“Leopard Hunting”

A sermon delivered by Pastor Noel Anderson

 First Presbyterian Church of Upland     August 14, 2022

Matthew 7: 24-27

24 “Everyone who hears my words and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. 25 The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!”

Erosion 1

Jesus’ parable about houses on sand is about erosion. What destroys the house on sand is not sand but the forces of decay, chaos, and entropy that rule this world. 

When you were a child, did you love playing with sand at the beach? I did. The wet sand not far from the water was perfect for molding and sculpting into castles or caves. Inevitably, I seemed to build them as the tide was coming and soon the waves destroyed my little castles in a minute or two. 

The other danger was bullies—usually my big brother or his friends—who decided my sand castle looked like a great place sit or jump. Waves and bullies—wrecking my sand castles! 

Today we’re looking at erosion and entropy as means of social change.

TWO LINES FROM FRANZ KAFKA: 

Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over , knock over all the statues and drink all the ceremonial wine;  This happens again and again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes part of the ceremony.                                                                                                                        

This is a picture of social and cultural change. Now I use the word “culture” all the time but I have never defined it. Culture is the way one generation passes its values to the next. Sometimes the values do not make it into the next generation. That is the erosion of culture. 

The politics of erosion has eclipsed rational discourse as the means of reform in the United States.  What once were dignified debates—carefully articulated arguments meant to inform and persuade—have now given way to shouting contests and closed ears.  What used to be civilized discourse—honest dialogue between Church and Society—has now become a battle of Church vs. Culture, with too many Christians representing society more than church.  

LEOPARDS IN THE TEMPLE

These Christians, often called Progressive, have erosion on their side.  All they have to do is stand, watch, and cheer-on the leopards.  In time, the ground may wear away, and when it does they will celebrate erosion as a victory for their group. When what you want is erosion, you don’t have to lift a finger; all you have to do is watch.  

Presbyterians who used to say "Let go and let God" may today mean "Let go and let Erosion.”  Without real discussion and dialogue, they may be beyond persuading as well.  Nothing can be justified to those who will not think or talk reasonably.  

Sometimes I suspect that dusk has descended on the age of reason altogether.  Making sense doesn't seem to make sense anymore. No matter how loudly or reasonably we cry out against the sacrilege of leopards, there seem to be plenty who have abandoned the temple as a holy place.  They’ve left it to the leopards. Or worse, the desecration of leopards has become their new ritual. 

Our Task at First Pres

Now there are plenty of churches will tell you what to think, telling you that Christians can only hold one given opinion about an issue. “All Christians think this—“ and so on. We try not to do that. Not because the faith is aloof from all politics, but because we know there is never just one way to think about things unless you reduce them and dumb them down to easy manageability. 

We try to keep a 10,000 foot view of things. We are not likely to tell you what to think. Indoctrination—to be indoctrinated—is to be told what to think and what attitudes to have. Authentic education, on the other hand, teaches one how to think. If you want to be told what to think—well, there’s no shortage of churches out there to do that. If you want to be indoctrinated, try the Catholic, Orthodox, or Fundamentalist churches. Or go to college—especially Ivy Leagues.

Our interest is not indoctrination, but helping everyone learn to read,  interpret, and apply Scripture to your life. And also how to critique modern society based upon your commitment to Christ. Our Fall Series is just that—we’re calling it “be the church: equipping the saints” from kickoff Sunday to Thanksgiving. And in 2023, we’re going through the Bible again as a congregation.

Our desire is that your opinions about politics bear a witness to Christ based upon your knowledge and understanding of God’s will as revealed in Scripture. 

Moral Desensitization

You know what desensitization is—that process whereby a therapist exposes a person to their phobia bit by it until they aren’t afraid of it anymore—that’s desensitization. But do you know what moral desensitization is?  Moral desensitization is the process by which your moral stature is worn down—eroded. The repeated exposure to something immoral slowly, gradually, wears down your moral resistance.  What would have caused outrage just a few years ago now only elicits a shrug of the shoulders.  Oh well—what’r’ya gonna do? 

As moral erosion occurs, our outrage grows weaker and weaker. Before long, we shrug it off and in time, we come to accept it. After that, it becomes part of the ritual and we celebrate it—even defend it and advocate for it. 

It is as though our conscience is expendable, disposable. The moral outrage of a few years ago is now a grand “Oh well…” and we have thrown our conscience under the bus. 

We may even do this unconsciously. We don’t mean to abandon conscience, but the process of moral erosion and moral desensitization, we just find ourselves moving with the herd unthinkingly and with little to no self-examination on the way. 

Shouldn’t people of faith value conscience above all else? Shouldn’t we be training ourselves not in moral desensitization but increasing moral sensitivity and awareness? Yes, I think so, and we should be leading the culture in what is right and wrong rather than following.  We obey God, not men. We follow Christ, not culture. 

Trading Moral Codes

Taking a look around us, we see so much evidence of erosion it is easy to feel that humankind has no moral compass at all, but that’s not quite right. Cultures like ours tend to abandon many morals, but they add morals at the same time. 

We can see this clearly if we think about language and taboo words. Back in Chaucer’s day—the late 1300s—the only taboo words were blasphemies. In Elizabethan England, all words having to do with sex, death, or bodily functions were replaced by an enormous wealth of euphemisms—and remain with us today. We don’t “die”; we “pass on,” “graduate,” or “join the immortal choir invisible.” Women excuse themselves to “powder their noses,” and men, in what should be a quickly disappearing phrase, “visit the little boys room.” 

Taboo words change with time.  Remember, when Clark Gable, in “Gone with the Wind,” said those famous words, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,” there were newspaper reports of women fainting in the aisles, such was the shock. Today I, a Presbyterian Pastor, can use the word damn in a sermon without raising an eyebrow. I can also use the word Hell, but only if I’m referring to the place. These words are tame now. They are no longer taboo—or as taboo—as they once were. Words that were once taboo fall off the back of the barge and are no longer considered taboo. Likewise, new words get loaded on to the front becoming our new taboos.  

A brief survey of cable tv will demonstrate many words that were taboo a decade or so ago that now fail to raise blood pressure a single point. And words that were fine to use in the past are now no longer acceptable—they’ve become taboo. Consider all the words referring to national heritage—Italians, Polish, Irish—remember jokes about these? All now verboten. 

And the barge is picking up speed. The present whirlwind around pronouns and special identities causes the cancellation of people who crossed today’s boundaries twenty years ago.  There are new taboos. Some drop off; others are added, and what is true for language is true for our morals as well. 

It used to be wrong to be homosexual and fine to chain-smoke cigarettes in a restaurant. The morals change in time, as does the moral compass, so the real question is: are we trading well? 

Two Realms

Two realms: Augustine wrote about them as Rome was dissolving and eroding. He called them the City of God and the City of Man—rival cities shaped by opposing loves and working toward different ends.  We would call them the Church—the followers of Christ—and the world, which follows its own nose. There are conversations that we have within our family—the Body of Christ—that we wouldn’t have out in the world. Every team has its own bench—its own huddle and dugout—where their internal conversation shapes them for their game out on the field. So we in the Church have conversations among ourselves that we would not have in evangelizing the world. They are not part of our conversation because they cannot be—they do not share the same assumptions and apparently do not know or serve the same Lord. 

The Church strategizes to reach the outsider. We serve this world as we serve Christ. We love the world because we love Christ first and he loves them. 

Being nice in order to reach others

Some will say, “They see us as judgmental and condemning. If we don’t love them first, then we’ll never have their ear to share the gospel!” They are correct. We can become so righteous—so committed to our moral code—that we become incapable of meeting those outside of our code. That is a problem; it turns the church into a monastery or convent up and against the sinful world. We are in this world for the world’s salvation, and it does God no glory for us to retreat from the world in order to feel pure about ourselves. 

We are here to reach out in service in order that Christ be known and glorified. 

Yes, we should give of ourselves sacrificially to the unrighteous and the undeserving, bending over backwards in order that we may make Christ known to them. But there is a line when we will not longer cast pearls before swine.

There is a line—we can meet others on their own terms only for so long. If they demand that we deal with them on their own terms or not at all, then we flex as we can, but be clear—for a blind man to say, “I am not blind, you are!” is as far as we can go. The blind man who denies his blindness is a fool. The sinner who denies his sin is a fool. When someone outside the faith demands that you and I call his blindness sightedness and his sin virtue, we can no longer dialogue. Our Christian conscience and integrity cannot be compromised at the whim of others. 

Bringing it down to earth, if your friend says, “If you, Christian,  want to talk to me, you have to accept my promiscuous lifestyle without question. If you don’t approve of it lock, stock, and barrel, then you are just as hateful as the rest of Christianity.” Sometimes we just have to walk away. We can bend over backwards to reach others—and should—but we can only bend so far before our own integrity cracks up into moral compromise. 

When the blind man says, “But I don’t need to be healed—I don’t want to be healed and you mustn’t say that healing is even possible,” then we are at an impasse. If our whole endeavor is to see the broken made whole, the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the sinners to be redeemed by Christ’s forgiveness, we can only do so much; for if a person has come to hate wholeness, truth, and the clear light of day, there is no grounds for dialogue. What do we do in such a case? We shake off the dust of our feet. We pray that God would break into that person’s life more directly. Bring that person some trouble which might awaken them. Ask the Holy Spirit to rekindle the love of light, truth, beauty, and wholeness—all of which will eventually testify to Christ. 

You can offer Heaven to someone who loves the fires of Hell for only so long. And yes, we should try, but we won’t be talked into calling the Lake of Fire Heaven II. 

How’s Your Outrage?

So what has happened to your outrage? 

Ten years ago, what bothered you and does it both you today?

Hollywood churns out the trash at an alarming rate—stories and messages (whether you recognize them as messages or not)—poured into your home and family rooms. 

Is it making us better? Is what you’re reading and listening to sharpening your moral sensitivity, encouraging you to love Christ, respecting and building up your conscience? 

No. Like a bully at the beach they come, mangling your sand castle—because they hate your Christian conscience, they despise your attempts to follow and serve Jesus. It is as though they want nothing more than for you to drop your moral indignation, abandon all you know and have learned about right and wrong, stop following Jesus, and follow them instead—to which I would ask: “What kind of people are these?” 

Who would consciously distort and intentionally pervert the moral compass of the nation (or world)? What is to be gained by the moral trades they would have us make?  How far and how much longer will we bend over backwards for them pretending that our kindness is winning their ears? 

How is your soul and conscience doing? Do you feel yourself caught in the landslide of moral erosion? Is your resistance wearing thin or has it worn out entirely? Are you just tired of fighting the inevitable flow of history, so you’ve turned yourself downhill to go along for the easy ride? 

We need to ask these questions—our spirituality depends upon it. Our witness to Christ depends upon it. Our soul’s health hangs from such questions. 

Good news; The Holy Spirit can and will restore what culture has mangled or broken down. The importance of repentance is that every time we ask God for forgiveness, we abandon the evils of this world. When we turn to God and stand in His light, we are re-oriented to Him. Whatever we confess we are forgiven—our brokenness, our weakness, our crooked heartedness—He does not reject us even if we are most deserving of rejection. 

He takes us and reshapes us. He breathes new life and spirit into us. He restores the sand castle of our conscience—replacing the sand with solid rock that becomes impervious to the waves or the bullies. 

Brothers and sisters, I tell you in Jesus’ name: Reject the codes of this world; turn away from them this instant. Put your trust in Christ alone, call out to Him, asking that He would give you His Holy Spirit to be your new conscience. And stay critical of your host culture—America’s health and future utterly depend upon Christians standing by their Christian morals.  Being salt and light means that we do not represent ourselves, but the one who sends us. 

Yes, we face uphill against the landslide. Yes, it’s difficult—so what? Christ is with us, among us, and gives us every gift we need to endure, flourish, and win. †

Questions: 

1. How does erosion work within a civilization? 
2. What is “moral desensitization”? 
3. Can you name some examples of changing morality? 
4. Discuss the statement: “We don’t lose moral codes; we just trade one moral code for others.” 
5. Can you name some of the positive trades? Some negative trades?
6. What makes today’s moral landscape different from other periods of moral change in western society? 
7. What is the role of Christians in relation to a culture that seems to happily abandon Christian morality? 
8. What might we call the New Moral Order that replaces the Christian code?