We have an enormous craving for popularity. This is the stuff of which false prophets are made. We have a desire to avoid unpleasantness at all cost. A desire like this keeps us from confronting, from intervening when we should.
We have a distaste for being different. We find it easier to move along with the crowd, to drift with the tide. It is all too easy to remain silent when we are in an adverse theological climate. We are ‘slaves who dare not to be right with two or three’.
We have lost the capacity for being angry. We are not easily enough disturbed. We are in the sorry state of having no capacity for indignation. We are experts at putting off decisiveness simply because we don’t want to act.
Sometimes we are too blinded by friendship to stand against wrong. When a Christian spoke out against E J Carnell’s book ‘The Case For Orthodoxy’ because it argued against the inspiration of the Scriptures, a friend of the author said ‘Well you do not know him personally as I do. He is a gracious gentleman, a godly man’.
Jay Adams was right when he said ‘In some circles, the fear of controversy is so great that preachers and congregations following after them will settle for peace at any cost – even the cost of the truth – God’s truth. The idea is that peace is all- important. Peace is a biblical ideal…but so is purity. The peace of the church may never be bought at the price of the purity of the church. The price is too dear’.
Ecumenism and catholicity are two great buzzwords today. Let’s all get together. Don’t do or say anything to rock the boat. Doctrine divides, they say. What we need is unity.
What we really need is to contend earnestly for the faith in a day when it is being attacked, diluted and denied. We will be tolerant in matters of indifference but intolerant of departure from the truth of God.— ‘Here we stand. We can do no other’. –William MacDonald, Think about it!
