Our society is crazy. We judge harshly those inside the church — most recently Mark Driscoll for his publisher’s promotion of him as a ‘Best Seller’, or Hillsong for influencing politicians or Ratzinger for being Ratzinger. If you make a small mistake you will be hounded.

And we all err. That is the nature of this life. At the same time we are encouraged to tolerate those who live continually in error and sin. We are told to judge harshly those who are competent, fruitful, successful — and laud the failures.

On the Driscoll situation, I’m completely bored. I have taken part in enough book bombs to know that the best seller lists are manipulated by people all ordering on Amazon on the same day. I am more worried about Hillsong, where teacing is being seen as them is going liberal. Heck, the source I am using here (Google news) linked to a gay paper, and happy they are.

Hillsong church senior pastor Brian Houson’s message was broadcast to his churches on 18 August and had been recorded only a few weeks earlier at Hillsong London.

‘The one elephant in the room for churches around the world at the moment is the gay situation,’ Houston says in the message.

‘What would Jesus do? You need to pray for church pastors and leaders around the world because whichever way you turn the [gay issue] is there. You can turn one way and you can tell there would be a great scandal amongst the Christian Church.

‘You can turn another way and you would just cut off so many people. There’s lots of hatred out there but in the middle of it all you know there are three things: the world of the times we live in; the weight we live with; and the word we live by.’

Houston said that Christians had to live with the fact that societies were choosing to embrace things that were outside church teaching when it came to same-sex relationships.

‘The world has changed quickly,’ Houston said.

‘The world has changed and so I’m not saying that the church ever should be ruled by the way of the world but the reality is we are in a world which is changing fast. Here in Great Britain the laws have passed. … We’ve got the world we live in to consider.

Houston said that Christians also had to consider the consequences of how they treated gays and lesbians.

‘We’ve got the weight we live with,’ Houston said.

‘You say what’s that? Well it’s the weight when a young person growing up in a church feels like they are confused in their sexuality. They feel like “maybe I’m gay” and they go to a youth leader and they are rejected.

‘At that moment a great hatred comes in. At that moment some of them have gone so far with the rejection and gone to parents who didn’t understand and ended up committing suicide – That’s the weight we live with.’

Houston also recognized that there were now a variety of views on the morality of homosexuality within the Christian church.

‘There’s the world we live in. There’s the weight we live with and there’s the word we live by,’ Houston said.

I understand where Houston is coming from, but he needs a bit of Driscoll. The truth is that most of us have sinned sexually: if we have not fornicated or adulterated we sure as anything have lusted after that cute cheerleader. We are fallen.

But within the church we have to confront our sin and the sin of those around us. There are only two conditions for leadership: holy celibacy — where you put your sexuality on an altar and live without desire for people but for God. Those who have this calling should be greatly honoured. The second is as a husband of a family where your wife and children are well ruled, within the faith, and your ability to rule has thus been tested.

But we need to also say that our behaviour on these issues is wrong. We need to say this, we need to teach this. Our compassion for sinners should remain, but letting someone remain in mortal sin is not being merciful.

I continue to think that within the church the bigger issue is not gay members of the congregation but the toleration of divorce for any reason — and I am saying that as someone who has one of those tickets.

Besides, the issues of theft, extortion, and injustice remain. We do not merely sin with our genitals.

1 Corinthians 5:9-6:11

⁹I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons – ¹⁰not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. ¹¹But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. ¹²For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are to judge? ¹³God will judge those outside. “Drive out the wicked person from among you.”

¹When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous, instead of taking it before the saints? ²Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? ³Do you not know that we are to judge angels – to say nothing of ordinary matters? ⁴If you have ordinary cases, then, do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church? ⁵I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to decide between one believer and another, ⁶but a believer goes to court against a believer – and before unbelievers at that?

⁷In fact, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? ⁸But you yourselves wrong and defraud – and believers at that.

⁹Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, ¹⁰thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers – none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Mark 4:1-20

¹Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. ²He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: ³“Listen! A sower went out to sow. ⁴And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. ⁵Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. ⁶And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. ⁷Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. ⁸Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” ⁹And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

¹⁰When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. ¹¹And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; ¹²in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.'”

¹³And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? ¹⁴The sower sows the word. ¹⁵These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. ¹⁶And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. ¹⁷But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. ¹⁸And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, ¹⁹but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. ²⁰And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.”

The aim of the radical movements of the left, (wimmenz, gheyz, blackz, whyte powerz…) is to snatch the gospel away and replace it with a metaphor of oppression (blame straights, mens and whitey) and continual defeat, keeping the person who is of colour, with same sex attraction or a chick nicely in a liberal vote plantation and a member of the protest mob that, like a greek chorus, bleats mindlessly what the leaders say. I call that slavery, and that should be opposed.

For in Christ we need to control our desires. [And yes, that includes sex, and includes sex for straight men. If you do not control your desire and let your wish for a good bonk with that cute GF of yours take over you are then enslaved to her whim and cannot hold frame. You need to lead, and you need to call manipulation — despite our society being built on such manipulation]

And the consequences of a lack of leadership show within society.

Then a week later came departure and again the standard Aspen airport experience. Bear in mind this is the wealthiest city in America, its economy based on tourism with an airport about the size of Rotorua’s, which is quite adequate assuming New Zealand efficiency.

On arrival several hundred people were cramming the building and spilling on to the street. Some had been there four hours. Why? They didn’t have anyone to unload arriving flights, let alone load departing ones. As their loudspeaker system, like everything else, wasn’t working, periodically a massively obese young woman would shove her way through the throngs, shrieking announcements about the delays.

After four hours we boarded and waited for an hour while they tried to find the flight crew. Eventually they did but another hour elapsed while we waited for the ambling oaf they’d mustered up to load the passengers’ bags. I asked the despairingly apologetic air hostess how often she sat on the ground because they couldn’t find the crew. Several times each week she assured me.

In Los Angeles we had our eighth passport check and finally reached the refuge of Air New Zealand’s lounge. But it was staffed by American girls who took my issued boarding passes because they said, they’d “like to reissue them for their records”. And so they did, with us all in the same seat. It’s typical.

I spoke to an Auckland businessman who frequently travels throughout America selling a specialist computer service. Avoid United, he told me, this being America’s largest airline. But, he added, what we suffer each year he experiences everywhere there on a different plane. He visits numerous factories and without exception, he said, they’re light years behind in their technology.

I could outline similar stories about the hotel’s mismanagement and, indeed, with almost every aspect of a casual visitor’s experience of monumental cock-ups. As is ritual, once back home I stormed into our Colorado girl’s office and gave her a bollocking. “Why do you think I live here?” she bleated defensively.

I first went to the Soviet Union in the 1960s and thereafter was drawn back regularly through fascination at its horrors. But it was never as inept as modern America. My first US visit was more than 40 years ago. Then it was the height of efficiency. But over the past decade it has all gone wrong. I can only speculate why. As elsewhere, President Obama has been going on about the wealth gap. America is a great country but a tough place to be if on the bottom, with mediocre wages leading to widespread incompetence, which I suspect is the source of their problems.

If we do have a sense of discernment and judgment, we will call the small errors while missing the big ones. Driscoll made a small error, which, to his credit, he is correcting. Houston is making a moderate sized error, by thinking that the 800 lb gorilla in the church is the gay issue: it is not, they are a 10 lb lemur for only one to two percent of the congregation are gay. The 800 lb gorilla is frivolous divorce or frivorce: Divorce should be legal, rare and a source of mourning, for it damages not merely the souls of the poor couple going through the secular purgatory known as the family court, but their children and their friends.

For if we lack discernment, the church stops being of the Kingdom of God and becomes merely another part of the secular republic — and the rot becomes obvious to everyone.