When The Wind Blows
While it may break the heart of a wise parent, they realize that it is not love to shelter a child from every adversity and all hardship. It is through occasional adversity and the winds of life blowing against us that we develop the muscles to stand strong and steady, gaining our moral balance.
In today’s culture that worships at the feet of political correctness via the path of least offense, we are enslaving the next generation in chains of fear-based civility to the point that they have no clue how to handle offenses against them. After all, no one dares speak a word that could possibly be construed by anyone as offensive or that might hurt someone’s feelings.
I believe Christians must not condone hate speech or bullying, however, there are times that we as believers must stand for what is truth. For example, there are times when I have faced criticism for quotes that I have posted in the Daily Christian Quote. Recently I received angry email for a Bonhoeffer quote on the subject of abortion. Over the 12 years I have sent out the DCQ, I have posted exactly two quotes concerning abortion. One over six years ago, the other last month. “How dare you parade your rabid politics in a neutral forum such as this?” I must admit that I was amused by another irate reader’s dire threat to leave the mailing list as I do not charge for the mailing list and I pay for the running of this ministry out of my own pocket.
We as believers are expected to be bold in our witness, even in the face of growing persecution. Presently we in the western world are spared dire consequences for standing for our faith unlike many of our brothers and sisters world-wide. However, I believe the cultural pressures to conform to the ‘god of Inoffensiveness’ will increase in the coming days; the tsk-tsks of political pundits and the ridicule by Hollywood will give way to more serious consequences: loss of employment, civil law suits and human rights legislation.
John 15:18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.
Be of good cheer! He will not abandon us when we are called to stand before our persecutors. I encourage you to read Matthew 10:16-32, particularly verses 16-20:
“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues….But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”
Romans 8:35-39
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Revelation 12:10-11
“Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.”
Truth spoken from a place of love and deep desire to see hearts transformed by Christ only damages the kingdom of darkness and further advances the kingdom of our God.
© 2012 Katherine Walden