James Fields 
Saw someone post this In-N-Out post on FB yesterday and was really bothered by the idea that the world wants Christians to be silent. So I replied as follows:
I find it's not that people want silence from Christians, it's that they want Christians that hold to the Bible. Every modern issue pushback I've seen against Christians ties directly with the hypocrisy of Christians loudly declaring something is or is not good in spite of the Bible saying the opposite.
Push back on ICE and BP's detainment of individuals and families in inhumane facilities, often with sexual assault and other forms of torture goes directly against the Bible's command to treat the foreigner well and welcome them into the land ((Zechariah 7:9-10). Push back on "pro-life" is largely against the extremist pro-life view that there's no acceptable reason for abortion even in cases of rape and medical life endangerment scenarios, despite the fact that abortion happened in cases of adultery in the Old Testament (Numbers 5:11–31).
Pick the topic of pushback from nonbelievers and more often than not you find exactly how Christians are ignoring their call to follow, honor, and glorify Jesus and love their neighbor as themselves. Once I started to realize that was true, it really changed my thinking on a lot of things. Too often preachers and teachers will position these debates as an us vs them argument. In essence they've trained us, probably unintentionally, to see pushbacks as the enemy. And the truth is far more complicated. It's not us vs them, it's us vs our sinful desires and oftentimes ignorance and failure to listen. When we listen to what they're saying, we'll find we agree with a lot more of what they're saying is wrong than we at first thought was true.
And absolutely, pressure to remove those verses will come back from time to time in waves. But those waves always follow the injustices that Christians are standing beside. Like the torture currently happening in Fort Bliss Texas, the breaking up of families as they throw children in detention camps and ship them off to another part of the country away from their parents, and the complete insanity happening in Minneapolis right now. And honestly, if we, as Christians, are supporting that kind of widespread injustice, we deserve every pushback that we get.
Sometimes we need to be silenced in order to hear the cries of the oppressed rise up around us. Sometimes we need to be silent so that we can listen to the sounds we would otherwise have missed. And then, once we've heard it, we can join our voices with them to make sure that they are heard... I think that's what it means when the Bible says: "Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy" (Proverbs 31:8-9).
#Christian #InAndOutBurger #Faith #Christianity #InNOutBurger
unker73🇸🇬
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