Something Different

Can the church be inclusive – is it inclusive?

The church should absolutely be inclusive, but at its heart, this line of questioning and answering is virtue signaling. It’s an attempt to appear good, rather than to be good. The church does not change to make sin appear to be good because the world demands it!

II Timothy 4:1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Virtue signaling is not always a bad thing, but when it's done publicly, for worldly things, it can be narcissistic, which is pride, which is evil.

Christ spent time with tax collectors, prostitutes, demon-possessed, pagans, and the “unclean” – but it was THEY who went away changed, not Christ!

We are all fallen. We are all sinners. Of course, the church is open to all! That’s the purpose of the church, and as leaders or even laypeople building relationships, it is our responsibility – our obligation to share Scripture honestly, not to encourage people to continue to sin, but to lead them to Christ and away from sin! 

We are called as Christians to be in the world – not of it. The trap we fall into is looking at the church through the eyes of the world, rather than His kingdom. Do not be the false teachers and hypocrites we are warned about in Scripture. Defend the faith! Stop teaching and preaching D, E, & I and start teaching and preaching redemption, grace, and salvation. Anything else is spiritual neglect.

DEFEND THE FAITH

Help others by telling the truth and remind that that we are all fallen, we all suffer, and Christ suffers with them/for them. Be compassionate by leading them to Christ, while the world tries to lead them astray.

Inspired by, and paraphrased from a post seen on Highlight Truth Ministries 05-13-25

Luke 15: 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

I Corinthians 1: 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 

27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Amen