So, you allow the world to fashion you?

Rather than Christ? Or the Word of God?

Friday, June 30th, 2023

by Ken Pullen

A CROOKED PATH

A while ago I had a situation arise that made me wonder about some folks. A very young elder in a church my wife and I had begun going to out of convenience to how far it was from our home and the senior pastor at that church. Which bled into the church my wife had been attending for over five years, and involving two pastors there.

If a subscriber, a regular visitor to this place it is clear that language usage is important to me.

Especially when the world takes words and perverts and corrupts them changing their meaning. Not from convenience or clarity, but to confuse, deflect, and muddy the language. Pervert the language. Which has happened when it comes to sexual immorality, sexual deviancy, and sexual perversion.

I innocently, out of genuine wonder and concern emailed a young elder after a meeting consisting of a small group of Christians, a total of nine souls in the room all professing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, why in the presence of this small group this elder kept using the word gay rather than homosexual, or sexually immoral.

This small thing became a big thing. I was called into the office of the senior pastor at that church and admonished, at times intently spoken to with anger about how dare I write an email questioning his young elder. The young elder was present in this meeting, which lasted for an hour and forty-five minutes, wherein I had my faith questioned, told I was wrong, and sat humbly, quietly, for the most part, having a person who did not know me, had never spoken to me before except to say hello one time tell me what was in my heart, what my character was, and that I was a troublemaker.

Yes, I was actually told I was a troublemaker. And how I had inconvenienced the young elder in having him have to come into the church during the week for this meeting.

For one reason, because in the course of the hour and forty-five-minute meeting, I told the truth. The facts. Of how it was the homosexual community that decided to remove the word homosexual from the English language and supplant it with a truly benign and 180 from the fact of the act word, gay.

This was adamantly refuted by the senior pastor. Unwilling to accept this historical fact. So, I was a troublemaker, I made things up, I was told I was dangerous, and I was wrong in questioning the speech of the young elder in that small closed door group of nine professed Christians, who prefer to use the worldly corrupted word to describe the sexually immoral against God and nature acts.

I was told by both the senior pastor and the young elder, “The word gay is used and known by the world, everyone knows what it means.”

Ahh, so we would rather fashion ourselves like the world? To be accepted and approved by the world? Conforming to the world?

I did not say that during the meeting but I should have.

After this, I had a telephone conversation with a Christian man who I had gotten to know in a cursory way through our being in the same online men’s Bible study during the COVID-19 lockdown and hysteria. After the Bible study ended we would call and talk with each other at times.

During the course of one of these phone conversations, the man kept saying the word gay and using the acronym to refer to those people who practice sexual immorality, and this man says he’s a very conservative, longstanding Christian man, and I asked him, “Why do you always use the word gay in mentioning homosexuality, or the acronym used by the world?”

He asked, “What word should I use? It’s the accepted word to use these days.”

I replied, “Why not use the best descriptor, the real word created to describe a person that lusts after and has sex with their own kind, homosexual, a perfectly good word?”

“Well, everyone says gay, or uses that acronym, so what do you suggest I say?”

“I just said it, homosexual, but if you’re uncomfortable saying that word then say sexually immoral as that covers every letter in the acronym used to cause perpetual mind numbness deflecting from the reality of the actions of such people.”

“Oh, okay, yeah, I can see how that could be better.”

So, you would rather fashion yourself as the world? Indistinguishable? Being a part of the darkness rather than a light unto the world? Not flavoring your speech as the salt of the earth. Not clear in conversation and language used?

Conforming to the world rather than living and speaking daily, nightly to be holy as Jesus is holy, to live to please the Lord rather than the world. And, yes, it is about that. Let’s not pretend or make light of this.

I’ve been told, “You’re making a big deal about nothing.”

I say you’re making nothing out of a very big something in the sight of God.

How are we to be seen as separate from the world? One clear, easy, simple way is in our speech. The words we choose to use or not use. Language is a lot more vital than most people think as most folks are very careless, thoughtless really, and lazy in the words they speak. Perhaps not knowing, or not caring, not believing that each of us will have to give an accounting for every word we’ve ever spoken.

Every word.

“I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak,”

Matthew 12:36

“But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.”

Matthew 15:18

My wife and I knew even before beginning to go to this church closer to our home out of convenience that it was not the right way to approach how we spent the Lord’s Day, the Sabbath, and to honor the Lord and hear His Word preached.

After my hour and forty-five minute meeting wherein I had my life dissected and my character discredited. You would have thought I enacted one of the greatest sins in recent years if listening to the senior pastor lecture me in the meeting, where I was also told, “It’s probably difficult for you because you’re old.”

As the elder was in his late 20s to early 30s and the senior pastor was in his mid-40s, and I was a 70-year-old man.

And how certain words had to be used to relate to people today. Really?

I guess the words homosexual and sexually immoral are confusing. Vague? Have numerous meanings so in saying or writing them the intent of the speaker or writer could be misunderstood?

So, my wife and I returned to the Bible preaching, Bible-teaching church we had been going to for over five years, which is about a 40-minute drive from our home, and we drive by 14 other churches on our way.

Yes, being old, and having a permanent physical disability, we had hoped we could find a sound doctrine church to have as our home church, but driving forty minutes or so is a small sacrifice to make to attend a place where the Word is clearly preached.

Of course, through the course of this experience, two of the pastors at the church my wife and I had been attending for over five years heard of my sending an email to the young elder. The close to home church was a church plant of our longstanding church, and that is why we began attending. We were under the impression it would be a smaller version of where we had been going, and thus a good transition.

The senior pastor made it abundantly clear, as did the elders in a meeting for the whole church they are totally separate from the church my wife and I had been going to. They totally disassociate themselves from that church, other than acknowledging the church we had been attending, and returned to, made the building of their church possible, as the church we have as our home church paid for everything and is carrying the church plants mortgage. The senior pastor and elders made it very clear that was the only connection to the church we had come from.

Our time at the church plant near our home lasted about a month. And we then returned to the church we had known, and been members of.

So, in the course of this going on, and two of the pastors from our original home church knowing of the email, and our return, they wanted to have a telephone conversation with me.

The one pastor, a man in his mid-70s knows me better than any other pastor at our church, as my wife and I attended his early morning Bible study group prior to going into one of the two main morning services.

To conclude, in the course of that telephone conversation discussing the subject of my hour and forty-five-minute meeting and email, I was told by both of the pastors from our home church;

“Ken, the word gay is what everyone uses, it’s what the world uses and everyone knows and uses. You’re making a big deal out of something that should not be such a big deal.”

So, you allow the world to fashion you?

Is it better to please men and women?

Rather than being honed, refined, clearly separate from the world, to be distinguished from the world as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, serving Him. And how can this be accomplished in a very easy, daily manner?

By what comes from our mouths. Which comes from our hearts.

And we either love and serve the world, or we love and serve the Lord. We all serve somebody and it’s either the devil, or it’s the Lord, just as Robert Zimmerman wrote it and sang it years ago.

Our words, our every word uttered is very important. Known and remembered by God.

God is always listening.

Can we finally begin to listen to Him?

RELATED:

On Fashioning Ourselves as Christians by A.W. Tozer 

Have You Lost Your Mind?
 
Do Not Love the World
 
The Pain of Being Forged Into His Image
 
State of the Bible U.S.A. 2023