After Much Prayer

Yesterday Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver announced that they were separating. They don’t want the public to know much, but they want us to know this:

After a great deal of thought, reflection, discussion, and prayer, we came to this decision together.

Does anything stand out to you in this statement?  Clearly they are a couple of deep devotion.  They don’t say it exactly, but they want you to understand that their future divorce is God’s will.  How can you deny that when they have prayed about it.  Prayer, after all, is one’s connection to God and the way he reveals his will.  It’s also quite handy that you can’t argue with what God revealed to me in my prayers.

Also yesterday, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted to allow clergy to be involved in homosexual and lesbian relationships.  Now you can be a pastor and have a sexual relationship with someone not your spouse and have the church’s blessing.  Top Presbyterian executives issued a statement in which they said this:

However, as Presbyterians, we believe that the only way we will find God’s will for the church is by seeking it together — worshipping, praying, thinking and serving alongside one another.”

Ah, here it is again.  The Presbyterians learned God’s will by praying together.  Thank goodness for that.  Otherwise I might have supposed that they were bowing to cultural pressure and sinners in their midst.  But they prayed about it so I simply cannot argue with it.

It is important to note that this is a prepared statement.  It’s not somebody speaking off-the-cuff who didn’t have his thoughts organized and just happened to overlook the relevance of God’s Word to the discussion.  No, the top Presbyterian executives—the leaders of the church—carefully excluded the Bible from the decision-making process. 

In a way, this is refreshing.  They aren’t trying to assert that they have a biblical mandate.  They aren’t saying (at least here) that when Jesus said

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female, ‘ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh ‘? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Matt 19:4-6)

that he really meant that homosexual relations were part of God’s plan.  There is nothing in the statement that says that Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality is really commendation.  There is nothing in the statement that “keeping the marriage bed holy” allows for sexual relations with people you are not married with.  The top Presbyterian executives do not claim to have found a new meaning in Paul’s emphatic declaration:

It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God (1 Thess 4:3-5).

It is refreshing that (at least in the portion of the statement quoted in the article) there is no dishonesty in claiming Scriptural backing for this new understanding of God’s will.  Endorsing gay pastors is not a matter of the Bible but of prayer.  This is explicit in a comparison of the old and new language in the PCUSA’s constitution.

Old language:

Those who are called to office in the church are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the church.

New language:

Standards for ordained service reflect the church’s desire to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life.

Fortunately we can submit to the “Lordship of Jesus Christ” in whatever way we damn well please feel the Lord leading us in prayer. 

I too have been praying and the Lord has made something clear to me.  Christ is the head of his body (Eph 1:22-23).  Christ speaks through his Word (John 12:48).  Those who do not submit to the head of the church as he speaks in his Word are not his body.  The Presbyterian Church (USA) is a lot of things but it is not a church.  Their god is their own word, not his Word.  Their submission is to their own sinful passions, not to the holiness demanded by the Lord.  They are described in Scripture:

They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good (Titus 1:16).

When the “church” makes prayer the means for determining God’s will, then it no longer has any moral authority.  The PCUSA cannot say to Arnold and Maria that their divorce is outside of God’s will because Arnold and Maria have prayed about it.  The PCUSA cannot say to factory owners who oppress the poor that they are wrong because they have rejected an external standard for determining right and wrong.  The PCUSA has no more authority than cultural mores in condemning pedophilia.  If this is the case, what use does the PCUSA have?  Jesus has a suggestion.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men (Matt 5:13).