INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER

Friday, October 30th, is the International Day of Prayer (IDOP). Click on this link for a live webcast starting at 8:00 p.m. ET, and to sign up to receive a free IDOP kit. For many years (actually decades now!) we've been urging Christians to pray for persecuted Christians in lands controlled by communism, now called the former soviet bloc countries.

Although the USSR collapsed on December 25th, Christmas Day, twenty-four years ago (I was in Moscow at the time, watching President Gorbachiov on TV as he signed the decree that dissolved the Soviet Union), these countries continue to struggle to cope with their communist past. In some of these lands we still witness acts of religious repression: public ridicule, discrimination, arrests, imprisonments, damage and destruction of church buildings, and laws that limit or prohibit the free exercise of one's religious faith.

Freedom of religion is a fundamental human right. It is so basic, that without religious freedom many other human rights begin to wither and die. The right to life for the unborn and the elderly, freedom of speech, the right to vote, women's rights are based on the right to live out our Christian faith. But today we are witnessing strong efforts by the "progressive" (leftist) media elite and politicians to denigrate and ridicule the public expression of the Christian faith. Some have even stated outright that traditional Christian beliefs must change, and that religion is a private matter that shouldn't be expressed in public. Thus much of the same types of discrimination against and public ridicule of religious faith that existed in the former soviet bloc countries is coming to the West.

How should we define the freedom of religious expression in a multi-cultural society? Does religious toleration mean that all religions are equally true, or only that the state should treat them equally? What about religions that aren't tolerant of other religions - should we also tolerate them? In my essay "Our Homecoming" I've dealt with these issues:

In the Eastern Church more attention is paid to two things: unity and doctrinal purity. In Eph. 4:3-6 we read - "being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as you also were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in us all."

Many other Bible texts stress the oneness of the Body of Christ. The Eastern Church believes that "one body" means one visible, united Church. In contrast, Paul writes in Gal. 5:20 that "strife... divisions, heresies" are works of the flesh, right along with adultery, murder, drunkenness and gluttony, and he writes, "those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God" (v. 21). So strife and division are just as serious "mortal" sins as is heresy. When Western toleration is taken to the extreme that all viewpoints are equally acceptable and true, we've crossed the line into approving of theological and moral relativism, strife, divisions and heresies.

In the West, if we disagree with others in church, we often will simply start a new church, denomination or an un-denomination. But because strife and divisions are just as serious sins as heresies, the Eastern Church looks upon "sectarians" who split away from the Church as just as sinful, even though they may have fairly orthodox doctrines, as "heretics" whose doctrines may deny the Trinity (Molokans, United Pentecostal Church, Children of God, Witness Lee movement, etc.) or deny the unique God-manhood of Christ (Arianism, Nestorianism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons).

And because the tsar or emperor was blessed by the patriarch or pope as the protector of the Church, the clergy could call upon state power to put down both "sectarians" and "heretics." The enforcement of Church teachings with state power gradually diminished in the West after the Protestant Reformation led to Western Europe's population being decimated by decades of religious wars, which finally caused the Austro-Hungarian Emperor to issue an Edict of Toleration. So it may not be such a tragedy that there has never been a Reformation in Russia: it may have been spared decades of religious wars. All of this at least partially explains why there is a lack of western-style religious toleration in the former USSR.

Christians, Jews and Muslims all believe God is one, not many. But which one is the true God? That is our free choice. Religious freedom, however, includes the chance of being wrong. Historically, those who have claimed to know all truth absolutely have tended to force others to accept their beliefs. But ecclesiastical and doctrinal authority should not extend to all of society, only within that religious organization. There should be religious toleration in today's multi-cultural society, because having one state-enforced religious confession brings only superficial unity at the price of insincere belief.

True belief can't be forced, or else it leads to unbelief. President Eisenhower, when Americans were deciding to put "under God" in the pledge of allegiance, stated the matter with secular clarity: "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith - and it doesn't matter which one." No, it matters very much which one is true, but it is not within the domain of the state to tell its citizens which faith is the true one.

So religious toleration in society needs to be carefully framed something like this: "The state upholds freedom of religious belief, confession and practice, and cannot enforce only one or a few religious confessions. This does not mean, however, that the state upholds the idea that all beliefs are equally true, that no belief is ultimately true, or that only unbelief is true. Each person's right to believe does not make wrong beliefs right, rather, the freedom to choose inherently includes the possibility of making wrong choices. But we acknowledge that religion has historically played a leading role in forming society's laws and morals. Laws assume moral standards, so it is impossible to keep religion and morality private, because religious beliefs or the lack of them affect all of human behavior, both public and private. Therefore the state encourages all citizens, including those with religious beliefs, to participate in the formulation of morals and laws."

What do you think about this? Please post your opinion below.

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 24 Oct. 2015.)