O Holy night! The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth
Then we were in for a real treat! A hefty woman from the apostate United Church of Canada (UCC) came sliding across the front of the church, snapping her finger to the beat of the music, and delivered an off-key version of “Rockin’ around The Christmas Tree.”
At the Christmas party hop
Mistletoe hung where you can see, Every couple tries to stop.
When Rotunda finished, she took a bow and scampered away whispered to herself, “Nailed it!” The over-crowded church sat in stunned silence at the spectacle they just witnessed. What was that? A comedy routine? I whispered to my wife, “United Church theology.”
SAD LEGACY
There was a time when the United Church of Canada was the largest Protestant denomination in Canada. But beginning in the heady 1960s, they decided to try and be relevant and hip, abandoning the uncompromising Gospel of Jesus Christ for liberal trendy tolerant worldviews. They became tolerant to the point of tolerating sin, then accepting it, then celebrating it. The pews emptied.
Now the UCC is just a sad relic; they are little more than a secular organization—like a social club cloaked in religious vestments. Ironically, they sought to be relevant and became irrelevant.
The fact is that people do not need soft soap and the tasteless gruel of a liberal social gospel devoid of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is God made man, fully human yet fully divine, the only Messiah and Redeemer of the human race. When individuals surrender their lives to God’s will, repent of their sins through faith in Jesus Christ and cleansed by His blood shed at Calvary, they find unspeakable peace, joy and purpose.
DOESN'T FIT THE NARRATIVE
But this doesn’t fit with liberal woke narratives dating back to the 1960s. The United Church of Canada (and other liberal denomination) abandoned crucial tenets of Christianity such as the biblical creation account, the miracles, the Virgin birth, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (except in some metaphorical sense) and the inerrancy of scripture as our final authority in all matters of faith and conduct.
Their clergy have even denied our Lord’s unequivocal words: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14.6). This is so offensive to the United Church of Canada (and many other liberal Protestant churches)! It offends because of the exclusivity of Christ’s claim. In the Book of Acts, Saint Peter says the same thing about Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:11-12.)
Jesus is the only way to God, not a way. This is untenable to liberals—there must be many ways to heaven. Christ and the Apostle were not inclusive according to post-modern liberal sensibilities and that is utterly unacceptable.
Now they come to Christmas.
How do liberal churches, like the United Church of Canada, face the truth that the timeless One entered time when they have denied Him, His power over life and death and the foundations of Christianity? Over the past 70 years they have chosen comfort over the Truth. Their manger is empty.
Pray the blinders be removed from those who have compromised the Christian faith or abandoned it completely and come back to Christ and His holiness and seek to become more like Him.
MDP
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with, and in the end, despair.” — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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