The path to courage that changes the culture
Child psychologist Allan Josephson received one of the American Psychiatric Association’s highest awards while serving as chair of the University of Louisville’s Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology. In 2017, he said at a Heritage Foundation panel, “Transgender ideology . . . is neglectful of the need for developing coping skills and problem-solving skills in children.”
For his comments, he was forced to resign as division chair. According to a lawsuit he filed, the university reduced his salary, retirement benefits, and academic travel funds before eventually choosing not to renew his contract, effectively terminating his position. He sued the university, alleging that they violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
Dr. Josephson will receive a $1.6 million settlement from the university this week.
China bans foreign mission activity
I was in Hong Kong some years ago. On my first morning, I exited my hotel, turned left into the coming stream of pedestrians, and was nearly run over by the mass of humanity rushing the other way. I quickly learned to find my “lane” of intended direction and strayed from it at my peril.
Going the right way when the crowd is going the other way is always dangerous.
For those who truly follow Jesus, it has ever been thus.
The Chinese Communist Party is banning foreign missionary activity, effective May 1. Foreigners will be prohibited from “preaching, sharing their faith, or establishing religious organizations without official government approval.” Non-Chinese citizens will be forbidden from recruiting Chinese citizens as religious followers. In addition, foreign clergy can preach only if officially invited by state-sanctioned religious institutions, and all preaching content must receive prior government approval.
On a speaking trip to Beijing some years ago, I met underground church pastors who risk their families and their futures daily to share God’s word. I have prayed for them often and can only hope I would have their courage in their circumstances.
Paul warned his fellow believers that “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22); “tribulations” translates the Greek word for a massive weight used to crush grain into flour. Jesus used the same word when he predicted, “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33a).
However, our Lord then added: “But take heart; I have overcome the world” (v. 33b). “Take heart” could be translated, “have courage.” The Greek tense translated “I have overcome” states an accomplished fact with ongoing relevance. We could render his phrase, “I have overcome the world and am still overcoming it today.”
What happens “when people renounce lies”
Faithful Christians in communist countries face prison and worse. In the post-Christian West, the threat is less obvious but no less real.
Like the church in northwest England spray-painted with lewd images, obscene phrases, and the statement, “God is a lie,” Christ-followers face an ongoing mass of humanity rushing headlong into secularism. Its destructive consequences are all around us, from the epidemic of pornography to plummeting life satisfaction to the threat of loneliness to discouragement exacerbated by the daily news.
Ironically, the attack on the British church came on Good Friday.
If we wish to experience Jesus’ overcoming victory in a culture blinded by “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4; cf. 1 Corinthians 2:14), our first step is to follow Dr. Josephson’s example.
On February 12, 1974, the dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn was arrested by the Soviets. That same day, he had released the text of his now-famed address, “Live Not By Lies.” In it, he identified “the simplest, most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies!” (his italics). He added, “Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!” (his italics).
He explained:
This is the way to break out of the imaginary encirclement of our inertness, the easiest way for us and the most devastating for the lies. For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person.
“The secret of the worker’s life”
To find the courage to refuse the lies of our culture, we need to love our Father more than we love our world. In The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) observed, “If God were our one and only desire, we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.”
How, then, do we make God our “one and only desire”?
We begin by remembering how much he loves us (1 John 4:19). Pope Francis, whose body is now lying in state in St. Peter’s Basilica ahead of Saturday’s funeral mass, urged us in his last book, “Allow me to share the most fundamental truth with you: God loves you. . . . You are, in all situations, infinitely loved.”
Then we respond with the counselor’s adage: Act into feeling. If you loved God more than you do, what would you do?
The more time we spend with our Lord, the more his Spirit inculcates in us a desire for time with him. The more we worship him, the more we find ourselves wanting to worship him. The more we experience his presence in prayer and solitude, the more we yearn for his presence through prayer and solitude.
Oswald Chambers noted,
“The secret of the worker’s life is that he keeps in tune with God all the time.”
And the Holy Spirit infuses us with the courage of Christ in refusing the lies of our culture and testifying to the truth of the gospel.
Prior to Pentecost, Peter denied even knowing Jesus three times (Matthew 26:69–75). But after he joined believers who were “devoting themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:14) and was “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4), he courageously told the same men who condemned Jesus, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
With this result: “When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus” (v. 13).
Will people recognize that you have “been with Jesus” today?
Quote for the day:
“It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.” —A. A. Hodge
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