We have just had an excellent reminder about why truth is so important, why Christians always need to stand for what is right in the public arena, and about the power of prayer. All this and more took place the past day or two, and demonstrates again why we must never compromise, never cringe before controversy, and never back down when the gospel is at risk.
I refer to the outrageous decision by World Vision to capitulate to the homosexual agenda, which I wrote about just two days ago: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2014/03/25/another-christian-sell-out/
The latest WV statement begins: “Dear Friends, Today, the World Vision U.S. board publicly reversed its recent decision to change our employment conduct policy. The board acknowledged they made a mistake and chose to revert to our longstanding conduct policy requiring sexual abstinence for all single employees and faithfulness within the Biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.
“We are writing to you our trusted partners and Christian leaders who have come to us in the spirit of Matthew 18 to express your concern in love and conviction. You share our desire to come together in the Body of Christ around our mission to serve the poorest of the poor. We have listened to you and want to say thank you and to humbly ask for your forgiveness.”
You can read the whole statement through the link below. This is very good news indeed. Here we have a very public Christian organisation making a decidedly bad decision, but then being willing to admit that they got it wrong big time, and even publically apologise for this.
That is very commendable indeed, and something we can all give thanks for. And as I say, it shows quite clearly the power of prayer, and the vital necessity of Christians always being willing to speak out when biblical truth and morality is at stake.
Questions
Now, we could leave things at that and simply rejoice in this turn-around, and thank God that common sense and biblical truth has finally prevailed here. But one is still left with some nagging questions it seems. So while I fully and publically applaud WV for their change of heart and mind, I still feel obligated to at least raise a few hard questions here.
The most important question is this: why in the world did they ever see the need to head down this path in the first place? Why did they feel compelled to clearly violate biblical standards of morality and sexuality, and so overwhelmingly cave in to the demands of the militant homosexual lobby?
The truth is, they never, never, never should have even contemplated this, let alone gone down this ungodly and unbiblical path. This was a massive sell-out out of biblical Christianity, and a gross capitulation to the values and standards of the world.
Another set of questions arise here: presumably the WV head and board will claim that they did not enter into the original decision lightly, but thought long and hard about it, and prayed much over it. And surely that process did not happen overnight; it would have been the result of months of deliberation, thought and prayer at least – perhaps even years.
Regarding their first decision, they evidently felt quite strongly that this was the right thing to do, and they emphasised that this was a sound Christian decision, in the interests of ‘compassion’ and ‘unity’ and so on. Yet their second decision was made in a matter of mere hours.
What is going on here? Months to make a really bad and anti-Christian decision, yet hours to see the light and make a complete reversal? Only God knows the real motivations of the WV leaders, and why they changed direction so quickly. It is certainly possible they all were convicted heavily, and all fell on their faces before a holy God and pled with him to show them biblical truth here, and they responded accordingly.
I certainly hope this was the main motivation here. But is it not equally likely that the overwhelming negative public response from concerned Christians all over the globe was perhaps the main reason for this sudden and radical back-down?
Certainly thousands, if not tens of thousands, of biblical Christians would have let WV know in no uncertain terms how they were outraged by this bad decision, and they were going to take their support out of WV and give it to other genuine Christian aid organisations.
How much of this really influenced their most recent decision? Was the public backlash, the Christian outrage, the storm of protest and disgust, and dare I say it, the withdrawal of huge amounts of financial support, the major reason for this quick reversal?
As I say, only God knows the hearts of these men and women, and I suspect that in a fallen world there would have been a mixture of motivations at play here. Some may have actually realised the sinful and tragically wrong nature of the original decision, and repented accordingly.
Whatever the case, it is still good news. But the original decision never should have occurred. And this is not the end of things. Both WV and other Christian churches and parachurch groups will continue to be tempted to toy with the idea of accommodation, compromise, capitulation and selling out the gospel in order to please men.
So we must continue to pray for WV and other Christian bodies. The pressure to cave in and to sell out will always be there. We can thank God that sense prevailed at WV – for now. And we can rejoice in the fact that so many godly Christians did raise their voices, did speak out, and did put biblical truth ahead of other loyalties.
This was a tremendous win for Christian people power, and shows just how very important it is that Christians never wimp out, back down, or take the cowardly approach to such matters. The Word of God and Christian values must never be abandoned, but always championed and fought for.
Many of you did this in regards to WV. Well done to all of you. This is a victory we can all savour. But the war continues. Keep praying always, and keep standing up for biblical truth and morality in the public arena.
http://barbwire.com/2014/03/26/confirmed-world-vision-repents-asks-forgiveness-sin-blessing-sodomy-based-marriage/
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