Be Bold Enough to Follow The Truth As Far as It Takes You
By Jared C Wilson, For The Church:
The world needs Christians bold enough to follow the truth wherever it may take them.
Weirdo fundamentalist John the Baptist was imprisoned. We know that the Romans did not have a reputation for putting up with large Jewish followings for very long. It’s possible that John’s leadership was so attractive, his baptism ministry and his prophetic truth so popular among the spiritually hungry, that the regional magistrates thought of him as a threat. Whenever any Jew seemed to get too big for their britches, the Romans would hang them on a cross.
But in this particular case, Matthew 14 says that John was put in prison because he criticized Herod for having his brother’s wife. He had the audacity to not just preach against sin, but to say to a sinner in need of repentance, “You’re a sinner in need of repentance.” John was not interested in following a theoretical God and engaging in academic spirituality. He followed the personal God whose word of truth matters.
Some who profess the faith today are refusing to do the same for much less severe consequences. They fear insults, marginalization, the judgment of the world. Some depart from the great tradition not out of fear of the world but because they love the world (and not in the way God does).
Given what is taking place in the world today, do we have any indications that to follow Christ will become more and more comfortable? The Bible Belt, long the cultural bastion of “biblical values,” has long been heading toward the spiritual ruins of post-Christendom. Cultural Christianity is wasting away. And the outside world is becoming more and more hostile to the things of faith. Even some professing Christians are becoming hostile to those who will not move according to the shifting winds of the culture. And if God is doing anything in ordaining these cultural shifts to come to pass, it may be this: We are finding out who the real Christians are. (Even today, some are announcing in anger and embarrassment that they will never again call themselves evangelical, to which we must respond with all sincerity and soberness, “Thank you.”)
Maybe he is sifting out his churches that his Church might rise up.
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