Insight on the News

Tolerance of Sin No Virtue

In a recent address to church leaders, religion columnist Michael J. McManus stated that the churches have contributed to a disintegration of the American family. So reports The Fresno Bee, a California newspaper. McManus noted that there were 1.2 million divorces and 750,000 illegitimate births in the United States during 1985 and that 2.2 million unmarried couples were living together.

McManus indicated that, instead of staunchly upholding Biblical standards on morality, which urge fidelity in marriage, the church has taken a more passive role on such issues in an effort to bolster attendance. As an example, he cited a recent proposal “that the Episcopal Church drop its opposition to couples who live together without being married.”

Such modernistic views on sex and marriage stand in sharp conflict with the Bible. The Christian apostle Paul stated: “Let marriage be honorable among all, and the marriage bed be without defilement.” (Hebrews 13:4) When the Pharisees confronted Jesus Christ on the matter of divorce, he said that “a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh.” He added: “Whoever divorces his wife, except on the ground of fornication, and marries another commits adultery.”​—Matthew 19:4, 5, 9.

Responding to proposed leniency by the church on such moral issues, McManus said: “The Episcopal Church has gotten to the point where it says its highest virtue is tolerance. Nowhere does Jesus say to tolerate sin. He condemned sin.” Well-informed Bible students agree.

Undeniable Evidence

“After years of proudly skeptical agnosticism, scientists are grudgingly beginning to give God a second look,” observes columnist Pete McMartin of The Vancouver Sun, a British Columbia, Canada, newspaper. Although religion and science have been in conflict for centuries, “that’s simply no longer true,” says Wasley Krogdahl, a former University of Kentucky professor of astronomy and physics. He adds: “Cosmology has made it clear that the universe had a beginning, and that implies a creator.”​—The State Journal-Register, Springfield, Illinois.

At least some scientists are rethinking the origin of the universe. The reason? “The universe makes a lot more sense than it did 50 years ago,” explains astronomer Krogdahl. During the last 25 years, the development of more sensitive equipment has resulted in the discovery of quasars, neutron stars, and pulsars. Krogdahl concedes that as the knowledge of the universe increases, so does the evidence that there is a God. Such evidence, he notes, “has simply knocked the props out from under the atheists.”

Yet, what has taken scientific minds years to accept after exhaustive research and study, students of the Bible have known for centuries. “[The Creator’s] invisible attributes, that is to say his everlasting power and deity, have been visible, ever since the world began, to the eye of reason, in the things he has made.” (Romans 1:20, The New English Bible) Simply put, the undeniable evidence has always been there.

[Picture on page 24]

Orion Nebula

[Credit Line]

U.S. Naval Observatory photo