Where is the Church?

I am naive. I am entrenched in a Christian culture that has isolated me from the culture of my country. I have struggled to understand the promiscuity that I see in my clinic. 13 year old girls who are pregnant. 28 year old women who are grandmothers and raising the children of their children. I had an epiphany this last week. I had thought it was the younger generation reacting to fatherless homes, broken homes, the sexuality portrayed on TV. It is much deeper. It goes back generations. There is no morality. There is no shame associated with promiscuity, with sexually transmitted diseases. There is no shame in your children knowing your promiscuity. I understand why the choice to not be sexually active is not really a choice. It is not a choice that is validated by their role models, by parents. By parents!? The consequences of promiscuity is more than the physical diseases that bring people to my office. The emotional and spiritual consequences run far deeper and are not easily dismissed with a few pills and a shot. I must ask. Where is the Church? Where are those who will speak truth? Where are those who will speak love? Why is this not something that causes us to weep, to pray, to act? Are we so comfortable in our Sunday meetings and our American culture that we do not speak the truth? The role of the church is not to shame people, but to speak truth in love. Have we confused love with silence? How will they know they are sick when the symptoms of moral depravity are glorified by television, by our culture? How will they know that their longings will not be satisfied with what the World offers when the Church is indistinguishable from the World? When they do not see the Church? How will our culture change unless the Church weeps as Christ does? How will our culture change unless the Church gains a voice? How will our culture change unless the Church longs for Christ as a bride longs for her bridegroom? Forgive us for our silence. May my patients hear me speak words of truth, love and healing and not condemnation. May they see in me Jesus, Jesus that weeps for them, that longs to bring healing and restoration. Jesus who calls sin Sin. Jesus who made redemption possible.