THE GALATIAN DECLARATION
A Call of Christian Conscience
Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of Roman civil society, beginning with the family.
We are Faith-Alone and Judaizer Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow Roman Empire inhabitants, Christians and pagans alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:
1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.
Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of Roman society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our pagan culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
[I cannot imagine the Apostle Paul uniting and thus signing such a declaration with Judaizers. Apparently, many Evangelicals can. Some will consider this point unrefined, and un-nuanced, but I gladly accept this charge.]
I would open a debate on the floor to insert a number 4 based on these verses:::>
ReplyDeletePro 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Pro 1:8 Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching,
Pro 1:9 for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.
Number 4 could read something like this:
4. Hey children, honor mommy and daddy cause the big bad devil wants to make you do it contrary to the Fear of the Lord, Knowledge, Wisdom and Instruction!
Now, on second thought, number four should go something like this:
4. Hey parents, you bring children into this world, train up your children in the way they should go and when they are old they will not depart from it and end up trapped and departed to pits of hell.
Or something like that because of these two further ideas of King Solomon:
Pro 2:12 delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech,
and
Pro 2:18 for her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the departed;
Pro 2:19 none who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life.
Can I hear a second?
I think that so many Evangelical Christians equate (to varying degrees) America with the Kingdom of Heaven that they forget we live in a pagan society. In your analogy, it seems ludicrous to many to equate Rome with America. But if we do, the danger to the proclamation of the true gospel becomes much more clear.
ReplyDeleteTUAD would sign it...
ReplyDelete(easy TUAD, laugh a little)