Ten Things Christians Should Never Accept

Last updated on: June 1, 2023 at 1:12 am by Ben Witherington

Ten Things Christians Should Never Accept 2023-05-13T08:46:01-04:00 Ben Witherington

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TEN THINGS CHRISTIANS SHOULD NEVER ACCEPT

The premise of this post is that I’m talking about what counts as Christian behavior. (and ethical belief). I’m not dealing in this post with what the larger society deems moral or legal. That’s a discussion for another day. Christians should never assume ‘we live in a Christian country’ and assume that what the Bible says should be the law of the land. In fact, we live in a morally and religiously pluralistic society. I am simply talking about what Christians should accept as their own ethical credo and behavior.

Christians should never be an advocate for abortion on demand. An unborn child is not merely a lump of tissue in a mother’s body. If one wants to avoid getting pregnant, then by all means use good contraception! And stop running around yelling ‘my body, my choice’. You didn’t get pregnant without the aid of a second party, and the notion that they should have NO choice in the matter is illogical. Are there cases where abortion should be available as a lesser of two evils choice? Yes— if the life of the mother is in danger, or if there is something like an ectopic pregnancy such that a viable child cannot result, and perhaps also in the cases of rape or incest, though why exactly the unborn child should get the death penalty for someone else’s sins is a question that never gets asked or answered. Abortion is not a form of normal health care except in the exceptional situations just mentioned. There are nearly 1 million abortions in America every year. This has to stop as we are destroying our own nation’s future.

Christians should not be promoting relationships as if they were Christian marriages when they are not. According to Jesus and Paul, heterosexual monogamy is what counts as marriage. (see e.g. Mt. 19 and 1 Cor. 7). Outside of that relationship disciples of Christ should remain single and not engage in sexual relationships, not least because the major purpose (not the sole purpose) of sex is to repopulate the species. It is simply illogical when a man talks about having a husband or a woman talks about having a wife. From a Christian point of view only men can be husbands, and only women can be wives and these two terms husband and wife are binary— they require members of the opposite sex to be appropriate.

Christians should not be advocating transgender surgery as if it were ‘health care’. It is not. It is a form of mutilation or augmentation, just because an individual is uncomfortable with the gender that their chromosomes dictate. I had to laugh the other day when I read an article that talked about ‘the designated at birth gender’. No, it was determined in the womb whether a person is a male or a female. It wasn’t designated at birth. A baby didn’t pop out of the womb and sudden someone said ‘I dub thee male or female’. We know this very well as a result of the gender reveal procedure involving a sonogram. Transgender surgery is dangerous and should not be encouraged. We live in a narcissistic culture that thinks we should have choices about everything— even our gender. This is false. Some things are determined for us by our heredity and chromosomes and we should not attempt to change it. If how one views or feels about one’s self is at odds with what the chromosomes determined then one needs mental health counseling not surgery. The only possible exception to this is if one is abnormal and born with both male and female genitalia.

Christians should never be advocates for loose or non-existent gun control laws. Because they are pro-life (by which I don’t just mean pro-birth), they should be all about having necessary laws in place to protect life which means: 1) universal background checks; 2) the weapons of war kept out of the hands of all but soldiers or police (and no, a private citizen is not ‘a well ordered militia’ and the second amendment should not apply in this case); 3) if the minimum age for voting or drinking is 18 then no one under 18 should be owning and carrying a gun. Furthermore, no one with mental health issues should be allowed to be anywhere near a gun. Many of the recent mass shootings have been by young people, and young people who were mentally ill. But the Bible is also clear that we are all born fallen human beings, with an inclination to sin. So, extreme caution should be the watchword for us all. In America there is now more than one gun per capita. This is one very important reason why we have so much violence, call it over-kill. And while we are at it, we do not need our police shooting to kill when lethal force is not necessary, just because a policeman feels threatened.

The Bible is perfectly clear that adultery is a serious sin, as is same sex sexual activity. (see Rom. 1.18-32). There should not be a double standard when it comes to sexual sins. They are all an offense to God. For too long, the church has turned a blind eye to adultery, while ranting and raving against homosexuality. But ‘thou shalt not commit adultery’ is one of the ten commandments. In fact, adultery is a more serious sin, as it is a sin against a marriage that already exists. This is why it is mentioned more frequently in the Bible than other sexual sins.

Christians should be good citizens and obey the governmental authorities except when the latter make rules that violate what the Bible teaches. We should pay our taxes, love our neighbors as ourselves, and refrain from voting for grossly immoral candidates guilty of lying, tax fraud, business fraud, adultery, while using the excuse ‘well I like their policies’. Better to abstain from voting than vote for such a candidate. We need leaders who are moral exemplars for ourselves and our children. Many of the candidates of both the major parties DO NOT QUALIFY AND DO NOT DESERVE OUR VOTES.

Christians should not be taking other Christians to court and suing them. I was appalled recently when during the primary season one candidate bragged about being a Christian and then bragged about suing a fellow Christian who is the governor of our state. This is a clear violation of what 1 Corinthians says about Christians not taking fellow Christians to secular court, but rather settling differences between them by other means. There are a few exceptions to this rule, when it’s a matter of a lesser of two evils, to prevent a greater one. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians, we should settle things between ourselves, and not present the world with a bad witness that Christians cannot sort out their own affairs with fellow Christians.

Christians should not be defying science and be climate change deniers and major polluters. We should be working to clean up our planet, protect our clean air and water, and not endorse dirty energy, especially coal, when we do have viable alternatives these days. God gave us the responsibility to ‘tend the garden’ take care of mother nature, not destroy it. This includes simply things like recycling, buying hybrid or electric vehicles, working to offset one’s carbon footprint (and if you don’t know what that is, Google it). Creation care is part of what God calls his people to be involved in.

Christians should never endorse racist ideas or agendas, regardless of the ethnic group or race one is talking about. For example anti-Semitism, the hatred or fear of Jews is a sin. America is a nation of all sorts of immigrants, so it will not do to say ‘keep the immigrants out’ when your heritage is you come from immigrants. No, we need reasonable immigration laws, careful border policing, and more compassion for people fleeing the drug cartels and thugs in Latin American and South American countries. Ask yourself the question— Would I walk hundreds of miles with small children to find refuge in America if my family was not in serious danger in the country where I’m from? The answer is no. And this word just in, many of the blue collar jobs in America are already being done by recent immigrants, especially in the service industries, because no one else will do them. We need those folks, and they should be fairly treated. Obviously, if some of them are criminals they must be treated as such, but otherwise not. We have vastly more criminals who have always been citizens of the U.S.

Christians should be supporting worthy charitable causes, including those founded and maintained by Christians like the Salvation Army, Goodwill, and many more such endeavors. Self-sacrificial giving is what Christians are called to. And this means evaluating one’s spending priorities. John Wesley stressed that someone else’s necessities of food, shelter and clothing, should come before your spending on your own luxuries. As St. Paul says ‘the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil’. You should be placing your ultimate trust in God, not in your bank account and your philosophy should not be ‘I shop until I drop’. Rather one should ask ‘what should I do with the money and property God has entrusted to me’. ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof’. This being the case Christians should all know we are not ‘owners’ in this world, we are stewards of God’s property, and he will hold us responsible for what we do with it. See my little book Jesus and Money.

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