Our culture has a growing discontent with how our institutions have always operates. News reporting has grown into a for profit business, slanting reports with opinions in order to gain financially. Ordinary citizens only seek information to confirm previously held bias and opinion. Politicians who bully and pressure the electrode to a viewpoint enhance intolerance, preventing compromise toward common goals.
"Let's not get discouraged for the way things are. Let's keep believing and fighting for the way things should be." - Jon Gordon
Many who profess to be Christian live in fear of those with opposing views and retreat into clusters, hoping to gain power and dominate the pluralistic culture. The role model of Old Testament heroes is the antithesis of dominating with one view. Joseph and Daniel worked in cultures that had very different values than them. Nehemiah gained the confidence of a foreign king to do what God wanted. Esther worked undercover to save her people. In the New Testament, Lydia developed her business among nonbelievers yet helped spread the gospel.
Having invested 46 years into public education and having taken all undergraduate and graduate classes at public universities, I’m dismayed at the lack of respect by many church people toward public employees. Most public school educators work hard to prepared their students for a real work world. Some even pray for their students but most work hard to protect them from a variety of cultural evils.
When I hear a speaker in a church setting decry the evil of daycare facilities and public schools, I’m dismayed. When I listen to similar speakers defy health warnings, thumbing their nose at wearing madks or receiving a vaccine, I feel as if I’m in a minority. These same speakers think there is nothing wrong with consuming alcohol, claiming that to voice opposition to social drinking is legalism. Legalism depends on who’s rules we follow.
Some Christian professing speakers feel the need to use vulgar language or phrases that are not acceptable in the public school classroom. I wonder if they are saying things for the shock value, or merely to rationalize how far they have strayed from a humble obedient response to the Holy Spirit.
What is going to happen if the Christ follower withdraws from all public social settings? What if the only source of information becomes the resource to deepen the withdrawal?
Nehemiah constantly faced slanderous accusations during his ministry. His reply? “There is nothing to these rumors you are spreading; you are inventing them in your own mind” (Neh. 6:8).
Don’t allow baseless bullies to steal your focus from what God has called you to do.
