I think the one thing that a lot of people don’t understand about Christians, is that our faith or even certain beliefs are not something we can just put aside for the “sake of society.”
In other words, many assume that their concept of a moral and just world will far outweigh our concept of the same thing, so when the time comes, they think we need to sacrifice or modify our beliefs/doctrine/precepts for the sake of what they think is better for humanity and society.Â
But that’s not always the case, and unfortunately, because that is not the case, many get upset at us for “allowing” certain “injustices” to run wild instead of “doing something about it" immediately.Â
I’m not sure I’m being clear with my point so I’ll provide a very well-known example: Gay marriage.Â
In completely humanistic perspectives, there shouldn’t be anything “wrong” with allowing gay marriage to become legalized. Why? Because it allows someone to exercise freedoms with whomever they’re romantically involved with. In other words, if it’s not “harmful” to anyone, why resist? Let people marry whomever they want, nothing bad about that, right?
But to a Christian’s perspective, we’re not just dealing with that purely humanistic perspective, and neither is this just about what is harmful or not to a human’s eyes. We’re also dealing with the perspective from a supreme being whose morals/will/desires far outweigh our own, and whose near impossible standards we are trying to honor, out of love and obedience in response to what He had done for us. And for us, what may not seem harmful to someone can be very much harmful to them spiritually without them actually being aware of it (or without any empirical, human-centered science necessarily backing it up). Therefore, we stand our ground in these sorts of issues, even if it means arousing resistance from the people around us (some issues are obviously more flexible like entertainment, diet, etc. but there are times when they aren’t, like idolatry, marriage, sex, and the sanctity of life).Â
(Side note: There are other issues that Christians should 100% be backing, like justice for the poor/oppressed and the destruction of racist ideology, just in case someone will assume that just because I’m talking about gay marriage, I’m also treating racism with the same perspective. It all depends on what God values which a person would understand if they truly read/understood Scripture or the Gospel).
So when people demand that we also be 100% supportive of something like gay marriage, they’re asking us to choose between obeying the God that we worship versus obeying or adopting the sensibilities of the world (gay marriage represents this direct clashing well, though it doesn’t happen for all issues). They place us in difficult situations because in the end, if we’re serious about our desire to honor God, then of course we’re going to choose Him and end up disappointing the other (understatement). We don’t exactly like being called enemies, but Jesus had already warned us that this would be the case and we are to still worship and praise Him (But if you do selfishly enjoy being treated like an enemy, fellow Christian, then you need to start evaluating whether you’ve developed a martyr or persecutory complex).Â
Yes I’ve used gay marriage because this, along with abortion, are two of the loudest examples where a Christian has had to face backlash for choosing to honor someone bigger than the world, bigger than the universe. But also consider that our worldview also encompasses the past and the future, the status of humanity and its destiny. From there you’re forced to start asking questions like:
“Why are they so serious about this? Why can’t they just give up this specific belief? I’m not asking them not to become Christian, just asking them to let us have this, give people the desires/needs I believe with which they’d have better lives. What is so special about this God of theirs, He doesn’t even exist (some of them might say) and why are they so narrow-minded?”
And most times, instead of asking such questions calmly and investigating them in their own time, many people resort to anger, name-calling, accusing us of being harmful or (un/intentionally) perpetuating harmful ideology or just being downright murderous.Â
But more subtly, they downgrade the significance of our faith in relation to the rest of the world. Thus it’s revealed that these people do not truly understand how important, how central, how integral the Christian worldview is to our lifestyle, beliefs and even behavior, and many refuse to even try to fully acknowledge it. They default under the assumption that they know more about our faith by treating it with flippancy or less significance than it really is to us by calling it simply another religion.
And the key to understanding is to seek out the Truth. Because if there are people who do not believe even in the supposedly basic humanistic truth that freedom is defined as simply doing what you want without harming anyone...
...then what is the Truth?