The Stakes Are Too Low

        Has it crossed your mind that perhaps one of the reasons for the recent surge of unrest and violence across the world is that no one is playing for high enough stakes? 

        A little perspective might not go amiss: right now, in North Korea, underground Christians risk death every single day. Up until the early nineties, many Christians in countries behind the Iron Curtain risked torture and long imprisonment. In the former Soviet bloc states, some still do. In China, there is significant persecution today - to what extent we don't really know, but it's not a walk in the park. Throughout many areas in Africa, Christians are under barbarous attack by devilish men who seek to kill and destroy, as we have seen over the past couple of weeks in Nigeria. Even in Hong Kong, which was one of the most free Asian states until this past year, the usurping Chinese government has just passed legislation which makes sharing the Gospel quite dangerous in different ways, calling it seditious. 

        But here, in the so-called Western world, where we are apparently so civilised and free and well-off, it seems every finger points to everyone else and accuses them of generational racial prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry. We fight and argue on social media over strange ideas of injustice that somehow appear to have sprung up overnight, but yet are told they have been around forever. We flood the streets to protest and vandalise since our lives and feelings have been hurt. We aren't being arrested or tortured or killed for peacefully opining different ideas, actions, or speaking the Gospel. So what stakes are we as a culture actually playing for? More importantly, what stakes is the Christian church playing for?

        Of course, the sins of injustice, corruption, and prejudice have indeed been around for a long time. The Lord God already destroyed all of humanity, excepting eight persons, for complete and utter wickedness over 5000 years ago. And still, every so often something touches off the powder keg of emotions and feelings, and the resulting "boom" is heard and observed all over countries across the globe. Yet all that is merely symptoms of the greater issue. Zechariah 7:9-14 says the following:

        "Thus says the Lord of hosts, 'Render true judgements, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.' But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear. They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great anger came from the Lord of hosts. 'As I called, and they would not hear, so they called, and I would not hear,' says the Lord of hosts, 'and I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not known. Thus the land they left was desolate, so that no one went to and fro, and the pleasant land was made desolate.'"

 

        The prophet Zechariah was explaining the reasons for which God had judged the people of Israel after they had returned from their exile in Assyria. And it should be quite frightening to see that what happened 2500 years ago is what is happening today. Do we today think that we are immune or beyond the reaches of such wickedness as described so long ago?  The people of the world today stop their ears and shut their eyes to the true laws of God. Mankind devises evil and destruction against his neighbour just like before. We do not show kindness and mercy to each other. nor do we render justice as the Lord Almighty has instructed. Our hearts are hardened by the deceitfulness of pleasure, money, sexual immorality, laziness and self-love. Let no one say the Bible is irrelevant today. 

        Trying to solve injustice and sin without the Gospel is like kicking a soccer ball into the goal over and over again, cheering for each point scored, only to realise that you've been aiming at your own net every time. A good effort and decent skills, but a completely useless outcome. The people who riot and destroy, along with those who condone such lawlessness, are not shooting for the right goal - and they don't realise it. Neither are the politicians, the heads of public services, leaders of armed forces, CEO's of corporations, or anyone else. One can try to placate, calm down, and mollify those who complain about feelings and unfair ideas and never realise that nothing can solve any idea, any injustice, any hurt feelings. Legislation cannot do it; neither money nor apologies: absolutely nothing except for the truths of the Gospel.

        When Christians forsake the Gospel in the pursuit of ethnic social justice, we throw the baby out with the bathwater, and run from the very solution which we then desperately try by fruitless means to obtain. 1 John 5:1-4 says: 

        "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world - our faith." 

 

        If Christians do not obey God's commandments, we are not born of God. If we are not born of God, we cannot overcome the world. All the man-made projects and programs cannot meet the needs of the world. The commandments of Christ for his children cannot be fulfilled in any way other than He tells us in Scripture. There is an uncrossable gap between the world's many broken and useless solutions to the problem of sin, and God's one, infallible, perfect way of Salvation. C. S. Lewis, in his brilliant work, The Screwtape Letters, has the person of a senior demon in teaching a younger demon how to destroy a Christian, say this: 

        "About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our[the devils'] position is much more delicate: We do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything - even to social justice.  The thing to do is get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy[God] demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. The Enemy will not be used as a convenience."

         Lewis' point here is that we must beware of lowering the stakes of the Christian faith and theology to a base level "means" whereby man can obtain sociopolitical change.  Christians must be careful not to use Scripture and interpret it in light of a personal, autonomous morality. We ought to be wary of "means" which use the Bible to advance a moral cause for worldly measures. Such uses are abuses of the Gospel and serve only to detract from and lower the worth and power thereof. This is what is meant by the stakes being too low. Too often it would appear that Christians assume a knowledge of the Gospel, and relegate it to the backseat of their response to certain issues, which leads to a perchance morally idealised, but nevertheless man-centred persuasion of how to solve a social problem with a worldly solution.

        The early church father, St. Augustine, stated that "people hate the truth for the sake of whatever it is they love more than the truth. They love truth when it shines warmly on them, and hate it when it rebukes them." What do you love the most? What truth are you fighting for?  Are you playing for the ultimate stakes of the Gospel and Salvation? Or are you lowering Christ's Gospel to a petty human level? Those man-centred stakes are too low - if you are a Christian, you must raise the stakes to the ultimate level of the Gospel.