COURAGE TO STAND

 

 

Holding your ground against intimidation and rejection is not easy. When you are treated like trash, you feel like trash. This is because we are social beings. When we are demeaned, we naturally try to submit and to regain the approval of the oppressors. However, as we mature, we should begin to recognize that there are more important things, namely truth and our integrity.

How can we stand against the militant opinions and their shout-downs if we think that we are standing on the shifting sands of the evolving opinions of man? Sadly, an increasing number do not stand on solid ground:

·       “More than half of respondents to the State of Theology survey say that religious belief is not about objective reality. However, fewer people expressed this view in 2020 than in 2018. It isn’t clear why this is the case, but it may be that our chaotic cultural moment has prompted more people to turn to religion for objective truth,” LifeWay researchers said. https://www.christianpost.com/news/most-us-adults-say-religious-belief-is-matter-of-personal-opinion-study.html

If religious believe is personal and just pertains to me, it is allowed no place in public discussions. This same confusion about whether Christian beliefs depend upon blind faith also afflicts evangelicals:

·       The Christian Post previously highlighted from the survey how more than half of American adults, including 30% of evangelicals, say Jesus isn’t God, but most agree He was a great teacher.

If we believe that Jesus is only a great teacher, our foundation is not the solid Scriptures. As a result, we are easily manipulated and controlled.  “If we don’t know where we stand, we will fall for anything,” according to one perceptive saying. Without this assurance, we are also vulnerable to all kinds of temptations, promising new psychological therapies, and pretentious philosophies. This is why the Christian needs to be grounded through the teaching of the Word of God:

·       And he [God] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. (Ephesians 4:11-14)

Without this Biblical foundation, we can longer influence society, which then falls prey to many destructive philosophies and practices.

A Jewish epidemiologist surprised me. She explained that epidemics only can spread if a critical mass of the population goes without inoculations, perhaps 50%. She then likened this to the critical mass of serious Christians within a society. Once their percentage falls below a certain level, the society becomes vulnerable to an array of social ills. Therefore, Jesus called us to be the light of truth:

·       “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16)

When our light shines, our communities see our “good works and give glory to your Father.” However, there are no good works without good teaching from the Word of God. Nor will we have the necessary confidence to live sacrificially, especially amid the inevitable persecution (Matthew 5:10-12).

How are we to withstand persecution without folding? Only with the assurance of the truths of the Scriptures:

·       But the Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. (Isaiah 50:7-8)

Our confidence must be in the Lord whom His Spirit makes increasingly real for us through His Word.

THE COURAGE TO STAND AGAINST EVIL

How can we stand against evil? The rewards of feeling good about ourselves in are fleeting at best. Enlightened self-interest will fail us, so too a morality based on pragmatic considerations alone.

The day before he died (February 24, 1791) John Wesley wrote to William Wilberforce, who had been leading the crusade in the British Parliament against slavery:

·       Unless the divine power has raised you to be as Athanasius contra mundum [against the world], I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy, which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American Slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it."

William Wilberforce had been standing against the world. Os Guinness had written:

·       "Championing abolition was a dangerous business. The slave trade occupied a position in the British economy (as a percentage of gross national product) equivalent to that of the defense industry in the United States today. At one stage, Wilberforce was the most vilified man in England. He was even threatened and attacked physically…" (Entrepreneurs of Life, 83)

In a speech before the House of Commons in 1787, Wilberforce confessed:

·       "So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the Trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for Abolition. Let the consequences be what they would, I, from this time, determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition."

And Wilberforce, aided by his Christian colleagues, kept his vow, even to the day of his death, as Guinness wrote:

·       "On Friday, July 26, 1833, the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery passed… Wilberforce lapsed into a coma soon after hearing the news of his great success, and died three days later on Monday, July 29, 1833, aged 73." (89)

Wilberforce had travailed for almost 50 years. What gave him his fortitude? Certainly not moral relativism or simply what felt right to him! Instead, he was convinced that he was serving God.

How was Dietrich Bonhoeffer able to endure to his death in his fight against the National Socialists (Nazis)? He wrote:

·       "Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in the faith and in exclusive allegiance to God – the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people?" (70)

They are the ones praying over the Word of God.

STABILITY, IDENTITY, AND PERMANENT VALUES

NYT columnist David Brooks thinks that the social pressures governing life on American college campuses are overwhelming:

·       "When a moral crusade spreads across campus, many students feel compelled to post in support of it on Facebook within minutes. If they do not post, they will be noticed and condemned." (NYT, 3/15/16)

Brooks is convinced that the social pressures are greater when the standards are always shifting:

·       "Everybody is perpetually insecure in a moral system based on inclusion and exclusion. There are no permanent standards, just the shifting judgment of the crowd. It is a culture of oversensitivity, overreaction and frequent moral panics, during which everybody feels compelled to go along."

Brooks believes that the college student can find a greater measure of stability by basing their identity on values that are “more permanent”:

·       "If we’re going to avoid a constant state of anxiety, people’s identities have to be based on standards of justice and virtue that are deeper and more permanent than the shifting fancy of the crowd. In an era of omnipresent social media, it’s probably doubly important to discover and name your own personal True North, vision of an ultimate good, which is worth defending even at the cost of unpopularity and exclusion."

However, on today’s college campus, imbued with moral relativism (MR), this has become difficult. For one thing, MR is attractive for the very reason that it is dangerous. It tells the students that they are in charge – the captain of their own ships. They can decide what is right for themselves. If it feels right to them, no one can objectively tell them that it is wrong. Consequently, the college campus celebrates any and all forms of sexual expression.

Brooks understandably ennobles that idea of finding “standards of justice and virtue that are deeper and more permanent than the shifting fancy of the crowd.” However, he wrongly associates these “more permanent” values with finding “your own personal True North.”

He is sending out contradictory signals – double messages. While on the one hand, he seems to recommend basing our values on what is objective and unchanging, but Brooks then suggests that we have to find our own personal subjective values. If our values are subjective, they will be as flimsy and impermanent as the university values that he derides. Also, they will be no less vulnerable to social pressure than the values they already possess.

Instead, in order to stand against the social pressures, we need to know that our values are objective, coming from above, and therefore are unchanging. It is only when we know this that we can stand against the tsunami of peer pressure and public opinion.

If we are going to resist persecution, it is not enough to know that we are standing upon our own “True North.” Jesus had recently suffered the worst imaginable death and His disciples were brought before the governing body – the Sanhedrin - that had earlier turned Him over to the Romans and demanded His death. Besides, these Apostles were also uneducated men, but when they were commanded to no longer speak of Jesus, they surprised the Sanhedrin with their courage:

·       But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.  And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” (Acts 5:29-32; ESV)

The Apostles were able to withstand the threats and pressures because they were convinced that they were standing upon God’s own “True North,” not on their own values or fleeting sense of dignity.

Jealousy: The Stealth (and not so Stealth) Killer

Frederick Engels

If we are not jealous of our neighbor’s wife, we are jealous of his attainments, money, house, car, influence, job, friends, or popularity. We want what he’s got, and we tend to hate him for it.

Communism had the perfect solution, albeit limited and superficial. They would equalize everybody and everything. After debunking Marxist theory, historian Robert Royal then exposes their underlying motivator – jealousy:

• The only reason these very dubious theories seemed like revolutionary bedrock to Marxist believers was that they justified hatred of bourgeois societies and gave sanction to the “inevitable” revolution ahead, after which, even more implausibly, religion and state, both mere bourgeois instruments of repression in the Marxist view, would wither away. That passionate desire for revolution, whatever the facts, lay behind the vehemence and even violence with which the Communist gospel was preached. (The God that did not Fail, 233)

Why did Marxism motivate the Communists to such a genocidal extent – the extermination of the 100,000,000 who would not see the light of their reason? Jealousy and hatred! However, these wicked seeds were camouflaged by the covering of an idealistic optimism. In the Condition of the Working Class in England, Friedrich Engels argued:

• Necessity will force the working-men to abandon the remnants of a [Christian] belief which, as they will more and more clearly perceive, serves only to make them weak and resigned to their fate, obedient and faithful to the vampire property-holding class.

However, the “working-men” never did exalt themselves to Engels’ enlightened heights, and when reason fails to win hearts and minds, coercion and violence are introduced.

Marxism continues to fail to address our inner struggles. Instead, the Marxist has readily partnered with jealousy, hatred, bitterness, with periodic exterminations of Christians, bourgeois, and others among the “weak and resigned.”

So what then is the answer to jealousy? The assurance that we are already rich and have everything we need! Where does this assurance come from? From the very light that the Marxist had tried to extinguish!

There is a truth that will set us free (John 8:31-32), as Jesus promised. It is the knowledge and assurance that we have God, and, having God, we have everything:

• For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. (Colossians 2:9-10)

It is this truth that has set me free! I need no longer covet what belongs to my neighbor or even my brother. I am already rich! Does this mean that I am no longer tempted? No, but now I have a defense. I know better!

In a sense, Engels was right. We are “resigned to [our] fate, obedient and faithful.” However, this resignation does not make us “weak,” but confident enough to resist evil. Why? We know that our true riches do not belong to this life. We also know that if we lose our life, we have an eternal inheritance in heaven. This enables us to be bold – the very reason that the Marxists had been eager to eliminate us and still are! In every Marxist nation, Christians regularly undergo persecution!

It takes courage to love our oppressors – a courage that Christ grants, and a courage that further enrages our oppressors.