“Queer Christianity,” “liberal Christianity,” and heterodoxy are born of fallen humanity’s love and worship of positive sentiment. Of course, it is impossible to feel good every day, at every moment, and all the time; nevertheless this does not stop people from pursuing extremes in order to avoid their having to acknowledge and deal with cold, harsh realities of the world in which we live.
Why are there Christians who, frankly, have gone about violating divine commandments against adultery and sexual immorality? Because “something that feels so right can’t be so wrong”: that’s why.
How did universalism ever come into being though there was always no shortage of Scriptures which showed universalism to be questionable at best? Because human beings, including Christians, are sympathetic creatures and some people simply are too weak-willed to deal with the reality of a world in which most people will end up condemned in the End: that’s why.
Why do some erstwhile Protestants and/or post-Protestants swim the Tiber and start singing the praises of sola ecclesia? Almost certainly because some are too weak-willed to confront and handle the theodical reality that in a sense God is a god of risk, allowing people to deliberate truth claims (that contradict one another) with their own brains and with whatever finite amount of wisdom they may contain.
When the love of feeling good inside morphs into what is nearly or exactly idolization of positive feelings or sentiments reason is often compromised. Evil deeds are committed with the delusional justifications “I’ll apologize later” or “I’m covered by the Blood.” Voices of both moral and logical intuition are suppressed by ideas of falsely privileged or axiomatic status: hence the outright ignoring of many Scriptures which any reasonable person without an agenda would acknowledge of fighting heterodoxy to a draw at least. Again, common sense goes out the window when people refuse to come to terms with the tough requirements of righteous living: they even end up making “excuses” like that of Proverbs 22:13.
The love and service of pleasure and upbeat sentiments often suppress the truth and frustrate attempts at valid reasoning. That is why it is with extreme ease that this Rachel Held Evans person’s argument has been refuted time and time again in blogosphere of late. In fact, I dedicate this blog post to her, because she brought all of this to mind after all.
(And finally, yes, much of political liberalism in general exists for the same reasons mentioned above.)
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