The Fight from Victory

There’s a reason besides the time and busyness factor that makes it difficult for me to write.

I have this tendency to get online, specifically on Twitter, and lose myself to the morass of articles and opinions and perspectives that can be found there. I’ll read article after article until I can hardly stand it anymore. All the noise will make me sick, and I’ll have to stop.

It is difficult for me to write, oftentimes, because I hate the thought of adding to that noise.

Last week, I posted an article about the exchange between Bernie Sanders and potential White House staffer, Russell Vought. In the days that followed, I would read several articles on that subject, most of them stating opinions similar to my own (and many of them more eloquently and thoughtfully written than mine).

After a while, I got bored of reading the same basic opinion from slightly differing angles, and I started looking out for those who viewed the Sanders event differently. Of course, the opposing view was not hard to find. I read several comments on Twitter and found an article or two from radically different perspectives than my own.

As I waded through those opinions and even caught an episode of a hard Left podcast, I could not help but be upset. No, I don’t mean that I was angry with “the opposition.”

I felt a deep sense of agony after reading through all the noise because I could not understand how to find a way forward. I could not see a solution for healing the great divide between the differing perspectives in our country.

Now, as a Christian writer with a majority Christian readership, I know that you will expect me to insert the Gospel at this point as the answer. Don’t get me wrong; I agree that the Gospel is the only message that could possibly resurrect life out of the spiral of death that is the state of our nation.

My sense of agony, however, did not stem from ignorance regarding the solution. My angst flowed from a heart of confusion as to how to communicate the much needed message of sin and forgiveness into a culture that sees those called “Christians” primarily as either a voting bloc to manipulate or a group of people looking to destroy them. How often does the wider culture ever think of Christians as those with a message of hope?

Even Christians rarely seem to think of themselves as bearers of a life-changing message, a message that is supposed to light up even the darkest of circumstances and radically transform lives.

We “religious Right” folk appear content to whitewash our tombs and make plays for power that ensconce our suburban way of living. The “pagan Left,” on the other hand, no doubt want to destroy the conservative, Judeo-Christian, traditional America, but they want to do so because they have absolutely no idea what exceedingly Good News they are throwing out with the bath water of pithy religiosity.

Now, I’m not so positive on the human condition that I believe those on the secular and liberal Left would believe the Gospel if they just heard it reasonably explained. I know that many of them, given the religious nature of the United States, have heard it and still spurn it.

But if they hear the Good News and still want to ruin its messengers, then by God, they’d better be waging war against the most loving, servant-hearted people who would take a trillion punches before even uttering so much as an insult in response.

I know. This goes against every instinct that we have as human beings, Christian or not, but this must be our attitude. We must continue to preach the message of reconciliation for sinners and walk calmly to our death if that’s what such preaching requires.

Why should we be so meager and weak?

Because Christ has already gone before us, fought the battle of humble submission to the point of death on a cross, and most importantly, He won.

Our victory is not found in a long, prosperous life in a great country. Our victory is not found in a pretty, little house out in the country. Our victory died on a cross and rose again to defeat sin and death.

If we fight for the “victories” of this world rather than from the victory that could only come from the other world, then we have lost, and the world will lose with us.

For they will stop hearing the Gospel; instead, they hear only the complaints of a people with power who hope to avoid being disenfranchised.