Deviations from God’s truth arise from deep within the human heart, which is deceitful above all things (Jer.17:9). Hence the warnings of the apostle Paul against being deceived on a number of issues (1 Cor.6:9-10). We are not born neutral; we are, in C. S. Lewis’ words, “bent ones.” Our wrong desires are not to be celebrated but mourned.

Heresies do not appear as mushrooms overnight. The Presbyterian Church in America—a body whom we would regard as a sister Church—has gone through a few disturbances, especially since the Revoice conference of 2018 which appeared to remove same-sex attraction from the Christian list of sins. Yet it may be that we ought to look at what has happened in the Presbyterian Church of Canada. In 1925 the United Church of Canada was formed of a union consisting of three bodies: the Methodist Church, Canada; the Congregational Union of Canada; and about 70% of the Presbyterian Church of Canada.

A die-hard Presbyterian might have entertained hopes that the remnant language of the Old Testament might be applicable to the much smaller Presbyterian Church of Canada, post 1925. Hopes were high that the Reformed gospel of grace founded on the inerrant Word of God might prevail, but by the time the Church historian, W. Stanford Reid, had retired, and worked in Australia in the early 1980s, he was privately saying that much was being lost. The evidence for that trend has become increasingly obvious.

C. S. Lewis’ third letter in the Screwtape Letters has the senior devil, Screwtape, speak of ‘the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken.’ We are all guilty of that. But let us look briefly at what has happened concerning the homosexual issue in the Presbyterian Church of Canada. In 1969 the denomination supported legislation to decriminalise homosexual acts between consenting adults in private. Over the next few decades, the Church put forward an increasingly accepting stance towards homosexuals and lesbians and their lifestyle within the Church.

Read More