Sin begets sin. In fact increasing sin is one form of God's judgment against a nation or a person.
From time to time I come back to the fact that most churches are disobeying the Creation Ordinance that requires women to cover our heads in the worship service. Two things brought this to mind again right now: first, the difficulty I've been having getting across why Christians feel obliged to refuse to do anything that puts us in the position of treating gay marriage as legitimate.
Then second: while looking for a particular book at Amazon I ran across a book admonishing the Church about our failure to be an influence against the moral deterioration of American culture: The Cost of Our Silence, by David Fiorazo. It's a fine book. I got it free for my PC Kindle library. He gives a thorough list of the many sins of the culture the Church has either been complicit in or actually embraced. Everything from abortion to gay marriage of course.
But as I was dealing with the problem of gay marriage, realizing that God's ordinance of marriage in Genesis 2:24 is the basis for the Christian's conscience against gay marriage, the head covering came to mind as another Creation Ordinance. And one that is pretty universally disobeyed by the churches.
So once again, alone as can be on this subject I nevertheless keep suspecting it may be a crucially important element in the moral deterioration of the Church which is the cause of the moral deterioration of the culture. Once again the specter of the covered heads of the Muslim women comes to mind, who are of course part of a major element of God's judgment on the West, and once again I found myself thinking how this fact alone could be God's message to us about the importance of the head covering creation ordinance. As often happens in the cultures of the fallen world, the Muslims overdo it; Paul only requires covering the head in the worship service, not at all times. Christendom made the same mistake for centuries too, as you never see uncovered female heads in western art either up until recently. It's possible someone could make a case for this I suppose, but the passage in 1 Corinthians only refers to the context of the church assembly. Muslim women also represent an extreme version of female modesty, on which I started another blog that never went very far. I believe that too is an important element in the moral deterioration of the churches and the culture. But I am probably being cowardly about saying so, knowing how unwelcome these subjects are, and feeling so hopeless about changing anyone's mind about them.
I've written a great deal on the subject at my blog Hidden Glory, and a few thoughts on modesty as well on the other blog, Women's Place. lThere's a lot that could be said, but for now I just want to register this recurrent thought:
It's possible that the deterioration of the churches and the consequent deterioration of the culture both started before the banning of the Bible from the schools, and before Roe v Wade, with the giving up of the wearing of hats by women in the churches, and that too was probably preceded by other violations, liberalism being the main one. The election of Trump bodes good things but we need to go deeper, much deeper. It's been a horrifying mystery why in spite of our being attacked on 9/11 the very enemies who attacked us have been growing in influence and even popularity, spreading through Europe and moving into America more and more. Why can't we stop this incursion, this threat to our security?
This is clearly God's judgment. It has to be that the churches haven't repented for the causes.
What if we started with a small thing: women covering our heads in the church services? (I think hats don't quite meet the requirement but we need to start somewhere and if hats are easier for women to adopt that's the place to start). If this is the linchpin I keep thinking it probably is, then we could be sure God would open our spirits to new understanding of how we have offended Him and how we can recover His blessings.
Seeking God again
7 years ago
