Evidenced

 We’re good at talking a good game. It has become the de facto national pastime. We spend endless hours discussing how we would change the world given half a chance, then we get the opportunity and shrink back into the shrubbery because we realize that the chance we were hoping for presupposes sacrifice, and sacrifice is high on the list of things we would rather avoid.

I get it. You finally got that big promotion at work; the gentrified hip kids are starting to come to your church; you got complimented for your sensitivity and inclusivity just the other day; it’s not that easy standing up for the truth and calling out evil. Why make enemies when you can make friends? Why upturn the apple cart when tacit avoidance keeps everyone amiable?

I’ve often asked myself why Lot never left Sodom, why he didn’t pack up his family and return to his tents in the desert seeing the corrosive environment he’d brought them to. It’s why most people don’t do the things they know they ought to nowadays: because it was just easier not to.

Between confronting the people of Sodom about their evil, removing his family from among them, or biting his tongue, looking the other way, and pretending as though everything was fine, pretending everything was okay was the easier option. Yes, his soul was still vexed, but he learned to cope with it because his flesh was exceedingly comfortable.

If you think being surrounded by evil doesn’t have any untoward influence on the individual, just look at the statistics over the last few decades and see how society has been persuaded into accepting the abnormal and by what percentages.

Evil is like a battering ram incessantly pounding against your castle walls. If the enemy is not repelled, if an offensive is not mounted to make the enemy flee, cracks in the wall will become evident. Eventually, the wall will crumble altogether.

We put ourselves in situations we shouldn’t be in, thinking ourselves impervious to the wiles and ways of the enemy, even though the Bible tells us to flee the very appearance of evil. We come to the point of needing supernatural extraction if we hope to survive, but somehow it’s God’s fault when we stumble and fall.

Here’s a question I haven’t been able to answer conclusively: Would the Lot who pitched his tents near Sodom have offered up his virgin daughters the way the Lot who lived in Sodom did?

I’ve got two daughters. I know the lengths to which I am willing to go in order to protect them, up to and including my own life, so what Lot did to pacify the men of Sodom never sat well with me. It’s not something you can gloss over, or ignore, especially if you’re a dad.

Even though his soul was vexed in Sodom, the place, people, and depravity had affected him to the point of compromising with evil on a disturbing level.

That’s another lesson worth learning, given what we’re seeing in the church today. No matter how much you’re willing to compromise, evil is never satisfied. Whatever it is you offer evil in order to leave you alone, it will always want more until it has it all, and you’re left empty and broken and hopeless.

You don’t try to understand evil, negotiate with it, or compromise on its behalf. You resist evil, reject it, and stand resolute in opposing it. When you push back on evil, you realize it is not impenetrable. The invincibility it projects is only an illusion, one that can be shattered the moment you stop retreating and making excuses for it.

We’ve seen how quickly the veneer falls apart once decent people stand up and say no more. If everyone was so gung-ho about mutilating children, if it was now routine, where’s all this backlash coming from?

They lied about the acceptance because they hoped it would keep you silent. They thought if you believed everyone else, except for you, was for children getting mutilated, sexualized, and groomed by perverts, you’d do as Lot, and just sigh and shake your head, and go about your life.

Tragically, they were half right. For the most part, the contemporary church is staying silent, turning a blind eye, or trying to excuse the behavior by calling it something other than what it is. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s the people who came here hoping to find freedom and a better life for their children that are standing up and making their voices heard.

It’s people who risked their lives for the promise of being free that are standing in the gap and fighting this darkness because it’s not what they signed up for. Unlike many who have been lulled to sleep by comfort and excess, these parents are unwilling to lay their children down on the altar of perversion for the sake of convenience.

Between having the character of Lot and the character of Abram, I know which one I would choose. Between trusting in the Lord to provide and offering up your children’s innocence to pacify the godless, the choice ought to be clear and universal, but it’s not. Not even among those who belt out Hillsong like they’re going out of style or call themselves the movers and shakers of the kingdom.

Eventually, the fire will come to test what they have built, and that they built with wood, straw, and hay will become clear to all.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.