The Spiritual Principle We Overlook to our Peril: Sin begets Sin, in individuals and in society and in the churches. Thinking about the head covering again.

This is a subject that occure to me from time to time as a very important one though my grasp on it is pretty weak.  It comes up this time of what I heard about Wayne Grudem's research that found the violation of the principle of the roles of the sexes to be the beginning of a chur h's slide into other kinds of apostasy.   Liberalism to be specific.   Scripture is clear that women are not to be in positions of authority in the Church so women pastors and elders are a violation of God's order.    Apparently Grudem found that this kind of elevation or perhaps some earlier form of it came before other violations and the eventual slide into outright liberalism in a church.

There is a spiritual principle here but pinning it down is not easy.   We have a vague understanding that sin begets sin in an indivudal.  Also in society at large.  Once we've enacted laws against God's Law as we've done in America, we go on to enact more such laws until we find ourselves in a condition of lawlessness from which it seems we may never recover.

As I've noticed in myself, if I allow a sin in my life others follow, and stopping the trend is very difficult.  I've noticed this over and over.   There seems to be a time factor involved:  the spiritual effecrt has to run its course before I can get back on track.   I'm hopinhg there is a way to interrrupt the course, through ackno0wledgement, rep[entance, prayer and so on, but I don't have a clear grasp of this yet.

Scriptural principels that come to mind are the admonition in Proverbs to guard our hearts with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.   Another is the principle that whoever has will have more and whoever has not will lose what he does have.  I'm sure there are others but these come to mind.   

The time factor is apparent in the concept of "the fullness of time" in which a sinning nation is understood to come under final judgment only after some point at which its sins have ripened to some standard that isn't defined, only that it will be after a certain number of years, such as the four hundred years for the sin of Canaan to be p8nished by the armies of the israelites.

David's sin with Bathsheba had some dire consequences starting with the death of their infant  son.  But there was much more that occurred over the following years as his son raped his half sister and then another son rebelled and tried to take his trhown from him, and many of his children were murdered.  

Trying to trace such a pattern in one's own life or the lifves of others is very risky and shouldn't be taken beyond whatever might be useful for repentance.   I'm not recommending it, just think it's an important principle we need to keep in mind .   

Small errors beget bigger errors.   What about the Arminianism of the Wesleys?  Their own lives were exemplary but aht doctrine contains seeds of serious error that may have sprouted in the liberalism of the Methodist Church in later years.  I'm beging vague and general because I don't know enough about the history of any of these things to be more speicfic but also I don't think it woulde help to be more specific, I'm trying to get at a general principle that we all need to be more aware of.

So lately I've been coming back to the abandonment of the head covering as a possible turning point in the direction of the rampant apostasies wer eare seeing in the churches today.  The general weakness of the churches is apparent so that where we should be functioning as salt and light in the culuture we've been failing miserably as the culture sinks lower and lower.   Sex roles is a pretty glaring issue these days, so a failure of the churches in this area  is where we should look for our influence since wse do have some responsibility for what happens in the culture.

Women pastors and elders is certainly a trend in many churches.  But what about the head covering?>  That's a clear emblem of God's headship order, a creation ordiance.   It makes my heart hurt to think about how that passage has been misinterpreted in such an aggressive way over the last few decades, which allows the error toi keep onb doing damage in the Church.

Even the best tachers will begin to accumjulate other errors on top of such an error.  I think we need to be watchful about this in particular.

BBut how do we reverse the trend?  I'm hoping it's possible.  First we have to see the problem.   Then we have to acknowledge it to God and ask Him for repentance.  I don't know even if that is possible.  Sometimes sin accujmulates beyond correction, in individuals as well as in churches as well as in nations.  But I wouldn't know where else to try to reverse a trend.  Perhaps scripture holds a solution I'm overlooking.