Contributed
Source By’ Larry Alex Taunton (12th March 2017)
In
July 2012, I was speaking at a youth retreat in the mountains of Tennessee when
I received a call from CNN. It seemed
that Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy had publicly commented on the issue of same-sex
marriage and now the gay mafia were out to destroy him and his restaurant
chain. Would I, asked CNN, be willing to offer the orthodox Christian
perspective on homosexuality and defend Chick-fil-A in this controversy? After
reviewing Cathy’s remarks and concluding that they were neither outrageous nor
biblically incorrect, I agreed to the interview and, later that day I defended
the Christian position on the network as vigorously as possible in the time
that I had. Shortly thereafter, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee called
for Christians to mobilize and show their support for the embattled fast food
restaurant with “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.”
They did. Lines at the restaurant
stretched for blocks. This event marked
the first time I could remember Christians fighting back rather than meekly
submitting to the media and special interest bullies. But not all evangelical
Christians were supportive of the Home of the Chicken Sandwich.
In an
article for World Magazine, Barnabas Piper, son of prominent evangelical pastor
John Piper, wrote:
“I
will not be attending ‘Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day’ on Wednesday. Here’s why…
Convictions, especially biblical ones, will divide people. That is inevitable, but not desirable. The separation of believers and unbelievers,
when it happens, must be a last resort or an unavoidable result. Actions to the contrary, those that clearly
promote an ‘us versus them’ mentality, are most often unhelpful. There is a time for Christians to engage in
boycotting, such as when a business deals in obviously immoral areas or is
clearly unethical in its methods. But
for a mass of Christians to descend upon Chick-fil-A restaurants across the
country tomorrow to support the leadership’s view on this issue is, I believe,
a bold mistake.” I was stupefied by these remarks. Piper is young and was’, no
doubt, well intentioned here. But,
brother, if you can’t be relied on to show up and order a combo meal in support
of a company under attack for its commitment to Christian principles, when
exactly can we count on you? This wasn’t
about “the leadership’s view” on homosexuality; this was about the biblical
view of marriage and society. Besides, Huckabee wasn’t asking Piper or other
Christians to die for their faith. He wasn’t asking them to take to the streets
and destroy property as protestors on the Left have recently done in such
places as Ferguson and Berkeley. He was asking them to do nothing more than eat
a chicken sandwich and some waffle fries for Jesus. Has any protest in history been easier or
tastier?
A
generation ago pop star Bonnie Tyler famously asked: “Where have all the good
men gone?” Since then, the situation has
only gotten worse, Bonnie. As C.S. Lewis
noted, men in the English-speaking world have largely been emasculated, and men
in the Church are seldom an exception to this decades-long trend. To stand strong for one’s faith in Jesus
Christ and push back against a culture that, in the words of Isaiah 5:20,
“call[s] evil good and good evil” is to be “divisive,” “unloving,” “bigoted,”
and “intolerant.” This is because evangelicals have confused Christ’s command
to love others with being likable, as if that were an attribute of God. (It
isn’t.) As such, they endeavor to be,
above all else, inoffensive and polite. This doctrinal malpractice has given us
a generation of men who are what Lewis called “men without chests.”
I am
a child of the military. I was born at
Fort Benning, Georgia and grew up at such places as Fort Gordon, Fort Campbell,
and Fort Lewis. The idea of fighting for
things that matter has never been foreign to me. I fully recognize, as the Athenian statesman,
Pericles, observed, “Happiness depends on freedom, and freedom depends on
courage.” My father, a career soldier,
had a phrase he liked to employ whenever he saw a man behave in a manner that
was less than manly. He would say
something like, “That was candy-assed.”
Of course, my father didn’t invent the idiom, but in his use of it you
didn’t need further explanation. You
knew exactly what he was talking about. The term fits the kind of Christianity
that has infected the Church and sapped it of its vitality and strength. The
expression might offend the sensibilities of some of my readers to which I
could only say whether or not it might fit you.
I
urge you instead to be offended by the way our God’s name is blasphemed in our
country every day; by the 54 million children murdered in the holocaust of
abortion since 1973; by the sordid sexual agenda that is eroding the very
fabric of Western civilization; by the fact that Christians are dying for their
faith, largely at the hands of Muslims, at a rate of 100,000 per year; and,
most of all, by the reality that these things are being ignored, trivialized,
or celebrated. These are things that
offend me deeply, and I hope they offend you, too. In the words of Ephesians 4:26, “Be angry and
do not sin.” Righteous anger has a place within the Christian life.
Evangelical
Christians comprise a hefty 26 percent of the U.S. population. I fully believe
that if they were to find their voices, their courage, and were to dispense
with candy-assed Christianity, that we would see a Great Awakening in
America. Indeed, we would see America
become truly great again rather than superficially so. But it will, as I say, require courage,
because the forces opposing us seem determined to burn this country to the
ground.
That
cannot go unchallenged.
Profile Background Source:
Larry
Alex Taunton is the author of The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless
Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist (2016) and the Executive Director of
the Fixed Point Foundation. You can follow him at larryalextaunton.com or on
Twitter @LarryTaunton.
