What’s wrong with taking a stand? Everything, apparently.

I don’t understand why people hate it when others take stands for something they feel is important.

While browsing the internet with the TV on, I overheard a story about how conservative Judaism will now allow openly gay rabbis. While it really isn’t much to me, as I’m not a Jew, I can’t help but remember what my Old Testament says about homosexuality and God’s opinion of it. But the thing that caught my attention the most was this young guy in, I don’t know, Jew seminary (what do you call rabbi school? Again, I’m not Jewish), who said that he didn’t see why anyone would split off the conservative branch (I’d hate to see what liberal Judaism is like…), citing that the difference here is “silly.”

“Silly” is how a lot of people regard those who have strong convictions that are deemed too old-fashioned or narrow-minded or whatever. It’s the opinion of many liberal Christians towards more conservative Christians…if you have a problem with it, deal with it yourselves but don’t force yourself on the rest. This, however, is pretty ironic, in that the thing forced on people was the “official” acceptance of liberal ideology.

Luckily, I don’t belong to a faith with a central human authority that can make and remake official doctrine to suit itself. My central authority is the Bible, which itself is inspired of God. He’s the central authority, and His Word is pretty plain. Anyone doing anything different is a heretic, whether they think so or not. And while they won’t have to answer to me…they WILL answer to Him, per the passage in Romans 14:11-12 (KJV): “For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” But fundamental values are popularly derided and disdained these days.

For an example, consider Rick Warren’s opinion of those who won’t compromise doctrine for a lenience conducive to his brand of church growth: “I’m saying some people are going to have to die or leave. Moses had to wander around the desert for 40 years while God killed off a million people before he let them go into the Promised Land. That may be brutally blunt, but it’s true. There may be people in your church who love God sincerely, but who will never, ever change” (Rick Warren’s “Ministry Toolbox,” No. 263, 6/14/06). While this is a gross misapplication of why they were wandering in the first place…the people had sinned, and God punished them by making them wander until the offending generation had died out, reserving the Promised Land to their children to conquer. But, it remains instructional to see how some “leaders” view people who won’t back off plain teaching in the Bible. Conform or else!

The afore-mentioned scripture has a verse in it that gives these people what they see as carte blanche to put down the traditional views: “Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way” (Romans 14:12, KJV). They see us as putting forth the stumblingblocks, but the problem is that the stumblingblock being presented is a diluted gospel that confuses and cannot save.

So take a stand for what’s right, if for no other reason than it rankles the tolerate-anything hippies.