Nacho: Ok. Orphans! Listen to Ignacio. I know it is fun to wrestle. A nice piledriver to the face… or a punch to the face… but you cannot do it. Because, it is in the Bible not to wrestle your neighbour.
Chancho: So you’ve never wrestled?
Nacho: Me? No. Come on. Don’t be crazy.

A man punched me in the face. 

I went to hit him back and he said wagging his index finger, “Ah, ah, ah…you can’t hit me, you are a Christian.” Oh man, he’s right. I am. The man smiled a sinister smile and gave me one more quick jab to the ribs as he walked away, laughing. I wanted to punch, unleash a good retaliatory piledriver on him, but my fellow Christian friends around me said, “You must let him go, he doesn’t know any better.”

“He doesn’t know any better? He smiled at me, how can he not know? He’s a sentient human being, isn’t he?” I wondered.

My friends replied, “We can’t expect him to behave decently because he isn’t saved!”

Silly story isn’t it? But believe it or not, this is the world we live in. Christians and moral conservatives are expected to be the responsible ones. They must take the abuse, the slander, the general tomfoolery of a world gone mad; while the non-Christian progressive liberal insists they are not to be held accountable for anything. They are given a free pass to do as they please while demanding the Christian to act Christian. It’s absurd: the immoral clod appeals to morality to keep others in check while he galivants freely in his debauched libertine behavior. 

So grin and bear it when the culture at large punches you in the face.

Take for instance the person who comes to church and says, “I hate church because I don’t like all the fake Christian hypocrites who do nothing but judge me.” Notice how judgmental and intolerant that statement is? Yeah, but we must allow the person who doesn’t hold to standards to get away with abusing the standards they expect from us to uphold. But what they logically don’t realize, is if you appeal to a standard you are inferring that that standard has real merit. 

If you tell me I am not allowed to hit you in the face, why can you hit me in the face? That is called a double-standard. Well, daily we see the double standard being used to keep those who live by standards under control.

Take Chris Cuomo the CNN host for example. He thinks your daughter needs to show tolerance for the transgendered male peeing in the female bathroom. He actually said that we should teach our daughters tolerance by not being surprised when they see “male genitalia” in the locker room. But if we counter that we want to protect our daughters from possible predators and exhibitionists dressed as transgenders, Cuomo has no tolerance for showing tolerance to our daughters. We have to submit to his understanding of the word tolerant, while he just runs rough-shot over ours. A clear double-standard.

And of course there is the woman’s movement as another example: They want us to respect and even validate their “feminine uniqueness” while at the same time they are violently advocating for the elimination of the uniqueness of the child in the womb. They want us to respect their complete disrespect for the unborn.

A few months ago I pointed out on-line the clear double-standard when many of the Hollywood elite were protesting the presidency of Donald Trump by calling him an “immoral misogynist.” You can’t deny that he said some truly atrocious things about some of his female adversaries – – I hate it when he dabbles in disgusting rhetoric. But who is Hollywood to talk? Hollywood is one of the chief purveyors of material that objectifies women and promotes immorality. However, if you point that out to them, they and their supporters, many Christians as well, will claim that they are only “doing their job.” The movie industry is only telling stories – – they are not meant to be taken seriously.  

C’mon, if you call others out for something, you are appealing to a standard that you must honestly place yourself under, even in your line of work. People are not given a pass just because they claim they should be given a pass.

In the book of Amos, the prophet Amos opens up by saying “The Lord roars from Zion and utters from Jerusalem; the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the top of Carmel withers.” Uh oh, he is ready to unleash some condemnation and harsh judgment on the land. So you would assume, like all of the other minor prophets, he is going to go after God’s people. But wait…he first unleashes the heat of God’s anger against the nations surrounding Israel. In other words, he is judging the heathen nations first.

This is problematic for most people in our culture because even though they don’t claim to believe in God, they will still be held responsible by God for how they live. In Romans 2:14-15 God says he wrote his law in all people’s hearts, including the non-believer’s. Why does the non-Christian appeal to moral law when he demands that the Christian uphold that very law? Because he knows in the depth of his soul it is true. And not only that…he even faintly realizes that he will probably be judged by it.

So, my dear Christian friend, the reason we don’t retaliate when we are punched in the face is not because they don’t know any better, it is because of something far more terrifying. Romans 12:19-20 says this, and listen very closely, 

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’” So when we are insulted we are to respond in kindness, not simply to be a nice guy, but to let God at them.

In conclusion, as Americans we have been given a voice – – it is o.k. to speak up and argue your position. And as Christians, we must use our voice to warn. Don’t allow faulty logic believing that people can avoid God’s judgment simply by claiming they are not followers of him. We will all be held responsible, we will all face judgment.

And if you think a human punch to the face is bad, you have yet to see God’s right hook.