A particular species of Christian now flourishes in America. I call him the “wet noodle Christian.”
He is easy to recognize. He attends Bible studies, laments the moral collapse of the nation over coffee after church, and speaks with deep concern about the culture. But ask whether Christians should publicly oppose evil or contend for the moral direction of society, and he recoils as though you had proposed human sacrifice.
When Jesus taught believers to turn the other cheek, he addressed personal vengeance, not civilizational surrender.
“Oh, I don’t get involved in politics,” he says.
Or: “The world is supposed to get worse anyway.”
Or, with special confidence: “Jesus told us to turn the other cheek.”
He says all this as though Christian ethics can be reduced to the consistency of warm pudding.
This attitude springs partly from biblical illiteracy, partly from a successful Marxist strategy, and entirely from sin.
Biblical confusion
Christians often invoke the crucifixion as though Christ’s death requires believers to become passive spectators while evil marches through every institution of society. That confuses the unique work of Christ with the ordinary duties of Christians.
Christ’s death was the once-for-all atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God. No Christian is called to redeem the world by offering himself as a substitute for sin. That office belongs to Christ alone. Nor did Christ go unwillingly or by force.
During his earthly ministry, Jesus rebuked sin, denounced hypocrisy, drove money changers from the temple with a whip, and told adulteresses to stop sinning. Hardly the behavior of a celestial yoga instructor murmuring therapeutic affirmations beside a Himalayan stream.
When Jesus taught believers to turn the other cheek, he addressed personal vengeance, not civilizational surrender. The command restrains sinful retaliation. It does not abolish justice, civil authority, or moral responsibility.
The same Christ who taught mercy also stands behind Romans 13, where the civil magistrate bears the sword as a minister of God against evil. The same Jesus appears in Psalm 2 as the enthroned king while rebellious rulers “take counsel together, against the Lord and against His Anointed.”
The biblical picture is one of advance, not retreat.
In the Great Commission, Jesus does not tell Christians to preserve their private religious feelings until death mercifully arrives. He commands them to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that he has commanded.
One searches the text in vain for the line: “Go therefore and quietly lose every institution while avoiding conflict.”
And here the second problem appears: Marxists understood the wet noodle instinct long before many Christians did.
RELATED: Adults are refusing to grow up, and their children are paying the price
Matt Stroshane/Walt Disney World Resort/Getty Images
Marxist subversion
For roughly 70 years, leftist media, academic institutions, and entertainment industries have carefully catechized Christians into believing that public Christianity is somehow immoral.
Christians were told that bringing moral convictions into public life is divisive. They were taught that the First Amendment requires a functionally atheist public square, though this alleged neutrality somehow never excludes progressive secular dogmas. The Christian could privately believe whatever he wished, provided he kept it quarantined like a contagious disease.
Meanwhile, the left marched through the institutions with all the subtlety of Sherman marching through Georgia.
One suspects many Marxists privately thought: “I cannot believe how easy this is.”
They taught Christians that offending anyone is the supreme moral evil, that strength itself is suspicious, that certainty is oppressive, and that masculinity is toxic. They insisted public Christianity was dangerous, and most Christians agreed to stop speaking publicly.
The remarkable thing is not that Marxists advanced their agenda. The remarkable thing is that so many Christians surrendered before the battle even began.
Part of this surrender also comes from bad eschatology, the notion that Christians should expect inevitable defeat in history. If collapse is certain, why resist anything? Why build institutions? Why fight corruption? Why educate children? Why preserve civilization?
This mentality looks far more like ancient Israel than faithful Christianity.
The Old Testament repeatedly shows Israel absorbing the gods and practices of surrounding nations, surrendering covenant distinctiveness, and then coming under divine judgment. Defeatism was never treated as humility. It was treated as faithlessness. One can almost hear an ancient pagan telling his Israelite neighbor that the Temple sacrifices and the Law of Moses are simply not nice.
The New Testament continues the theme. Hebrews 12 reminds believers that God disciplines his people for their good, though “for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant.” Divine chastening does not mean abandonment. It means fatherly correction.
Perhaps America is living through precisely such discipline now.
RELATED: New book from Eric Metaxas shares the American Revolution’s forgotten Christian roots
ericmetaxas.com
Recovering the truth
Many Christians anxiously avoid offending anyone while ignoring Christ’s explicit command to disciple the nations. They have become highly obedient to a command Jesus never gave — be inoffensive at all costs — while neglecting the one he did give.
Christians often speak as though courage belongs to secular revolutionaries, while faith belongs to timid people waiting for evacuation. But biblically, faith grounds courage because faith rests on the certainty of Christ’s victory.
Christ will have the nations as his inheritance. The gospel will go into all the world. Faith lives here and now in light of what we know will be then and there.
The Great Commission is not a suggestion to attempt cultural survival until the batteries die. It is a declaration of conquest grounded in Christ’s authority: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me” (Matthew 28:18).
All authority. Not partial authority pending polling data.
The remedy for the wet noodle Christian, therefore, is not anger, resentment, or partisan hysteria. It is the courage of faith.
Christians must recover confidence that truth is true, that Christ reigns now, and that obedience does not become optional simply because it provokes pushback. They must stop confusing passivity with holiness and cowardice with kindness.
Above all, they must understand the strategy that has been used against them. The first step in losing a civilization is convincing its defenders that defending it is somehow unchristian.
Read the full article here
