by Angela S. Young

Created on: June 27, 2009   Last Updated: October 03, 2010

You walk into a church and find yourself greeted with a smile and a warm welcome.  You're hooked. You keep attending and soon begin to make connections with others. It goes well for a while and then you realize they are not all they claim to be. One woman talks about missing church because of a hangover; one man makes a pass at you; one teenager sports a very pregnant belly; one member thinks nothing of watching shows and movies that contain nudity and sexual acts, profanity, mockery of the things of God and worse.

Of course, all Christians are human beings with real failings, just like everyone else. But a person claiming the name of Christian should journey toward becoming as much like Christ as possible, given the human frame. In other words, the person does not chronically commit sin with no conscience. So why do we have so many in our churches, claiming the name of Christ, and yet living a life little different from those of the world?

Someone has come up with the idea that as the world slips inevitably toward deeper and deeper immorality, the church slides that way too. They remain different from the "world", and yet they have become immoral and immune to the nudging of the conscience (the Holy Spirit) in many areas. We may be far from the world, and yet we have drifted ever farther from the Father and the standards he has set.

God doesn't expect us to be perfect, for he knows we cannot. He does, however, expect the Christian not to trample on the blood of Jesus Christ who paid the ultimate price for our sins, as if what he did doesn't matter. Because God loved us, He sent Jesus to pay the price for our sins, before any of us were even born!

And yet, we laugh at cartoon characters on television that mock God and Christianity openly. We turn a blind eye, or become hooked into watching, sexually explicit television and other media. We turn a deaf ear to profanity and the taking of God's name in vain.

But this article is about moral misconceptions. The above sets the stage for the real problem. Christians, over time, begin to buy in to the philosophies of the world. "It's OK, it's just a little drink." "It's not like you're out cheating on your wife, so what if you watch others do it on screen." "Everyone says OMG. It's not bad because you're not saying the word 'god'." "God will forgive you if you slip."

The examples abound, the church has moved away from the Biblical standard and strayed toward the world, looking back just as Lot's wife did and losing

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