Culture Creep

In the paper Saturday was quite an interesting article by Sarah Boesveld[i].  It points out that the CRA is being campaigned on to revoke the charitable status of a number of Christian charities.  Why?  Because they specifically work with gays and lesbians in efforts to curb such behavior.  According to NDP Randall Garrison, the work of Living Waters Canada, Exodus Global Alliance, Courage and other like minded, “Christ-centered discipleship ministry that deals specifically with relational and sexual brokenness” is nothing more than ‘conversion therapy’.   The NDP is greatly encouraged by the fact that this practice has just been outlawed by California.  According to California’s governor Jerry Brown, conversion therapy (practiced by people that claim homosexuality can be overcome by the grace of God), “[have] no basis in science or medicine and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery”.

I must agree that it is certainly true that such therapy has no basis in science or medicine.  It is a spiritual work against a spiritual problem, and will probably never be understood by any secular practitioner.   Nor will it be successful if the person so engaged in such “therapy” is unwilling to admit and face the spiritual aspect of such behavior.  Indeed, Sarah quotes Kevin Schultz, who sought help 10 years earlier and only attended 3 “therapy sessions” as saying, “You keep being told, ‘You’re broken, you’re broken, you’re broken’…like how long can you hear that and feel like a normal human being?”  Kevin subsequently divorced his wife and married another man.   How does the church feel about that?  HDM Spence (Dean Of Gloucester at the time) wrote, “Men have been found to sacrifice their best and dearest interests for the sake of some low lust, some evil propensity, or some sinful habit.”  Course - that was in 1909 when it was still OK to call it sin.

I expect that the popular media will not make much of this story, and the pressure on the CRA to delist Christian ministry focused on helping people escape what the Scripture calls “besetting sin” (behavior that God speaks against that you have a very difficult time escaping) will only increase in the background.  How long will it be till they recognize that the Church (not just evangelical, but all protestant and all Catholic too) actively encourages people to repent from a host of things that our society believes are perfectly fine?  Will a church loose its charitable status if they speak against porn, or gambling?  Both are culturally acceptable (indeed - even culturally encouraged) behaviors that the Scripture denounces.  Will it soon be a crime to discern between greed and ambition?

What we are witnessing is what I would call, “culture creep”.  Not just the seeping of a mainstream worldview into the culture of the whole society, but the mandated enforcement of that culture to all.  What used to be attacks on Christian identity and practice by fringe elements of society became attacks on Christian identity and practice by the leftist media and is now becoming attacks on Christian identity and practice by members of parliament and the courts.

Jerry Brown might take some satisfaction that his government has just criminalized conversion therapy, but I think the only crime committed here was calling a spiritual effort a therapy to start with.  Therapy is a secular work, not a spiritual work.  The church, and all Christian charity, ought to be clearly engaged in spiritual work and ought to rightly call it that.  Then the error of engaging those who do not want to be so confronted can be avoided altogether.  Of course, that would mean that only a few will sign up.  Besetting sin being such a friend of secularism, after all.

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[i] “You keep being told you’re broke’ – article by Sarah Boesveld in the National Post, Sat Oct 6^th, page A5