Christianity,  Culture

What was lacking in Bishop Michael Curry’s royal wedding sermon

After the royal wedding this past weekend, there was a lot of celebratory discussion about Bishop Michael Curry, who delivered the sermon during the ceremony. It was a sermon on the love of God, and Bishop Curry even referred to Christ as the exemplar of this kind of love.

Nevertheless, there are many bible-believing Christians who are less than enthusiastic about this message. I am one of them, and here’s why. The way I see it, there were at least two major problems with Bishop Curry’s address.First, the message did not address the heart of the gospel. There was much Christianese but no gospel substance. As Garrett Kell has pointed out:

The Bishop preached what may be one of the most broadly viewed sermons in history. He did it in a compelling way. But the heart of what Jesus did was omitted. Jesus did show love, but a particular kind of love—sinner-saving, God-magnifying love.

Some will surely be frustrated that I would give a critique of a moving message on such a historic occasion. I get it, but here’s the deal—there is nothing more important than rightly understanding what God’s love is really all about.

Second, the preacher himself is a false teacher. He believes and teaches that the church should support and bless certain forms of sexual immorality. His teaching, therefore, leads people away from Jesus and toward judgment (1 Cor. 6:9-11). For that reason, his is a very serious and grave error–a disqualifying error that undermines what God’s revelation teaches. He shouldn’t have been on that platform–or any platform–speaking in the name of Jesus Christ. Gavin Ashenden has put it this way:

There is a civil war raging at the moment in Anglicanism (and elsewhere) between progressive Christianity that takes its priorities from the zeitgeist, the present culture, and a faithful orthodox belief, that keeps faith with what Jesus taught in the Gospels.

This is quite a fight. Orthodox Christians believe that we are caught up in a very serious struggle between Good and evil, and evil tries to trick us and hide the good from us; usually by dressing up something corrupt which pretends to be goodness itself.

This ‘telling the difference’ between good and evil is as important as being able to tell the difference between medicine and poison. It may be the difference between life and death.

So when Justin Welby suggested Michael Curry as the preacher on this astonishing world-wide stage, he was also signing up one of the most effective street fighters for progressive, distorted Christianity who – with great charm and verve – presents his own preferred version of Jesus to the real one we find in the Gospels…

If people are going to experience the love of God, find transformation and be brought to heaven, it can only happen by experiencing the real Jesus, and not the fake Jesus we invent for our short-term comfort.

And that is the difference between the two sides in this civil war in Anglicanism…

At stake is whether we offer the world medicine for the healing of their souls, or something that will have a very different effect, and nothing to do with the real Jesus.

Some people think it is bad form to offer up critique on such an occasion. I disagree. Bishop Curry spoke in the name of Jesus and of Christianity, but he speaks for neither. To point that out is not bad form. It’s what love requires.