Why is there Confusion and Lack of Wisdom in the Church?
(All Scripture references are from the NRSV).
In many aspects of the church, there is confusion and a lack of wisdom. This may be on a personal level with issues such as confusion of sexuality and gender, on a church leadership level with a lack of discernment of the heart of the Father and on a corporate church level in the worship experience.
The key to this is the submission to authority. Confusion comes with a rejection of authority, whether it be earthly fathers or our Heavenly Father.
Hebrews 12:9 says, “Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live?” (Heb. 12:9, NRSV).
In speaking of human fathers, the word for human is sarx, meaning flesh, so a more literal translation of the above passage is “fathers of flesh.” We will have life as we submit to earthly and Heavenly Father, ie become one in flesh with them.
Jude 7 speaks of the perversion of some, “Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” (Jude 7).
A derivative of the word sarx is again used, implying this perversion is caused by pursuing of “other flesh.” If we pursue other flesh then we cannot achieve one flesh. Jude 8 continues to describe these people who are living in perversion, “Yet in the same way these dreamers also defile the flesh, reject authority, and slander the glorious ones.” (Jude 8).
These people defile the flesh and reject and blaspheme against those in authority. This is confirmed in Romans 1, which explains that homosexual immorality is due to the rejection of authority given by God in revelation.
A well known account of people rejecting authority is that of Korah’s rebellion (Numbers 16). Korah united 250 leaders against Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! All the congregation are holy, everyone of them, and the LORD is among them. So why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?” (v3).
Here Korah would not submit to the authority ordained by God. After hearing this rebellion, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, and said, “Separate yourselves from this congregation, so that I may consume them in a moment.” They fell on their faces, and said, “O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one person sin and you become angry with the whole congregation?” (v21-22).
The common factor in rebellion, as displayed by Korah, is a rebellion against the ordination of the Father. This can take the form of rebellion against leaders or even angelic powers (cf. Jude 8-9).
Just as the Father ordains leaders, so too he ordains all things about people: the exact places and times they will live (Acts 17:24-28), who a person’s parents are, and also what gender a person will be created as. It is He who differentiates between human flesh, ie who is male and female. This is the ordination of the Father so all gender confusion is actually a rejection of the Father’s ordering of himself through humanity by maleness, which means the Lord Jesus Christ. God decided to adopt human flesh in the male form. Our spirit will be sensitive to the Spirit of God to the degree we have discerned the work of the Holy Spirit in the giving to us of life through the flesh of our mortal fathers.
The feminisation of the church and society indicates that discernment in the church is being progressively lost. This is evidenced in much of the contemporary singing which says “I will do this” and is being spoken by the woman (the bride of Christ- the church) to the man (the bridegroom- Christ), which is a disorder, as it is the man who is to initiate.
Many contemporary musicians lack a fear of the Holy Father but are in fear of the local church father i.e. senior pastor. The fathers of some current church leaders (who themselves were church leaders) were exposed as having serious problems in the area of sexuality and their children will either rebel or conform to their fathers. As long as the fundamental point of orientation for these leaders is the masculine rather than the orientation being to the Father in heaven, discernment by them will be lacking. Whether the expression of the confusion is homosexuality, feminism, gender confusion, immorality, the flesh of the father remains the fundamental point of orientation. Romans 1:32 tells us this rebellion is wilful, “They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die–yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.”
There is also confusion in regards to intimacy in contemporary church worship. When person is joined to another in sexual intercourse they become one flesh (1 Cor. 6:16). For this reason, Paul is urging the Corinthians to refrain from sexual intercourse outside of marriage because the marriage has not yet come. Christians are to wait for their marriage with Christ, even though they are already one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor.6:17). However just as an unmarried person may desire to be one flesh before the time of the wedding, so Christians can commonly desire to be one flesh, ie married with Jesus, before time. If they want one flesh now they will never have one S/spirit now. Many worship leaders aim to lead into a “one flesh” experience which focuses on intimacy with Jesus. However it is not possible to have one flesh with Jesus because it is before the wedding supper of the Lamb and Jesus has not come back yet. Worship leaders may never talk about the second coming because they have an over-realised immanent eschatology. They don’t understand the difference between imminence and immanent. Jesus is imminent in his return but not always immanent in today’s worship experience.