let there be thanksgiving. Be sure of this, that no immoral or impure man, or one who is covetous (that is, an idolator), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 5:3–6).
Colloquy, a magazine published for use by three major denominations as an aid to “Education in Church and Society,” now seems dedicated to the breaking down of biblical moral standards. Among a number of almost unbelievable articles and editorials in the March, 1970, issue, there is a “guest editorial” by a teacher in the Philadelphia school system. This teacher tells of “Jamie,” a girl who had been taught by her parents the rightness of chastity and the wrongness of premarital sex. Under the influence of movies she saw and books she read, she found that “what her parents told her didn’t make sense.” She thought she was “in love” with a boy and decided to go all the way with him, and she found it was a “beautiful thing”—“what her parents told her wasn’t true at all.” Then a friend introduced Jamie to marijuana and she “turned on.” The author of this editorial ends with these words: “So now, whenever I see Jamie, all I can say to her is, ‘I know what’s happening inside you, and we both know it is a good thing. So just don’t lose your cool.’ ”
In an article in this same issue we read: “At the Woodstock Rock Festival there was a great deal of nudity. It was accepted as quite natural. No one was shocked and no one was arrested for indecent exposure. Why can’t this be a general practice in the world? Why should my possible desire to walk around in the streets nude concern those who are clothed? I have yet to discover what is so shameful about the human body.”
The May issue of Colloquy further shows the obsession with sex and the permissive attitude that is contributing to the downfall of many young people. In this issue the associate editor writes about some of the objectionable movies. Taking as the heading for his editorial Woody Allen’s reply to the question, “Do you think sex is dirty?”—“It is if you’re doing it right”—he writes as follows about IAm Curious (Yellow): “The overreaction to the film reveals, in a kind of cracked mirror, what we see. We are about the age of five or six when we used to play Doctor and Nurse. What is so threatening about our genitals that more or less grown people try to prevent their being seen on a movie screen?”
Again, a young mother writes: “The petting process lets kids break that big complex bag called SEX up into a lot of little pieces so that they can be worked through one small step at a time. Who wouldn’t be shaken up and traumatized if he/she had to undergo total sexual initiation all at once? That kind of trauma used to be the ‘Christian Way’: absolute innocence before marriage and the bridal bed. Embarrassing jokes still abound—as well as injured psyches. A better way is how the kids do it now. Start young and gradually work through the various stages from handholding to kissing to touching to deep petting and finally intercourse. I hope my kids learn about sexual intimacy in this gradual way.”
In these magazines, official church publications, there is first a rejection of the God-given standards about sex clearly taught in the Scriptures and confirmed by our Lord himself. Following this rejection there comes the inevitable floundering in the opinions of men, and conclusions that do violence to almost every Christian concept of decency.
This is nowhere more evident than in the report on church and society presented to the general assembly of one of the major denominations. Among a number of deviations from accepted Christian standards is this statement: “We recognize that there may be exceptional circumstances where extramarital sexual activity may not be contrary to the interests of a faithful concern for the well-being of the marriage partner as might be the case when one partner suffers permanent mental or physical incapacity.”
When official church publications accept and publish articles advocating sex outside marriage, what is there left for the Church to concede to the world? Will we come to church-supervised brothels?
Why, oh why, should writers in these church publications be permitted to pollute the very areas where they should be leading into paths of righteouness? Confronted by sex obsession, they too have become obsessed, and they are guilty of betraying our Lord and his Church. If their solutions are valid, then oil is the “solution” to a raging fire.
L. NELSON BELL
