We are living in a period when people are quick to crucify others, wither it is digitally on reddits, forums, and Discord, or even in person at work. The trigger figure to shoot people with nine inch nails in a metaphorical sense is quick. It seems like at any moment someone is ready to be Judas, and get Pharisee Posse ready to give false charges or slant what was posted so as to get someone nailed to the cross. What is behind this and as Christians how are we to respond?
The truth is this behavior is here to say. The Scriptures tell us,” This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19). People love the darkness, and part of that darkness is this world, which the Ruler of is the devil, who at any moment has power over them, “You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.” (Ephesians 2:2). Then there is the aspect that we as Christians give off scent to people in this world, “To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume.” (2 Corinthians 2:16). Indeed Jesus even says that this world hates us because He has called us out of it, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’” (John 15:18-25). We are basically “pilgrims in an unholy land,” (Dr. Henry Jones, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade), here to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. The ire and quick to crucify mentality has been there from the beginning, because people “loved the darkness because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19).
There is a line in the song Bloody Mary by Lady Gaga that goes, “I will not crucify you for the things you doooo.” Its a powerful line because we experience the opposite, we experience people quick to bang in the nails and raise us on preverbal crosses over anything they can gather to be the evidence and charges they want to destroy us over. Honestly, there is no avoiding this entirely, your best hope is to find Christians ready to die for the Truth, for Christ, “They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death,” (Revelation 12:11), because those kind of Christians will not turn you in, they have died to the world (Romans 12:2, Galatians 6:14-18), and the world will persecute them because it fears what it cannot control, and you cannot control a Christian willing to be bold to speak the Truth and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ without fear.
The only solace I can offer is the words of Scripture. That this world with all its boasting, and duplicitous people baying for blood will burn up, “But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment, Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives you should live” (2 Peter 3:10-11), and that we Saints will live on a better world, “But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells,” (2 Peter 3:13); where we will only know healthy people who love the Light, not Darkness, who have the marks of the cross and persecution on their hands (metaphorically for most), and who loved the Lamb of God and the Bride of Christ, their brothers and sisters till the end. Amen.
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