Change and Unchange

We summarize questions and answers about inevitable change and its understanding to its management.  We change, society changes – everything changes in natural life.  Some unchanging factors remain in their varied management of the changing society.  The change we address here is not in essentials that don’t change, but in the way flowing changes are faced and addressed.  Many changes seem like flowing lava in the society, tearing at the country side threatening disaster.  Changes jerk at us, or when thoughtfully introduced offer a better future for those adapting to them.  Unchanging God works for natural change.

Some change in life is inevitable, and we may have no recourse except to manage within it.  In discussion, the concern is not in the fact of change, but which changes serve and which do not.  We may adapt, resist, offer options, or join in the context created by change.  Like so much related to human life the issue of change sometimes serves well and sometimes negatively.  Wise persons work with change, either to accept it when they find it beneficial, and to work around it or against it when they perceive the negative influence.  We begin by understanding that change is inevitable.  It both serves and afflicts us as individuals and as society.  As in other matters we want to embrace that which is good and reject or deflect that which is negative for us and others.  To manage we must be informed, understand, and act according to the truth we have or discover along the way.  This is the application of wisdom, referred to often in these Pages.

After this Page was begun the news reported that Joel Osteen, identified as the pastor of the largest Church in the United States, and identified as evangelical, has encouraged the homosexual community that God accepts the persons of the community.  The church will need some definitions to be certain of his meaning before responding, but there is no doubt that the statement will mean some change for some evangelicals who believe there are passages of Scripture, both in example and principle, that identify same sex intimacy as violation of the Christian lifestyle.  The tension in the area threatens in several ways.  The concepts of friendship, a strong factor in Christian doctrine as demonstrated between Jesus and the disciples, will be challenged, as traditional marriage has already been challenged.  Definition of marriage has been changed at this writing so as not to give credence to gender differences in the meaning of the family.  We do not know where this will lead in the general society.  We do know that the change is disruptive in the evangelical church bodies and in the Catholic Church as well.  Something will have to give.  We will not know, for a generation or so, if the traditional approach to marriage and to friendship will have faded, and the changes become standard in significant practice as well as in theory.

We might use many changes that include styles, education, sophistication, morals, and the list lengthens.  The Christian response, as we understand Scripture, is to meet God’s counsel.  The thought and conduct most accepted by God relates to change (growth) fitting to the knowledge, understanding and conclusion to God’s preferences. We are informed that holy God never changes. (Matthew 3:6)  Our human processes are arrested to discover the direction in which we may proceed if God is ultimately going to accept us.  The final evaluation is his, not the privilege of mankind.  So we leave it there for his adjudication.  It really does rest on the individual to gain or lose the approval of God.  God calls all persons to civility, to take responsibility for self, under God.  It is important for the Christian to make clear in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that the keeping of the laws of society and the grace of the society in its freedom for all will not suffice to gain the ultimate approval of God.  The Christian must be faithful to all persons, that mankind’s ideal must be found in the redemptive story of Jesus Christ to gain the approval of God.  Mankind does not decide on the nature of God, but God’s evaluation has already been announced on what he will require, and that unchanging, for acceptance and approval of those who will enter his kingdom.  Changes are not to be made on the basis of boredom with life, or preferences to experience, or in the competitions of society. God is in redemption – changing, not himself, but mankind.  That pattern context is accented in Scripture.