World Vision, in one of the most abrupt turnarounds in modern history, has done a complete about-face on its embrace of sodomy-based marriage.

Less than 48 hours after saying the organization was just fine hiring couples who were in same-sex “marriages,” the organization has repudiated that stance, acknowledging that the board “made a mistake,” and admitting they had failed “to be consistent with World Vision U.S.’s commitment to the traditional understanding of Biblical marriage.”

Says its president and board chairman, “We…humbly ask your forgiveness.”

Forgiveness is hereby granted, as Jesus instructed us to do.

One very encouraging part of this debacle is that the evangelical church and other pro-family organizations stood firmly, directly, and unanimously against this apostasy. World Vision’s decision was opposed by thousands upon thousands of donors who called World Vision to complain. Perhaps the sleeping giant that is the evangelical church has finally been awakened.

WV’s heretical decision was also publicly opposed by Franklin Graham, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, the Assemblies of God, and the Southern Baptist Convention. This united stand for truth and against sexual debauchery got World Vision’s attention and got their minds right.

However, there is a pronounced difference between forgiveness and trust. Trust, once shattered, cannot be rebuilt with just a letter of apology. Rebuilding trust and confidence requires change and action.

One key question that must be answered is whether this repentance represents what Paul, in 2 Corinthians 7, calls “godly grief” or “worldly grief.” The sorrow that is according to the world is a sorrow that I got caught, a sorrow that my twisted plans blew up in my face. The sorrow that is according to God, on the other hand, is deep-seated and produces “what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment!” (2 Cor. 7:11).

Luke 3:1-14 contains a thorough account of the ministry of John the Baptist. When individuals, tax collectors and soldiers came to John to receive baptism at his hands, a baptism of “repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” there was one question on everyone’s lips. This question is the hallmark of genuine, biblical repentance.

The people all said, “What then shall we do?” The tax collectors all said, “Teacher, what shall we do?” The soldiers, to the last man, said, “And we, what shall we do?”

John’s answer was simple and direct: “Bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance.”

What does this mean for World Vision, if its leaders also ask the question, “What then shall we do?”

The minimum change that is in keeping with professed repentance is a sweeping change in leadership.

The larger issue here is that an environment has been fostered in the upper echelons of World Vision that made it possible for its leaders even to entertain an option that should have been absolutely unthinkable for anyone committed to God’s design for marriage. There is something diseased in the the boardroom of World Vision, and that diseased tissue must be cut out if this organization is once again to fulfill an evangelical mission.

President Richard Stearns must step down immediately. He is the leader of this organization, and he led it straight into a ditch. He must be replaced.

But that’s not enough. Every board member who voted for the original apostasy from the Word of God must likewise resign. Stearns made it clear in his original communication, announcing the embrace of homosexual marriage, that the World Vision board’s decision was not a unanimous one. Although the vote for embracing sin was overwhelming, there were board members who objected and voted to uphold biblical standards. They get to stay, the rest need to go. ASAP.

I anticipate that World Vision’s mettle will soon be tested. I predict that the Obama administration will now pull some or all of the $330 million it sends to World Vision, in order to punish them for being hatemongering homophobes.

Also, the state of Washington will likely sue them for violating its anti-Christian employment discrimination laws. If the attorney general will sue a florist in the Evergreen State for not embracing same-sex “marriage,” you can bet it won’t be long before he sets his sights on one of the largest Christian organizations in the world.

In other words, this is not the end of testing for World Vision but the beginning. They had better make sure they have leaders who are up to the task. Right now, they don’t.

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This article was originally published at the RenewAmerica.com webiste.

 

World Vision, a well-known, well-regarded, and well-funded Christian charity has decided to abandon its policy that prohibits the hiring of those who engage in homosexual activity. World Vision U.S. will now hire homosexuals as long as they are in a legal (but false) “marriage.” While allowing employees who affirm homosexuality to work for World Vision, they will continue to prohibit the hiring of those who engage in fornication or adultery despite the fact that adultery is no more serious a sin than is homosexuality.

World Vision president, Richard Stearns, describes this stunning abandonment of biblical truth as “a very narrow policy change…symbolic of… [Christian] unity” and analogous to doctrinal differences over modes of baptism and beliefs on evolution.

The liberal shibboleth of “unity” rears its ugly head again. Unity, however, never trumps truth, and on the issue of homosexual relations, the Bible is unequivocal in its condemnation.

Are different views of homosexual “marriage” analogous to other doctrinal differences?

Both Theologian Russell Moore and Pastor Kevin DeYoung argue against the view that Steans appears to defend. Both argue that homosexual “marriage” is a concept which no church can biblically defend.

Moore illuminates  the gravity of the theological issue that Steans attempts to trivialize by comparing it to other denominational and doctrinal differences:

At stake is the gospel of Jesus Christ. If sexual activity outside of a biblical definition of marriage is morally neutral, then, yes, we should avoid making an issue of it. If, though, what the Bible clearly teaches and what the church has held for 2000 years is true, then refusing to call for repentance is unspeakably cruel and, in fact, devilish.

DeYoung elaborates on this point arguing that there exists no justification for viewing differences on homosexual “marriage” as analogous to denominational disagreements on a host of other issues. In other words, all theological differences are not created equal:

To be sure, like many evangelical parachurch organizations, World Vision allows for diversity in millennial views, sacramental views, soteriological views, and any numbers of doctrinal issues which distinguish denomination from denomination. Stearns would have us believe that homosexuality is just another one of these issues, no different from determining whether the water in baptism can be measured by liters or milliliters. But the analogy does not work. Unlike the differences concerning the mode of baptism, there is no long historical record of the church debating whether men can marry men. In fact, there is no record of the church debating anything of the sort until the last forty or fifty years. And more to the point, there is nothing in the Bible to suggest that getting the mode of baptism wrong puts your eternal soul in jeopardy, when there are plenty of verses to suggest that living in unrepentant sexual sin will do just that (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Jude 5-7).

What is marriage?

In rationalizing this policy change, Steans digs an even deeper, darker, more tortuous theological hole:

Changing the employee conduct policy to allow someone in a same-sex marriage who is a professed believer in Jesus Christ to work for us makes our policy more consistent with our practice on other divisive issues….It also allows us to treat all of our employees the same way: abstinence outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage…. This is simply a decision about whether or not you are eligible for employment at World Vision U.S. based on this single issue, and nothing more. (emphasis added)

Nothing more? What else is left once you’ve gutted biblical truth about marriage?  Marriage is not a creation of man to “solemnize” consensual romantic/erotic unions. Marriage is picture of the union between Christ and his bride, the church. Marriage is not a union of two identical partners. It is the union of God and man and reflects the ontological difference between the marriage partners. One would expect World Vision’s leaders to understand better the relationship between earthly marriage–central to which is sexual complementarity–and the gospel story of creation and redemption.

When Steans says this policy allows World Vision to treat legally “married” homosexual couples the same as married heterosexual couples, he is acceding to the proposition that two men or two women can in reality be married.  But our secular government’s legal recognition of same-sex unions as “marriages” does not marriages make.

Steans should know what John Piper makes clear in a sermon on marriage:

The point is not only that so-called same-sex marriage shouldn’t exist, but that it doesn’t and it can’t. Those who believe that God has spoken to us truthfully in the Bible should not concede that the committed, life-long partnership and sexual relations of two men or two women is marriage. It isn’t.

The Implications of World Vision’s Worldly Change

Kevin DeYoung warns what this “about face” by World Vision portends:

The about face in World Vision’s hiring policy deserves comment both because their reasons for the switch will become terribly common and because the reasons themselves are so terrifically thin. Serving in a mainline denomination, I’ve heard all the assurances and euphemisms before: “We still affirm traditional marriage. We aren’t taking sides. This is only a narrow change. We are trying to find common ground. This is about unity. It’s all about staying on mission.” But of course, there is nothing neutral about the policy at all. The new policy makes no sense if World Vision thinks homosexual behavior is a sin, which is, after all, how it views fornication and adultery. There are no allowances for their employees to solemnize other transgressions of the law of God.

DeYoung asks if the following assertions are true:

Jesus Christ is coming again to judge the living and the dead (Acts 17:31; Rev. 19:11-21). Those who repent of their sins and believe in Christ (Mark 1:15; Acts 2:38; 17:30) and those who overcome (Rev. 21:7) will live forever in eternal bliss with God in his holy heaven (Rev. 21:1-27) through the atoning work of Christ on the cross (Mark 10:45; Rom. 5:1-21; Cor. 5:21). Those who are not born again (John 3:5), do not believe in Christ (John 3:18), and continue to make practice of sinning (1 John 3:4-10) will face eternal punishment and the just wrath of God in hell (John 3:36; 5:29). Among those who will face the second death in the lake that burns with fire are the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, the murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars (Rev. 21:8), and among the sins included in the category of sexual immorality is unrepentant sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Jude 5-7).

He then asserts that “If the Bible does not teach these things, or if we no longer have the courage to believe them, let us say so openly and make the case why the whole history of the Christian church has been so wrong for so long. But if the Bible does teach the paragraph above, how can we be casual about such a serious matter or think that Jesus would be so indifferent to the celebration of the same?”

Steans claims that World Vision leaders are “not caving to some kind of pressure. We’re not on some slippery slope. There is no lawsuit threatening us. There is no employee group lobbying us….This is not us compromising.” The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.

What to do about current sponsorship

World Vision will lose donors, as it should. For many who are currently sponsoring a needy child, this decision is difficult. The ultimate cause for the suffering of children who lose sponsors rests not, however, with donors who cannot in good conscience support the efforts of an organization that abandons foundational biblical principles, the adherence to which was what led them to support the organization in the first place. The ultimate cause is the foolish decision of World Vision’s leaders.

For those sponsors who decide to cease donating immediately, there are other options, one of which is Compassion International. Compassion International works with impoverished children all around the world and currently, has over 4,500 children in need of support.

Other World Vision sponsors, however, may believe they should complete their sponsorship of a particular child, which ends when the child reaches age 21 or earlier for a variety of reasons. In such cases, IFI recommends informing World Vision that after sponsorship of their current child ends, they will no longer be supporting World Vision.

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