The relevant section today is in the last verse. Our sufferings are the things that make our salvation perfect, and give perfect witness. I would add a gloss: we will all be taken from this life, and most of the time there will be suffering then: we will all grieve for parents or our beloved unless they grieve for us.
It is not as the Steve Jobs said. Death is not the killer app of evolution. Death is the enemy. It is a consequence of the fall and our fallen world. And Christ has already conquered this.
Christianity is not about being accepted and being comfortable. It is the opposite: it is being rejected and being placed where you are uncomfortable. Most of the letters in the New Testament were written when Paul was imprisoned. Revelations was written when John had been exiled.
Our actions should offend the powers of the age, and there will be consequences.
1Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it. 2For if the message declared through angels was valid, and every transgression or disobedience received a just penalty, 3how can we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? It was declared at first through the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, 4while God added his testimony by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his will.
5Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. 6But someone has testified somewhere,
“What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
or mortals, that you care for them?
7 You have made them for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned them with glory and honor,
8 subjecting all things under their feet.”
Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, 9but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.10It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
It is not about civil right or inclusion or any other delusions of the narrative. The narrative is opposed to us, and their legal vectors will try to punish us.
An LGBT organization in Ohio has announced plans to target churches if they refuse to offer their property to be used in a homosexual wedding. In opposing the Ohio Pastor Protection Act (HB-36), the group Equality Ohio announced that they would target churches, forcing them to rent church facilities to groups that oppose their beliefs. This despite the fact that all the Roman Catholic bishops in Ohio support the bill, and Catholics make up approximately 20 percent of the state’s population.
When asked “if a church community has a church hall that they rent to couples who want to have that wedding reception in that hall … should that church hall and church community be forced to rent that to someone who wants to use that building for something that’s against that church community’s belief system,” an Equality Ohio spokeswoman said, “Sure, I would say that if that space is open and generally available to the public for a fee, yes that should be available to everyone.”
This statement may seem innocent enough, but to Representative Nino Vitale (R-Urbana), the author of HB-36, it is a declaration of war. “If you have property rights and religious freedom, shouldn’t you have religious freedom, at least on your own property?” Vitale asked in an interview with PJ Media.
Specifically, Vitale suggested that the ACLU of Ohio, which he described as “a large cash cow organization that exists to sue people,” and which opposed the Ohio Pastor Protection Act last year, would target churches if HB-36 does not pass. “That’s what they aim to do,” he explained.
Locally, the Presbyterians have restricted marriages in their churches to those performed by ministers in good standing. The book of order defines marriage between a man and a woman.
And I got married on a lakeside, using the traditional service.
The narrative wants approval. We should not give this. Their pearl clutching and appeals to get us shoved off projects will happen. Do not apologize. Your defence is Christ.
UPDATE
Robyn reminded me that no one can use our congregations’s church: it has been deemed an earthquake risk and banned from any use. The minister’s offices are in a prefabricated office, and the building is going to be demolished.