"If we cannot refrain from sinning, let's change church doctrine so that, what we want to do, will no longer be a sin." That seems to be the prevailing thought, today.
The Presbyterian Church recently concluded (by a committee vote of 11 out of 17) that maturity and not marriage should determine when adolescents engage in sex. In addition the proposed new doctrine would state that sexuality is a gift of God to be enjoyed by everyone, including gays, lesbians, and unmarried adolescence. The proposal claims that the church is patriaricahal, homophobic, and biased towards hetrosexuality. The movement seems to follow other churches in the past where there is a reordering of Church Doctrine so as to redefine sin, so that our weaknesses are not considered sins anymore.
The trend is to remove all absolutes, so that if you cannot refrain from sin (as defined by the Church), then change the Church Doctrine so that you are no longer sinning. Why not simply do away with all absolutes so that there are NO standards, then there would be fewer sinners. If we did away with law, there would be no law breakers. That follows a growing civil attitude: If you cannot refrain from breaking the law, don't accept responsibility. Just change the law.
We all sin. We all fail. But there must be standards. There must be a NON-COMPRIMISING absolute for which we must strive to attain. Instead, we now have a church full of people who are only half-committed, luke warm, non-dedicated. They are full of greed, impatience, hatred, pride, vanity, selfishness, intolerance... And the church has taken a stand that since we ALL do these things, they cannot be prevented, therefore, the standards need to be lowered to a "realistic" level. Our weaknesses are condoned. We are all sinners. Noone is perfect. Let's not judge others. We have to accept these weaknesses in others. Forgive their shortcomings.
We cannot refrain from our evil thoughts, so we change the definintion of sin to be only the ACTIONS, not the INTENT of our deeds. We are asked: Did out ACTIONS violate the Ten Commandments? We narrow the definition of sin to the Ten Commandments so that we need only feel guilt when any of those Ten are violated. By extension, we might say, that we all run stop signs, but since it is not specifically FORBIDDEN by the Constitution, it must therefore be okay. Since noone can rid themselves totally of selfishness (we are all selfish), then it is OKAY to be selfish so long as it does not violate the Ten Commandments.
Forgiving other shortcomings is to learn to accept the beauty that they are, even though they are different than ourselves. If we are to judge others, it is by that same yardstick that we are to be judged. To the degree that we hold others up to our standards and find them to be weak, then by other's standards, we too will be found weak. Everyone has blemishes. Everyone has hurts which they must hide. We are called to love others, blemishes and all.
But behavior is something we elect to do, driven by our habits, our pasions, and our weaknesses, we chose the path we take. Knowing right from wrong, and chosing to be weak and surrender to our weaknesses, is not the same as a shortcoming. Weaknesses in body and spirit are far different that weaknesses in Character. Jesus never forgave the hypocrite, he confronted their weaknesses. Only after they repented of their weaknesses, were they then immediately forgiven. But forgiving someone who is not repentant, gives that person strength to continue sinning. Acceping failure, is to condone it, to ligitomize it.
A person who has lived his life and has built his character is a light for others. But between the lost child in the dark, and the beacon of light for others, is a person who listened and learned from others. The church is filled with men and women of strong moral character. But each one of them has their own shortcomings. It is the Church itself which must take the best in all of them, and set that as the standard by which all others can learn and grow. By taking our weaknesses, and using them as the standard, those of strong character will still be a guide, but the church will not be there to point the weak toward the strong. The church itself, once the respository of all that is good, will continue its slide into being less of a moral guide than the boy scouts.
With Jesus' death and resurrection, the Ten Commandments as the sole definition of sin, became OBSOLETE. So says Paul on the subject. There is now a new standard by which to measure our morality, not limited merely by our actions, but now emcompassing our thoughts, our motives, our words, even our feelings. Jesus speaks repeatedly of this new attitude toward sin, in his confrontation with the Pharisees, the parables, the service to others, the sermon on the Mound, and the Greatest Commandment which He graphically illustrated by the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Instead of trying to weaken and dilute definitions of right and wrong, we need to elevate self restraint and moral strength as ligitomate goals There is a better way of becoming free from sin than doing away with the definition, and that is NOT trying to redefine sin so that we are no longer sinners, but rather to redefine our hearts so that we can become right with GOD'S own definition of sin. Does the Presbyterian Church and so many others, think for a moment that declaring this behavior and that as being no long a sin, that God himself, will then disregard their actions as wrong. As hard as it might be to change the behavior of millions of people, I think you'd stand a better chance doing that, than trying to get God to go along with changing his definition of sin. Instead of ligitomizing our weaknesses, we need to get serious about letting go of them. So many Churches expect too much too fast, that the average person is more content to just give up, than to try to do right. It's time the church set an example. It's time that the church members commit to walking a new walk, and helping anyone else to begin to making their first steps as well.
What has been widely called "The Greatest Commandment" that we must love God with all our heart, mind, and soul and love our neigborbor with the same repect we would want from him, this commandment is NOT, as some suggest, a mere summation of all other law, it is the foundation of all law. We don't change it to suit us. We change US to suit IT!