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Friday, January 26, 2018

Jesus Is Lord Of The Church, But Nothing More


The difficulty isn't obvious to most, and many who attend the church don't even realize there's a problem.

Photo by Batman007 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Not far away, in the center of town, stands a large church. The sermons are replete with Scripture, and the congregation has a reputation as “Bible-believing” people. This is why what I’m about to say is so hard to believe.

The difficulty isn’t obvious to most, and many who attend the church don’t even realize there’s a problem.   

It has to do with the Sunday School.

You see, the Sunday School teachers don’t teach the children and youth that the biblical truths taught in the sanctuary are actually true, and applicable to all of life. They don’t want to “impose” Christianity on the next generation, or sway the youth one way or another when it comes to the Bible.

There is no discussion about how the Bible relates to all of life, provides a standard for moral order, or brings meaning to all human endeavor. This sort of teaching is appropriate for the sanctuary, they say, but not for the Sunday School. The rule-of-thumb for Sunday School is, “neutrality in all.”

This matter is never addressed from the pulpit, lest Sunday School teachers take offense. Besides, the vast majority of parents don’t have a problem with the Sunday School. They figure if they do their job at home, there’s nothing to be concerned about.

Does such a Sunday School really exist? No Bible-believing church would tolerate such a program! Yet most churches, and the parents who attend them, see no problem with a Monday-through-Friday educational system that does the very same thing, five days a week, six hours a day.

Let me explain.

If it is not OK for 1 hour on Sunday to give young people the idea that God’s Word plays a “neutral” role in life, and does not provide the overarching Light and Truth by which all other things are to be understood and measured, why then is it OK to give them this message on Monday through Friday?

Why does the church in general see no problem with schools that provide instruction in academics divorced from God’s Word, where teachers make no connections whatsoever between the Lordship of Christ and math or history, or literature and biology, and where the Light by which all things are to be understood has been thoroughly put out?  

The outcome is not necessarily atheism, but surely dualism: the toxic notion that Jesus is Lord of the Church, but nothing more.