HAVE WE BECOME A NATION OF SELF-CENTERED COWARDS?
“Many would be willing to have afflictions provided that they not be inconvenienced by them.” -St. Francis de Sales
“Though the path is plain and smooth for men of good will, he who walks it will not travel far, and will do so only with difficulty, if he does not have good feet: that is, courage and a persevering spirit.” -St. John of the Cross
Have you been wondering … Where is the outrage? Where is the resolve to do something about the carnage against Christians in the world today? I am so glad Matt Walsh said this. I was rooting him on with every word I read. What has happened to our nation? How have we become so detached to the suffering of others? Where has our “home of the brave” gone?
You can read Matt’s entire post over at the Blaze. Here’s some amazing highlights …
“Outside of those two important steps, I can think of only one other thing:
We can honor their courage and sacrifice by not being such lazy, selfish, apathetic, cowards.
In dozens of countries around the planet, Christians go to church, read their Bibles, and profess their faith fully aware that these decisions might get them killed. In many cases, they convert to the faith knowing their conversion may well cost them their lives. These are men and women ready to give up everything — their very existence, if necessary — for what they believe.
And what about us? With church attendance on the decline, many of us can’t be bothered to drive a few minutes to an air conditioned building to worship with our brothers and sisters for an hour or two on a Sunday. And why? Because it means sacrificing a relaxing morning. It means having to get up and get dressed before noon. It means maybe missing the first quarter of the afternoon games in the fall.
We flee from church, and we’ve never even had one blown up with 78 people inside. Ours aren’t being burned to the ground, we just can’t be bothered to turn off the TV and leave the house.
And if we can’t be hassled to praise the Lord at church once a week, we certainly won’t worry about standing by the more difficult and challenging aspects of our faith. Here, many Christians frantically skim through the Bible discarding every piece and part that doesn’t suit the modern lifestyle. We sit up on a perch like gods and construct a new religion for ourselves; one that permits abortion, pornography, premarital sex, adultery, gay marriage, and whatever other sin we feel like indulging in.
While our fellow believers many miles away are marched out into the desert and massacred for believing in the Word, we abandon the Word entirely if it threatens to put a damper on our sex lives.
In America, many Christians stand down. They cower. They whimper. They won’t even declare their faith on Facebook for fear that it might prompt a mean Facebook message and an unfriending. Christians in the Middle East will give up their lives to keep their souls while we give up our souls to keep our reputations and our social media reach.
This isn’t true across the board, of course. But it might be more true about you than you want it to be. I certainly am not hoisting myself up as a perfect example of a courageous American Christian.
What I know is that over 80 percent of the people in this country still call themselves Christian, yet we are far from a reverent, God-fearing culture. Indeed, we are a culture of abortion, of fornication, of materialism, of rationalizing and equivocating and compromising. Can you look around you and say that most Christians you know are truly on fire with the faith? Do American churches fight tooth and nail against progressivism and secularism? When religious freedom is threatened here at home, do all Christians stand in solidarity against it?
No. No to all of the above.
I get emails all the time from people who tell me they’re too afraid to speak out against the gay agenda or the pro-choice agenda or the secular agenda because they don’t want to deal with the blow back. This blow back, in our case, pretty much exclusively involves angry internet comments and frowny face emojis. This differs slightly from anti-Christian blowback in the Middle East, which often involves being dragged out of your home, beaten, burned alive, and hung from a bridge.
We are pathetic.
One day soon, we better wake up and realize that Jesus is talking directly to us in Revelation when He says:
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.
We are comfortable and insulated, but spiritually, as Christ said, we are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.
This is what we can do for the martyrs. We can try to change that. We can be inspired. We can make a sacrifice. We can make an effort. We can take a stand. We can take a risk. We can run hot, not lukewarm.”
God, have mercy on us!
