“He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open
shame, by triumphing over them in him.” Colossians 2:15
The most
salient lesson of Easter 2015 extends from a single verse midway through Paul’s
epistle to the church in Colossae: “He [meaning, God] disarmed the rulers and
authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (2:15).
Over the last week, Indiana, the State where I grew up, and where I now live,
was railed for passing its version of RFRA and then bullied into changing it.
Along the way, the Presbyterian owners of a pizza shop were forced to close
their doors simply for saying, as Christians, they would not choose to cater
for a gay wedding. The hate speech and threats unleashed against them made the
rants of Sodom and Gomorrah against Lot look like mere playground banter—all
this in the days leading up to the Christian celebration of resurrection from
the dead.
Other stories
in the news over the past week or so underscore a palpable menacing of evil far
beyond the borders of Indiana. One of them was the murder of nearly 150 college
students in Kenya at the hands of radical Islamists. If you learned about this
heinous crime from the New York Times, you may not have noticed that the
murderers were, in fact, targeting Christians. The Times barely mentioned the
Christian faith of most of the victims, and then not until deep into their
article. A gratuitous nod aside, the Times quickly slanted the closing
paragraphs of their article to the heroics of Muslim students who tried to help
their Christian fellows find shelter from the bullets. What else went
unreported? The murderers lining up students, then asking, “Who is a
Christian?” Then slaughtering those who confessed.
What do the
murders of Christian students in Kenya have to do with the bullying of
Presbyterian pizza shop owners in Indiana? Simply this, both were challenged
under threat to self-identify as Christians.
Both
courageously told the truth.
And here is
where the lesson of Colossians 2:15 comes into play. Death is the most powerful
weapon the world is capable of wielding, but the resurrection renders it
ineffective. Death is no longer able to accomplish its ultimate end, subjecting
those who weaponize it instead to open shame and defeat.
So an Indiana
high school women’s golf coach hatefully tweets, “Who’s going to Walkerton, IN to burn down #memoriespizza w me?” People respond
instead with more than $800,000 in donations to the shop owners, ensuring
rather than ending their future. Meanwhile, the coach is suspended from her job.
She didn’t see that coming!
Triumph over
death doesn’t always take place in this life. The terrorists in Kenya succeeded
in killing the Christian students. But that’s the point. The Christian students
willingly endured the reality of death for an even greater reality—their own
resurrection to eternal life. Their faith in the latter gave the students
courage to take a bullet, rather than to deny their faith. It’s as though the
faithful students were saying, “Bullets and death? Is that all you got?”
This is where
it gets interesting for those of us still among the living. We can learn
lessons from both the students and the pizza shop owners. It’s time to reinvest
in the disarming of our spiritual enemies and in the power and promise of Christ’s resurrection by standing up for our faith
regardless of the cost. There are a few things this means in relation to the
attempts of the LGBT community, along with some in business, and many in the
government and media, to marginalize the practice of our faith, making it
illegal for us to speak out or to refuse to approve and participate in their
sin, or even to earn a living according to the dictates of our consciences
before our God.
More about
these in my next post…
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