Vanity is Confusion (tohuw)

Lighthouse Trails Research has put up a review of emerging church pastor Dan Kimball's new book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church, which they cleverly retitled They Like (Another) Jesus But Not the Church, the Bible, Morality, or the Truth.

The book's premise:

Kimball insists (p. 19) that "those who are rejecting faith in Jesus" do so because of their views of Christians and the church. But he makes it clear throughout the book that these distorted views are not the fault of the unbeliever but are the fault of Christians, but not all Christians, just those fundamentalist ones who take the Bible literally, believe that homosexuality is a sin and think certain things are wrong and harmful to society...and actually speak up about these things.

The Bible says (in Psalms 14):

² The LORD looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.
³ All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.

Kimball's argument is not new, nor is it meant to be; it merely continues the sustained attack from inside (and outside) the church on two major areas of God's established order: sexuality and epistemology. The Western church's vain acquiescence to the world and acceptance of half-truths on behalf of "nice people who mean well" is evidence of hardened hearts. The postmodern repackaging of "Hath God said?" — the Devil's rhetoric from the Garden of Eden — is confusing and enervating Christians in the West.

As in past eras of the church, this is a time of judgment and testing. Christians and Christian leaders who do not take up the armor of God and attempt to "go it alone" on intellect, experience, and earthly wisdom and approbation will find themselves in a sea of confusion.

The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:

²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.