Looking around the Christian blogosphere and even in conversations with real life actual people there’s an ineffable (I love that word!) feeling among Christians that we’re losing. Perhaps even badly.
We live in a society that excels mainly in making corpses. Many of our astounding scientific and technological advancements are weapons. Our most common surgical procedure is ripping babies from wombs. And euthanasia has been liberalized to the point of common practice in our hospitals.
Marriage has been separated from reproduction. And reproduction itself is divorced from sex.
We bemoan the culture of death which surrounds us. We’ve seen the institution of marriage twisted into anything adults wish to make of it. We’ve seen children become sexual playthings in our advertising.
And sometimes we rightly throw up our hands and say we’re losing. But I wonder if this is actually something new. In many ways, haven’t we been losing for 2,000 years?
Jesus was born in a manger. Not the Inn. There was no room in the Inn. In fact, our society accomplishes an odd annual reenactment of Joseph and Mary’s rejection when manger scenes are shunned from the public square.
Let’s face it. It can sometimes feels like we’re Christians in a Barabbas world. And even on that day when the people selected between Barabbas and Jesus it must have seemed that Barabbas had won a victory and Jesus was handed a defeat. But Jesus, in fact, was the great victor and saved all of his persecutors (including us) that day. Isn’t one of the greatest miracles of Christ that Christianity seems to thrive most when it seems to be losing? When it is hunted it spreads.
We follow a crucified savior, what did we expect?
Sometimes we win in losing. It’s just up to us to fight. That’s all we can do. Fight in our little ways. Stay true to the faith. Love. And remember that sometimes getting eaten by lions is winning. It may not feel like it. But God has turned worse things to good before.
