Once upon a time there was a Christian people who had drifted from the right worship of God. They had, through laziness and unbelief, neglected to worship God the Father through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. In short, they ceased offering worship that was distinctively Trinitarian.
As a result, this people began to forget the Fatherhood of God. As they did so, fathers throughout all their congregations drifted away from the daily sacrifices of fatherly care, and became, according to their respective dispositions, either lazy or harsh.
One day a prophet came to this people and warned them in the most severe terms. “Unless the hearts of the fathers are turned to their children, and the hearts of children to their father, the God who sent me will also send and smite this land with a curse.” This stirred everyone up for a few weeks, but soon they all returned to their previous ways, their previous slanders of fatherhood.
But what would the curse be? Because the churches had not displayed the glories of fatherhood in their worship, and because men had not display sacrificial fatherhood in their homes, and around the dinner table, the Lord struck the land with one of the most severe judgments possible. He made their sons begin to lust after other men, and, though it seems unbelievable, even some of the women began to desire other women also.
Of course, there were many who blamed the unbelievers outside the church for corrupting the youth of the church, and wanted their parliament to pass a law. But this was the reverse of the truth. The church had corrupted the world outside, and the world outside, once restraint was removed, began to attack the churches. Just as Lot, a pathetic father, was attacked by the sodomites, so these churches, led by pathetic fathers, were attacked. The perversions outside were just the spots on the skin; the churches were the disease.