An Inconvenient Truth

So let's just be real about it - the reason the world says that Christianity doesn't "work" is because the world doesn't want it to work. The world doesn't want to live the way that God says they should live, so they just outright reject everything wholesale. The world knows if they confess that there is a shred of truth in any of it, there must be truth in all of it. 

And nobody wants that. 

The world doesn't want boundaries. The world doesn't want parameters. The world doesn't want rules and regulations. At least, not the kind that God sets. 

We shouldn't be surprised by this. That's been the case with the world from the very beginning. Human beings have rejected God even while they dwelt in His perfection in the Garden. The Bible is full of stories of peoples outside of Israel who rejected the ways of the Lord. God has to repeatedly remind His people that they don't live the way the world lives. 

Not only that, but He tells them plainly that they will have trouble with the world because of it. He tells us that the world will reject us. He tells us that the world will mock us. He tells us that the world won't buy into what we're doing with our lives. And, just in case we don't understand what He was trying to tell us, He picked up a cross and showed us that all of this was true.

Still, we seem to have an entire generation of mostly young persons who encounter the message of the world that is counter to Christianity, and they conclude - with the world - that Christianity is the problem. 

This, too, is nothing new. Christianity has been the world's problem since the very beginning of it, since there was a baby born in a manger to a virgin mother. And a star to light the way. 

And let me tell you this - Christianity is not the world's problem because it doesn't "work." If Christianity didn't work, the world would just laugh it off. The world would just ignore it. The world would just turn away and keep on living its own life. 

But the truth is that even the world knows that Christianity is the only way that does work. That's why it has to invest so much time and energy fighting against it. That's why it has to scream until its voice is raw trying to drown it out. That's why it has to resort to name-calling and use of, at least, verbal force. (In many places and in my ages, even physical force.) 

You don't fight that hard against something that's not a real threat to you. You don't waste your energy on a battle that's meaningless to win because you have already won it. You only fight when something you hold dear is at stake. 

So the very fact that the world keeps coming after your faith ought to be proof number one that your faith is something legitimate. Something real. Something powerful. Something meaningful. Something the world feels threatened by, even while it pretends to be laughing you off. 

It wouldn't fight so hard if it wasn't.