Frog Soup

Thanksgiving is fast upon us. About seventy-two hours from now the smell of turkey, dressing, dinner rolls, and pumpkin pie will begin to fill homes all over America. Thanksgiving is a peculiarly American holiday. It is not technically part of the traditional church calendar, but most churches have a service of thanksgiving of some sort. It is one of the many ways that the church has accommodated itself to the culture of our nation. And rightly so in this instance. There is nothing wrong with giving God thanks for his many gifts to us.

Not all accommodations are so harmless. Some have serious consequences. For instance, a trendy pastor recently gave out a seven day sex challenge. He wants his married parishoners to have sex for seven days. This trivialization of the church's raison d'être is characteristic of a certain kind of pastor and church in America. In an frenzied effort to become relevant he elevates sex to something akin to a sacrament in which God works in a special way. His sermon was laced with sexual innuendo, not so clever word play, and just plain silly assertions. In our over-sexed society in which sexual sins are so prevalent could this pastor be throwing obstacles in the path of recovering sex addicts. How about single members of his church? They are left out all together. Teens struggling with temptation are not helped to overcome their lust. On top of all the sex talk, very little Scripture was used by this pastor. (My understanding is that this is typical of his church.) Christ and forgiveness, life, and salvation were not the message given to the people.

I wrote in another place the following:

"This Dallas pastor is trivializing the purpose of the church. Can you imagine the Israelites doing this before the altar of a temple? Oh—that's right, they did. When Ba'al worship was mixed with Yahwism they did have sex as part of their worship. You connect the dots!

God gives us many good gifts (1st article gifts) but not all of them have a place in the divine service apart from our regular giving of thanks for them. Will we need to have a seven day food challenge next? How about a seven day wine challenge? Or a seven day shopping spree? These kind of emphases puts the gifts, not the Giver front and center. Is this part of worshiping and serving the creation and not the Creator?"

This kind of neglect of the Scripture, treating the Gospel of Christ and his saving work as if it were a boring old cliché, stealing the focus from God and his gracious work for us to place the spotlight on ourselves is characteristic of much of the evangelical "church" today. The worship service has become a sex workshop, a self-help pop-psychology group, a seminar on financial freedom. The Divine Service in such churches is no longer divine. God could be left out altogether and the message would not change that much. Substitute any other motivational idea for God and you would probably find the same seven steps to success.

We have become so comfortable with our culture's ideas, methods, goals, and standards that we are no longer salt and light. In an effort to make the world welcome among us we have become like the world. This hasn't happened overnight. It has been going on for a very long time indeed. We are like the proverbial frog in a pot of water. The temperature has been slowly raised to the boiling point. What you get when the church accommodates itself to the world is frog soup!