How is it possible that the Institutional Church is abandoning all Biblical precepts (except the few she agrees with) and taking on the mindset of the God-rejecting world? How can she profess to believe in the Lord and live like the world? What kind of spiritual gymnastics must she be playing? Close observation reveals two strategies used to nullify the Lord’s Words relative to the sinner-sin situation. Choice number one is the oldest strategy and the one the vast majority of churches embrace–reject God’s definition of sin and create a more acceptable one. 2) The other strategy is almost as old and almost as entrenched as #1–separate the sinner from the sin by blocking out the sin and seeing only the “sinner saved by grace.” I have spent years exposing the first heresy so I will focus on its religious counterpart–the Separation Syndrome.

Concerning the Separation Syndrome and sin, religious liberals remind me of social liberals’ reaction to  crimes committed by guns. After the murder of 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando a few days ago the Obama administration did what they always do when guns are used in killings–they condemned, not the killer, but the gun he used. It is as if the guns do the killing without human involvement. According to liberals, it is not the shooter who is to blame for the loss of life, but their guns. Because Muslims have used pressure cookers, knives, explosives, nuts, washers, ball bearings and airplanes to kill innocent people, should we not use the same ideology and ban all those items; should we blame them for the deaths?

As does the Godless world, the church places blame for sin not on the sinner, but on the sin which, in their way of thinking, makes sense. After all, is it not Adam’s sin infused into man’s spiritual DNA that is the root cause of the sinful action? I can imagine Satan saying to Adam and Eve: “It’s not your fault that God is punishing you. It is the tree’s fault for existing and God’s fault for creating it and placing it where you could get to it.”

Back when I watched meaningless movies I saw one that involved a young woman who had contracted AIDS from one of her many sex partners. As a “victim,” she was asked to speak to high school students about the deadly problem. The first thing she would tell them was that if they should contract AIDS it would not be their fault. The decisions they would make would have nothing to do with the situation. They were innocent; it was the virus that was to blame. Since then there has been added a layer of protection for the “victim”–the government is responsible for AIDS prevention which will enable people to do as they please without having to suffer the consequences.

In the same way the church views the sinner as the “victim” of Adam’s fall. Therefore, through the death of Jesus Christ, God has made it possible for them to sin with impunity. Therefore the wages of a parishioner’s sin is not death; the wages of his/her sin is eternal life, exactly as Satan told Adam and Eve relative to eating of the forbidden tree: “You shall not surely die.” To be continued. L.J.