Last week I perused a friend of mine’s blog and was deeply interested in a challenging statement he made:

“Everytime Culture abuses one of God’s gifts, the Church abandons it.”

So, I’m wondering if this is a totally true statement, meaning that this can be said about literally every gift that is abused by culture. Does the Church (in general) really abandon every gift of God, without exception? My first instinct was to disagree. I think the Church is guilty of abandoning many of God’s gifts because of cultural abuse and perversion (sex, alcohol, even masculinity) but I think there has to be a few things out there that are still preserved and openly enjoyed by the Church, despite culture’s abuse of it. Do any come to mind right now? Not really, but I’m working on it.

So what about gifts that have been abused? I think sex probably goes to the top of the list, but maybe that’s just because I’m a guy. Does anybody consider alcohol a “gift of God”? Well I don’t know, but I do know that culture has abused it and the Church has turned it into something worse than it probably is. What about “masculinity”? I definitely think that culture has abused the idea of what it means to be a man and somehow the Church (again, in general) has totally lost the concept of masculinity and as a result, the men in the Church have fallen away in areas of leadership, passion, and pastoring their families. Women have somehow become the spiritual leaders in the average Christian home.

So are there any other thoughts about this. Can that statement be made as a total truth, or are there exceptions? What exceptions are there? Is that statement even true in any case? Can a case be made for culture abusing God’s gifts because the Church abandons them? I’d love to hear some thoughts.