"...having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation. Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake... For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men...."
-- 1 Peter 2:12-15
While Peter's first letter exhorts believers to submit to governing authorities, he does not say that believers should not make use of their rights as citizens.
We are not Rome, of course, and ostensibly we the people are the government of this nation; at least that is how it was until 2009. Since then it has become the government who rules and "we the people" who are subjects. This young man was attacking those who had stood up for their rights long before that time.
Where in the Bible is there justification to condemn those who used their rights as citizens to try to hold back the attacks of the world on those very rights? On what basis are they to be accused of any motivation beyond that? Only God knows the motivations of the heart.
While he was still expositing on 1 Peter 2, he spoke of the fact that the world will complain and condemn us when we stand for what it right. How is it, then that he takes their complaints of the past as if they were legitimate? This speaker hasn't lived 40 years yet, but has grown up hearing the complaints of the world as they falsely accuse the Christians of being on the offensive in the so-called "culture wars" (an accusation not based on facts nor historical record). He has taken their side, casting "the Christian Coalition," by name and others by implication, as the villains in today's sermon.
We are now where we would have been in the 1980s if Christian citizens in many organizations and occupations hadn't decided that they needed to follow the example of the apostle Paul, to make use of their citizenship rights. They were good stewards of the opportunities built into the system for citizen activism, and involvement in a nation where the government was meant to be "of the people, by the people and for the people."
They were part of the salt which held back the rot. They were a light in the dark world of politics and among the fruits of their efforts were people getting saved who never understood before that the gospel was not about being 'good enough.' I'll take that as proof enough of God's blessing on what they did then.
Since then the professional political class has changed the system so that citizens have no real say. They shut down dissent, they ignore the voices of the people and tell us that we have no more right to resist.
What we have now is what we would have had decades sooner if those Christians had decided to let the world roll on unopposed. I absolutely disagree with this preacher's condemnation of, "the last 40 or 50 years." However, if he had saved his comments for this election season, and not presumed to know what it is in their hearts, he could have been correct.
Many of the movers and shakers among those who once stood up to the world-system appear now to be selling out their principles in order to keep their power and to win at all cost. They promote a candidate which any other time in the past they would have found completely objectionable and unsupportable. Earlier this year, when there was a better choice, they refused to stand with that better candidate because they believed the lie that, "he cannot win," despite his better poll results again the presumed DNC nominee.
Their actions are the same as this misguided young preacher. Both sides err in giving deference and sympathy to a world-system which takes offense at those who stand up with honor and who uphold the name of Jesus Christ.
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