Originally published as a featured article for Doorway Publishing
I am a glutton for punishment. I just can’t help it. When it comes to debates on social media, like Facebook and Twitter, I sometimes jump in the middle of a verbal fray throwing caution to the wind. My worldview leans conservative, this is true both politically and morally, which in this day and age, invites a lot of hungry cyber-trolls looking for a good fight. The one antagonistic voice I have found most frustrating and particularly vicious during my on-line skirmishes is not the aggressive progressive or the outraged anarchist on the left, but it is the appeasing Christian who always finds fault with his own tribe of people.
The specific thorn in my side is the ever-vigilant equivalency cop who demands all of his or her fellow Christians to scrape and scratch-out the microscopic speck from their own eye before they ever consider pointing out the massive gnarly log that is stuck solid in someone’s else’s eye. And if that person happens to be a non-Christian or a loud and proud atheist, the cop sternly informs us that we have no right to highlight their hypocrisy or condemn their soul-crushing wickedness. They insist that we must keep our big mouths shut even if a person’s decisions are destroying culture and mocking God. Because remember, we must not expect the unbeliever to understand moral truth and surely we never want to turn them away from the loving heart of Jesus.
You have heard these cops, their mantra is always the same, “Christians are not to judge others when dealing with issues such as abortion, adultery, homosexual behavior, gender fluidity, and proper pronouns.” When a Christian says, for example, that homosexual behavior is a sin and that same-sex marriage is not marriage in the biblical sense, we are not offering a generous enough tolerance. “Who are we to judge two people who love each other?” or “Who does the self-righteous Christian think they are, telling someone who they can and cannot love? You’re a sinner, too!” And then there is always the effective trump card that is played, “Someone’s private life is none of your business. Don’t judge them.”
But I am convinced we must stop swallowing such milk-toast moralism especially when it is our duty to tell the truth, even if someone listening is not a Christian. That is what it means to be both salt and light. Ephesians 4:11-12 is very clear on this, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible.” Shining a light in the darkness is a dangerous business because you might get bitten by those hiding in the dark; no one likes to be exposed.
Take, for instance, the curious case of Marilyn Manson and the recent domestic abuse charges filed against him by his former fiance, 33-year-old “Westworld” actress and Emmy nominee Evan Rachel Wood. She claims, “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years,” she wrote in her statement. “I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives.”
We will all admit that domestic abuse is a terrible thing, but let us not forget, the world had been warned about this man for years. Why should we all of a sudden care about his dangerous behavior now, when for decades he was denounced as an enemy to American civility because his music was against everything people of goodwill hold dear? Manson told a crowd back in the 1980’s “The character Lucifer in the Bible is to me a hero, because he got kicked out of heaven when he wanted to be God.” To prove his point, one of his signature moves in his concerts was to tear up a Bible in order to bring his crowds to a roaring frenzy.
So naturally, the church and Christian social critics immediately voiced their disgust for the ideas this man propagated and cautioned families about the negative impact his goth-metal shock-rock was bound to have on the young.
Manson loved the attention he was getting and continued to contemptuously mock Christianity and the church as he shrieked before his fans, “My fellow Americans, we will no longer be oppressed by the fascism of Christianity. And we will no longer be oppressed by the fascism of beauty. As I see you all sitting out there trying your hardest not to be ugly, trying your hardest not to fit in, trying your hardest to earn your way into Heaven, but let me ask you—do you want to be in a place that’s filled with a bunch of assholes?”
In November of 1997, Manson was the subject of a congressional hearing titled “Music Violence: How Does It Affect Our Children” led by Senator Joseph Lieberman which heard testimony from Raymond Kuntz, a North Dakota father who blamed his son Richard’s suicide on Antichrist Superstar. But no one in the entertainment industry cared, moral conservatives were characterized as old fuddy-duddies; people to be laughed at and ignored. One critic of the congressional hearing wrote, “It’s reckless demagoguery for members of Congress to endorse the idea that teenagers with no problems kill themselves just because they happen to listen to the wrong music. It’s especially puzzling to hear such talk from conservatives, who are usually suspicious of environmental explanations for self-destructive and anti-social behavior.”
By doing wrong, Manson could do no wrong. Pop-culture gatekeepers kept handing him more and more fuel for his debauched fire, and so Manson figured why quit when the sophisticated elite class supported your attack on all that is good and decent. In his 1999 autobiography “The Long Hard Road Out of Hell,” Manson admitted to smashing his mother in the face with a glass perfume bottle. Not only did the shards leave her permanently scarred, but Manson said he felt no regrets since he suspected her of cheating on his father.
“She just cried, and I never felt sorry for her,” he wrote, adding that he “hit her, spit on her and tried to choke her.”
So now, 20 years later, when a person from the entertainment industry cries foul concerning Manson’s sick proclivities, we must now listen! Why? Christians were ignored when they first voiced concern. As Christians, we should always weep at the pain and destruction of others. And this is also why we should keep warning people of the consequences of sinful behavior because people will “always reap what they sow’’ as evidenced by Evan Rachel Wood’s case. Warning others about the log in their eye isn’t judgment, it is our duty as followers of a holy God. Actions will always have consequences regardless of whether someone is a Christian or non-Christian.
In the prophecy of Amos, the hillbilly fig-farmer prophet starts out his book warning all of the nations of the world how they will be judged. The book begins by saying “The Lord roars from Zion and thunders down from the mountains of Jerusalem.” And for the next two chapters, Amos announces the judgment that is coming for the sins of the nations surrounding Israel. Mind you, most of them were unbelievers, they were not God’s people, and yet they still were being warned because wrath was going to be unleashed in very specific ways for their very specific evil actions. Amos says to a number of different nations, “For three sins, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath.”
Wrath is real, even for unbelievers, and it is administered directly and indirectly. But biblically speaking, God’s indirect wrath is the worst. According to Romans 1:26 indirect wrath is when God gives people over to their shameful lusts. He takes his protection off and lets people have the consequences of their rebellion. Grace is pulled away. We are not to rejoice in this, but we still are to warn about it. This is not self-righteous legalism or unjust judgment, it is the law of spiritual cause and effect. When a pretty 18-year-old woman decides to live with a man who was known for shocking the world with his vile fantasies and boasting of his hatred for all that is good, don’t be surprised if abuse and manipulation come thundering down the mountain. It’s bound to.
We shouldn’t be shocked when popular media outlets promote the homosexual lifestyle as healthy and life affirming and then find out that according to the CDC, “Research shows that, compared to other men, gay and bisexual men have higher chances of having: Major depression, Bipolar disorder, and Generalized anxiety disorder.” But the tolerance police still tells us to hold our tongues because we are out of bounds when we express caution. Just wait for the whirlwind that is coming after a few years of this foolish transgender experimentation. Don’t be surprised when the rates of suicide and mental illness start skyrocketing with children who are not told what sex they are by woke parents who ignore truth.
So my dear Christian cops, those who worship at the temple of tolerance, stop arresting your own people for disturbing the peace. Sometimes it is required to shout loud and raise your voice when you see actual murder, violence, sexual perversion, and wholesale destruction of society going on around you. Christians are not judging others when they tell the truth. They are simply being faithful to the gospel witness to a dark world that has been going on since the days of Noah:
“For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the flesh and despise authority.” (2 Peter 2:4-10)
