Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

I consider that the Christian life have three main aspects that can’t be separated: belief (doctrine), action (what you do) and experience (relation with God). If you have only belief you tend toward an intellectual Christianity; but if you lack of it you are tossed here and there.
If you have only action you are legalist, but if you lack of it you are antinomian.
If you have only experience you are mystic, but if you lack of it you’re having only a formal religion.

I think that we need a balance, biblical and Christ-centered approach on those three aspects of Christian life. Unfortunately, the emergents seem to emphasize only the experience aspect without consideration for the two other. In doing so they don’t have 1/3 of the real Christianity, they don’t have Christianity at all because Christ said: I am the way (action), the truth (belief) and the life (experience). If you drop one you have a false Christ because your doctrine of Christ is no more accurate as your deeds for him as your experience of him (2 Cor. 11:4 ; 2 John 1.9).

Pascal Denault, Qc, Canada

According to its teaching, being a Christian is not just a case of keeping a lot of rules and regulations, such as not sleeping around, getting drunk having a good time, it is “so much more.” Instead, what marks the Christian off from all others is that we have a relationship with God, that we experience acceptance, belonging, security, wisdom and many more things, the list of which “could go on and on.” There is no mention of receiving or needing forgiveness and that we are sinners saved by grace until the day we die.

The word “relationship” like the word tolerance, discrimination, equality, inclusion, has also become a casualty to word warp, where the contents of words, whilst retaining their familiar packaging, have been replaced by something altogether different.

Sex Education is now placing emphasis on teaching children “relationship” which sound perfectly reasonable on the surface but in reality means teaching children how to depersonalise sex and do it without experiencing too many negative consequences. We need to rescue the biblical meaning of this, which is to do with the fact that a personal relationship is only possible where total transparency and hence intimacy and vulnerability are possible. Relationship can only occur where we sacrifice our own autonomy and rights.

Tertullian, one of the early church fathers wrote this to his wife:

“How beautiful, then, the marriage of two Christians, two who are one in hope, one in desire, one in the way of life they follow, one in the religion they practice. They are as brother and sister, both servants of the same Master. Nothing divides them, either in flesh or in Spirit. They are in very truth, two in one flesh; and where there is but one flesh there is also but one spirit. They pray together, they worship together, they fast together; instructing one another, encouraging one another, strengthening one another. Side by side they face difficulties and persecution, share their consolations. They have no secrets from one another, they never shun each other’s company; they never bring sorrow to each other’s hearts… Psalms and hymns they sing to one another. Hearing and seeing this, Christ rejoices. To such as these He gives His peace. Where there are two together, there also He is present, and where He is, there evil is not.”

How would this go down in sex education?

David Skinner, UK