Know What You Are Fighting Against!
It is one thing to be in a war that is necessary because injustice is occurring and quite another to be in conflict just because you don’t like someone. The whole world was in a war in the last century because of the vehement dislike that one man had for a group of people. That war resulted in six million of those hated people being killed and five million others. What was the injustice – the fact that those people lived and prospered no matter what they faced.
Today we are in a series of wars – cultural clashes that result in violence and bloodshed. A large part of current violence is the result of widespread racial injustice, something that cannot be denied. However, if you look at the ideology behind some of the major groups that are decrying this injustice you see things like:
"…We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and "villages" that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise)…’.Taken from Black Lives Matter Mission Statement
While you may affirm part of the mission of such groups, have you considered all of their allegiances and can you agree with them? Because we live in a free nation you can determine your position.
And this is my point today. While we decry racial and other kinds of injustice, are we saying that this nation does not have redeeming qualities. Are we saying that the words spoken to announce the independence of this nation are not in principle worthy:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, (Taken from the Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776)
Have we gotten to a place in this nation like the thirteen colonies faced in 1776 with their relationship with their mother country England and their king, King George? Has the last vestiges of second class citizenship imposed upon a group of people even at the onset of this nation, so become embedded in this nation that nothing can eradicate it? That the strides toward civil rights that have occurred over the history of this nation been for nothing?
As we engage in the current civil unrest, these are questions that we have to ask ourselves, to determine "how do we fight, and what are we fighting for"? Cultural conflicts are nothing new. They have existed since the Garden of Eden when one brother saw life one way and another brother saw life a completely different way. The brother who had disfavor with God put to death the brother who had God’s favor.
As we take to the celebration of this nation with our barbecues and other festivities today, are we celebrating a just cause, or are we just partying? Do we denounce the good in this nation for the sake of the evil? Have we lost hope in the goodness of our God to eradicate evil? Do we as believers still hold fast to what was decreed in God’s Word concerning racial and ethnic conflicts?
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. I see it as the very power of God working for the salvation of everyone who believes it, both Jew and Greek. I see in it God’s plan for imparting righteousness to men, a process begun and continued by their faith. For, as the scripture says: ‘The just shall live by faith’.Romans 1:6 (PHILLIPS)
It seems as if the words spoken by Joshua many hundreds of years ago still cry out for response:
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serveyour fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24;15 (KJV)
Maria