There are a thousand ways the church foolishly follows the world. It is a perennial problem, just another form of the syncretism that led ancient Israel down the path of destruction. Typically our following is permissive. That is, when the world decides two men can marry each other, we blush a smidge, but go along. When the world decides that the definition of “girl” includes those who were born boys but want to be girls, we chalk up our capitulation to trying to just love on the lost. Worse though than the world’s aggressive chiseling away the law of God is its stubborn refusal to recognize the grace of God. They diminish law; they deny grace.
When you have no category for atonement you have no way to welcome home prodigals. When you have no substitute then you, and you alone, must pay. When have you paid enough? Never. This is why we have become a cancel culture. If you said something that caused no offense thirty years ago but someone dredges it up today you are cast into the ash heap. If you say something today that gives room for the approved victim groups to take offense, they will never allow themselves to be appeased. Your shame is their power.
The church has not only drunk deep of sundry contemporary worldviews built on the paradigm of oppressors and victims, but takes its grace cues not from Jesus but from the world with respect to how the oppressors must be punished. This the church calls “caring for victims.” It is, however, the very nature of the church that it is that institution that is called to care for victimizers. The Good Samaritan was a good man. He had compassion on the victim. He saw past the cultural divide into the true and full humanity of the victim. His care was more than lip service. He’s a wonderful example, one I pray for the grace to become.
The one I pray through, on the other hand, the one who always intercedes for me with the Father, is the one who rescued thieves. The thieves in the parable were just that, characters in a parable. But another thief, a real thief, entered into paradise because by the power of the Holy Spirit he called out for mercy as his debt was being paid right beside him.
The church ought to be a cancel culture. It is that culture where we celebrate the cancellation of our sins. It is that place where we learn exactly how our sins have been removed from us as far as the east is from the west. It is that place where we are called to look at one another, wretched sinners that we all are, through the eyes of the gospel, to add our amen to our Father’s declaration on our brothers, “Well done.” The church must learn to embrace the antithesis, not just in affirming law where the world denies it but living grace where the world rails against it. When the world wants to sin, they insist sin doesn’t exist. When the world wants to judge, they insist forgiveness is an impossibility. Sin is real, grace just as real.