Monday Morning Music Ministry

11-6-23

Christianity was berthed in Jerusalem as a vibrant, living body of believers. It moved to Greece and became a philosophy. It moved to Rome and became an institution. It moved to Europe and became a culture. It moved to America and became a business.

Somewhere in there, Christianity the Religion was corrupted and became synonymous with the Established Order. “Be ye in the world, but not of the world,” a command of Jesus Christ, has become obsolete in the post-Christian West. This week was the observance – scarcely observed any more, actually – of Reformation Day. It has caused me to wonder how many steps forward Christianity has made since Martin Luther’s day… and how many steps back.

In his times, Luther was not the first Christian to dissent from practices, corruption, and wayward theology in the Church. For more than a hundred years, believers had been tortured, imprisoned, and burned alive for questioning doctrinal inventions of Rome, and daring to translate Scripture into languages of the people. Luther, a monk, nailed a list of his complaints to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. He too was persecuted, excommunicated, chased, went into hiding… and translated the Bible into the language of his people, the Germans.

“Reform” became the Reformation. “Protest” became Protestantism. But what have the movements since become?

Luther sought reform, not revolution, yet revolution occurred: half of Europe caught fire with the belief that faith alone, by God’s grace, actuated salvation; and that people needed no intercessor with God except Christ; not saints (many of whom were fictional inventions), not Marys, not purchased “indulgences.” As doctrines, “Faith Alone,” “Scripture Alone,” “Christ Alone,” and “Grace Alone” were themselves resurrected.

The Reformation finally caught fire after the accumulation of martyrs. Other Reform denominations were founded. Luther, who never intended to break with the Church much less see a denomination established with his name, had to rein in his followers, the radical among whom had begun to destroy statues and Christian art. At the other extreme, Luther rode the wave, often manifested in secular art, of the Renaissance. Because his Reformation respected literacy and inquiry, local ecclesiastical and political control, and the dignity of the individual, the whirlwind he unleashed effectively led to the printing press, the Enlightenment, and Western democracy.

(For another essay we must examine the seeming contradictions in Luther’s rejection of Modernism – he can be seen as the last of the Medievalists – and remember his dictum that “Reason is the enemy of faith.”)

But, for those of us who commemorate the “birth” of the Reformation, let us think about the denominational movements, collectively called Protestant. Historians know what was protested 500 years ago. What do they protest against today? “Christendom” – the Western Church, certainly the American church in virtually all its corners — is in dire need of reformation again.

Many Protestant churches have become as secularized, money-oriented, and social, as the offending Roman churches were 500 years ago.

Many Protestant churches emphasize “works” – rewards, incentives, trying to please God through good deeds – no less than the Papacy did when Luther was disgusted by it all.

Many Protestant churches ignore the tenets of the faith, deny the Divinity of Christ, and question essential doctrines of the faith… to an extent worse than Luther beheld in Rome.

Christians must live in this world protesting – that is, not accepting the world’s standards, not conforming to the ways of the world. We must either offend the world-system or be a sweet savor; but NOT become like the world. Jesus did not “go along”! What does Protestantism protest against any more?

The Reformation succeeded in part because the larger culture enthusiastically embraced, for a time, the melding of Christian and social, civic lifestyles. But now, upon the altars of inclusion, pluralism, and multi-culturalism, Western societies increasingly eschew even mentions of Christianity and its standards, much less respect them.

Martin Luther accepted martyrdom for his beliefs, even to the point of his rescue. A letter on display at the Museum of the Bible, written the night before his trial, displays how accepting he was of his fate… and how ready to defend his conscience, to die for His Lord. He said when he was called on trial to recant his beliefs and writings (under the threat of death), Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can not and will not retract [my writings]. For it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.

The time is coming in this contemporary world when Christians will have it demanded of them to renounce their faith; in fact, it has begun. That this is already a time of anti-Christian persecution is abundantly clear. Not only in pagan and Communist lands, but our own. Believers daily suffer indignities and are asked to compromise their principles and forced to sublimate their voices.

Some day soon Christians will have to suffer no longer in silence, and will lose the luxury of withdrawing into small groups and communities of believers. The Bible does not merely warn… prophets did not just threaten… but God foretold and promised this holy challenge to the saints of God in the End Times.

We must, like Martin Luther, embrace our faith and moral integrity, at all costs; and find the spiritual strength to say:

It is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other.

+ + +

A clip of Niall MacGinnis’s iconic portrayal of Martin Luther:

Click: Here I Stand