Lawless Corruptions
In a March 19 column for The Spectator Roger Kimball identified the spiritual disorder of “liberals,” which is that they are antinomian or, in the language of the people, “lawless.” I think we should use the latter designation instead of the faulty political identifier so as to direct the applicable scriptural term to them.
There are two other words that have been so abused as to be practically unavailable to us.
First, I do not like to call myself a “Christian,” as was applied to followers of the Way first in Antioch by others—except among people to whom the term means the same as it does to me. In reality, I am the progeny of Gentile converts to Messianic Judaism, who believe the Law is the Word of God, which the Lord said “cannot be broken”—and that until “Christians” return to this understanding from their antinomian corruption of St. Paul (corrected in St. James’s Epistle), they will continue in apostasy toward their original paganism.
Second, “love,” the love of God and of Christ as exercised among believers, in common parlance means erotic desire, or affections of various intensities, or laxity in regard to sin, or some mixture of these. I suggest we return to the Pauline “charity” for real love and let the Gentiles use the word for how they feel about chocolate.
God’s name is most often used in vain in the market, the churches, the media, the forum, and the academy. We cannot replace this, for it is holy, but must seize and defend the high ground around it.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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