Perspective: Christians must withstand temptations to compromise their faith

Yahoo

17-05-2025

Whenever a new pope is elected, the mainstream secular media is abuzz with speculation about his politics and ideology. Is the pope conservative or liberal? What does he believe about particular political figures, parties, or movements? Did he favor the election of Donald Trump or Kamala Harris as the U.S. president?
More insidiously, many journalists and commentators seek to manipulate the new pontiff's first public words in light of the prevalent ideological trends in our culture: Does the pope's message that the church welcomes all people, sinners included, mean that the Catholic Church will revise its teachings on marriage? Sexuality? Abortion? Euthanasia? Will it get in line with the dogmas, whatever they are, prevailing among the day's cultural elites?
The implicit message is clear: faith — whether that of the people in the pews or of the leaders of the Christian community — can be cleanly divided into ideological categories. 'Progressive' Christians and a 'progressive' pope, for example, believe in inclusion, diversity, non-judgmentalism, and ensuring that all those pesky dogmas and doctrines don't make anyone feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, those 'conservative' and 'traditionalist' Christians are 'reactionaries' who unduly prioritize doctrine and seek to exclude those who in various ways fall short of doctrine's requirements.
To this way of thinking, what makes a faithful Christian is not the universal confession of faith and the lifelong struggle to adhere to faith's demands. Christianity can, rather, be taught and practiced in divergent ways according to one's political or ideological preferences.
I suppose we ought not to be surprised by the fact that many religious folks are swept along by cultural trends, even trends that are manifestly antithetical to biblical principles and the firm and constant teaching of scripture and tradition. 'Twas ever thus. (Indeed, 'twas thus for the ancient Hebrews, too, as scripture makes more than abundantly clear.)
And Christians who fall in line with a trend find ways to say that the trend, whatever it is, is compatible with Christian faith — even dictated by it. It's hard for human beings to actually be countercultural, and Christians are human beings just like everybody else.
We make a million excuses for going along with what's wrong — and pretty soon we find ourselves going along with calling it right.
So when Marxism is in vogue, there will be self-proclaimed Christian Marxists (perhaps doing business as 'liberation theologians'). When fascism is fashionable, there will be self-identified Christian fascists, as there were under Mussolini in Italy, for example. When racial subordination and segregation is the cultural norm, there will be some who seek to baptize it (these voices may even come from within the church: consider the three prominent Louisiana Catholics who were excommunicated in 1962 by Joseph Rummel, then archbishop of New Orleans, for distorting Catholic doctrine to try to justify their opposition to racial desegregation).
When eugenics is popular among the cognoscenti, there will be Christians claiming that eugenic practices and policies constitute authentic Christian love in practice. If polyamory becomes the next cause embraced by the cultural elite — as seems to be gradually occurring — we will start hearing about the Christian case for group marriage: 'God is love! And God teaches us to love one another, instead of keeping our love confined to just one other person.' And on and on.
Why does this constantly happen? Well, being the frail, fallen, fallible human beings that we are, we crave social acceptance and we like to fit in. Moreover, we human beings are naturally influenced by the ways of thinking favored by those who are regarded by the predominant culture as sophisticated, up-to-date and important. When push comes to shove, it's quite difficult to be true to the Christian faith — the social and personal costs are too high.
We who are Christians praise the martyrs and honor their memories, but we are loath to place in jeopardy so much as an opportunity for career advancement, or the good opinion of a friend — much less our lives. So we tend to fall in line or at least fall silent. We deceive ourselves with rationalizations for what, in truth, amounts to either conformism or cowardice.
We place the emphasis on whatever happens in the cultural circumstances to be the acceptable parts of Christian teaching and soft-pedal or even abandon the parts that the enforcers of the day's cultural norms deem to be unacceptable. We make a million excuses for going along with what's wrong — and pretty soon we find ourselves going along with calling it right.
But the Gospel's demands call us to something higher. Jesus says, 'If you want to be my disciple, you must take up your cross and follow me.' To be sure, the Lord offers mercy to those who, though they yielded to the intense pressures and temptations to deny him or his precepts, later return, like the prodigal son.
This is Christianity's true and unadulterated teaching. God's mercy is abundant, yes, and with mercy comes the opportunity for repentance — but to authentically repent for the times we have denied the Lord to please the world, we must rescue ourselves from the palatable half-truths and watered-down faith that the secular culture incessantly urges us to adopt.
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.