Tag Archives: identity

Overflowing rubbish bin

Are You Compromised?

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“If you’re not going to preach the gospel, you don’t have anything to worry about. If you’re not going to talk about sin, you’re not going to have anything to worry about; but if you’re going to proclaim the gospel, they’re going to try to shut you up.” – Evangelist Franklin Graham

I’m tired of being a compromised Christian.

The world of politics believes compromise is good: all parties make concessions so that (reasonable, acceptable, tolerable) agreement can be reached. This works in its imperfect way in our imperfect world.

However, in God’s kingdom there can be no compromise. When I make a concession to the world, to my desires or to the lying suggestions of the devil, I sin. This is compromise.

God is not a compromiser. He is a promiser. He gives grace and mercy, yes – but only on his own terms.

People who want me to shut up, as Franklin Graham suggests, are asking me to compromise. I’m tired of it.

My largest area of compromise is my focus on the events of the day. There truly is nothing new under the sun.1 Much (likely most) of what I read outside the Bible doesn’t inform my Christian walk. I’m deceived if I think there actually is something new out there. And yet I find myself returning to this secular arena again and again. Too many days I check the news before I check in with my Lord and Saviour.

This futile search for ‘something new’ compromises my walk with Jesus. I think it’s sinful for me, and so I repent.

As part of this, I spent several hours this week going through my various inboxes, unsubscribing from junk.

Yes, the seemingly endless flow from the cloaca of culture: attack, criticism, counter-criticism, culture war volleys and parries, cancellation, disparagement, rumor, conspiracy theory, speculation, condemnation, self-righteous proclamation; all of this fills the news today, from the Times to Tumblr to TikTok.

Do I really need to know any of this to be relevant? The great weight in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians has landed upon my shoulders and can no longer be shrugged off: “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” 2

If I believe what God says in the Bible, I should need nothing else for wisdom and demonstration. Who could say something as well as scripture, unless it too is inspired by the Holy Spirit?

It’s wise to know what’s happening in the world. But I’m becoming convinced the endless drip–drip–drip of cases only puts my eyes where they don’t really belong.

Times are dark. But then, times have always been dark. The Apostle Paul died in prison. Ten of the original 12 disciples were martyred for their faith in Christ, many of them horribly. There was persecution everywhere for the early church, as there has been for outspoken believers throughout the Christian Age.

The only relief from persecution has been in times and places where church leaders and believers compromised themselves: becoming worldly, political or, as we might say today, ‘relevant’.

Worldly relevance is irrelevant to God’s kingdom. Compromise has no value there.

When Peter unleashed his fusillade of a sermon on the day of Pentecost,3 he was not interested in relevance, but repentance.

He preached Christ’s basic gospel: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.4 ‘Repent and be saved’ was Jesus’ version of the prophet Zechariah’s warning: “Thus says the Lord of Hosts: Return to Me, and I will return to you”. 5

Are you afraid of proclaiming the gospel? It reveals truth and brings life. Relevant messages bring confusion and death. Are you bold like Peter? Or are you compromised?

I’ve been told: ‘keep your faith to yourself’ and ‘shut up with that *** and stop judging me’. I’ve been called names. I’ve been told I have no right to speak in the name of Jesus.

The world is compromised. Are you?

Christian organizations are being de-platformed. Why? Because they refused to compromise like the app stores do.

Christian organizations are being kicked out of financial institutions. Why? Because they refused to compromise like the banks do.

Christians are being arrested in Western nations for preaching the gospel. Why? Because they refused to compromise like local governments do.

Christians are being fired for sticking to their faith in the face of uncompromising work rules. Why? Because they refused to compromise.

There is nothing new under the sun. And yet, too often Christians foster outrage instead of resting in the grace and peace Christ gives us to meet them.

Focusing on outrage brings us into the same compromise we complain about. It tricks us into glorifying what the devil is doing instead of searching out what Christ is doing. Remember, where sin abounds (read the news), grace abounds more (read the Bible). 6

Here’s the bottom line for me today, as it has been for the church for two millennia: “Now Lord, look on their threats and grant that Your servants may speak Your word with great boldness, by stretching out Your hand to heal and that signs and wonders may be performed in the name of Your holy Son Jesus.” When they had prayed the place where they were assembled together was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.7

Are you speaking the word of God with boldness? Are you fully living the life Jesus called you to live? Or are you a compromised Christian?

By virtue of cleaning out my spiritual rucksack this week, my burden just got a bit lighter, and my path a bit straighter. Praise God.

1. Ecclesiastes 3:8-9 – ‘All matters are wearisome; a man is not able to speak to them. The eye is not satisfied with what it sees, and the ear is not content with what it hears. What has been is the same as what will be, and what has been done is the same as what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.’
2. 1 Corinthians 2:4
3. Acts 2:38-41 – ‘Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all who are far away, as many as the Lord our God will call.” With many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying “Be saved from this perverse generation.” Then those who gladly received his word were baptized, and that day about three thousand souls were added to them.’
4. Mark 1:15
5. Zechariah 1:3
6. Romans 5:20

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smartphone

A Full Mind is an Empty Mind

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All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance. – Will Rogers

I open my browser each morning,
Check in with curation-phone.
The pages are full of opinions,
With nothing new under the sun.

The newspaper too, where I find one.
A daily parade of the same.
The wag of the finger, the self-righteous tone,
Declaring the villain to blame.

The inbox as well, it is chock-full
Of siren songs: Eat-me and Drink.
Like Alice I blindly consume them,
And change the way that I think.

This molding is not to my liking;
It’s not even of my own choice.
When real information’s abandoned
In exchange for invidious voice.

The press is now propagandistic;
Agendas leap out to attack.
It seems like there’s no one to turn to
And certainly no turning back.

Our choices are clear, bright and simple:
The choice is between death and life.
One choice is the tightrope of freedom
The other a slippery cliff.

So turn off your lousy subscriptions.
Stop reading repetitive lies.
Stare out the window a moment or six.
And enjoy the truth that inspires.

‘You are what you eat’ said the writer.
It’s equally true for the heart.
Take care what you feed yourself – really.
Eat smartly, or be blown apart.

Distraction will lead to deception;
Delusion is not far behind.
Destruction will certainly follow,
In all those who keep themselves blind.

Such blindness may come from a smartphone,
Or earbuds we will not remove.
They create inhuman relation,
Replacing the flesh-and-blood kind.

A ‘wicked perverse generation’
The Christ called the men of his time.
A truth that is true in all seasons,
It holds in the days that are mine.

So I think I’ll go stare out the window,
Instead of the window within.
To see Him in His good creation,
And in my own freedom from sin.

The psalmist reports on the heavens,
How they speak of God’s wonderful love.
My own inner beauty reflects them,
And His grace means I’ve nothing to prove.

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woman peeping through door hole

Double Vision

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(a three-minute read)

This is being written in the year 2023. Everyone acknowledges it’s 2023, whether or not they say ‘The Year of Our Lord, 2023’ as they once routinely did. It remains 2023.

Calendar years were once universally labeled ‘BC’ and ‘AD’, meaning Before Christ and Anno Domini (Latin for ‘In the Year of Our Lord’). Some now secularize it, saying ‘CE’ (Common Era) instead of ‘AD’, as if to deny that time is God’s creation and his purview.

Regardless, every calendar you buy still has the year measured from the time of Christ. Jesus remains the linchpin of history, time and all the rest, whether God-haters like it or not. They may choose to measure in metric instead of imperial, as it were, but the starting point and standard of measurement, Christ, cannot be changed.

All of which to say we can change the labels of things but we can’t change their meaning. I can re-save this word document with a new name, even in a new folder, but it won’t change the content.

We live in a world of double-meanings. Linguistic double-talk; deliberately ambiguous or evasive language. We struggle against shape-shifting verbiage that means one thing to you and another to me. Or it means something different now than it did just last year.

We now must avoid deep conversations unless all of us agree on the meanings of our terms before we begin. Otherwise, we argue.

Many invoke doublethink from Orwell’s 1984, (e.g. war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength) to explain the expanding realm of miscommunication in public discourse.

This is misleading and shallow. Doublethink was actually the ability to hold two completely contradictory beliefs at the same time, and to believe they are both true. That may have been the Big Lie of the USSR (and modern China come to think of it), but the first one crumbled and the second one is brittle.

No – doublethink isn’t today’s challenge. Nor is double-talk, which is, simply, gibberish. We’ve moved past that to what I’ll call parallel-talk. That is, the existence of two dissimilar meanings of the same term that are true for two different individuals or groups.

Take a term that used to be politically neutral like ‘liberalism’. It used to mean one thing only: a political philosophy advocating private property, rule of law, free markets, and protection of individual liberties. That’s still what it means to me. I consider myself a liberal. But the definition of liberal has slipped. Because I follow Christ and not so-called progressive convention on social issues, I confuse people when I call myself a liberal.

Instead, I’m labeled a conservative, and am even characterized by some as a bigot and a homophobe, simply because I believe what God said in the Bible.

Hence, the need for definitions before any debate, otherwise we can simply talk past one another.

As a society, we’ve moved from hypocrisy (the normal human condition) to gibberish (the curse of the overly-educated) to double-talk (shifting meanings) to outright confusion (life in the virtual world).

When everyone agreed on terms, our common cultural understanding made reasoned discourse possible. Even those engaged in acrimonious public debate often remained friends after hours. This was and is healthy.

Now, we blow people out of our lives for simply expressing the wrong opinion, wearing a red cap or a blue/yellow button. This is not healthy. It’s poisonous.

Yes, we’ve come full circle, and the language that once served us well has now become our greatest impediment to understanding.

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