By Shafer Parker

So far as I know, something unprecedented took place during this year’s Super Bowl. An organisation called He Gets Us paid $20 million to twice broadcast a pro-Jesus, pro-Christian commercial. I’m not endorsing the organisation, but I do want to point out that its slogans: “Jesus loved the people we hate,” and “Jesus invited everyone to sit at his table,” are hard to square with the reaction from one of the U. S. government’s loudest liberals. “Something tells me Jesus would not spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign,” tweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat, U.S. House of Representatives, New York, New York).

Surely, I don’t have to explain the out-of-touch, hair-on-fire craziness of her response to what were relatively innocuous, even anodyne messages. If you clicked on the link above, did you see anything in the He Gets Us ads promoting something specifically fascist, e.g., centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, or a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism? I didn’t think so.

So, no, I don’t see anything in the commercials that would have inspired AOC’s specific slam. But what I do see is scary enough. She apparently hates even the weakest expressions of Christianity so much that she is willing to lie, or at least misrepresent the truth, to try to turn the public against Jesus. Ironically, to the fair-minded observer, the videos on the He Gets Us website seem especially eager to impress the woke crowd of which AOC is queen—so eager, in fact, that the website appears willing to jettison much genuine, orthodox Christianity in the process. If AOC truly represents the He Gets Us target audience, her negative response must have felt like a hard slap in the face.

Which, boys and girls, leads us to today’s lesson. Never try to suck up to unbelievers. The harder you work to impress them, the more they will scorn you, and if you deliberately attempt to make the Christian message palatable to the scorners you risk giving up what should be considered non-negotiable truth. When that happens, and you know it will, you only earn yourself the well-deserved censure of true, Bible-based Christians, leaving you without friends altogether.

It is worth remembering that attempts to explain the Christian faith to sceptics and scorners go all the way back to the New Testament. Paul, for instance, explained his (our) message to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers he encountered while passing through Athens. They wanted to know what he meant by “Jesus” and the “Resurrection,” and Paul was happy to explain it to them. You can read about it in Acts 17:22-34, but for the sake of time I’ll just summarise the themes he touched on:

1. That being Jewish and Christian he had in the Bible the full revelation of God, a privilege not afforded to any other people.

2. That the God who made the earth and everything in it is the God of the Bible, the God who sent His divine Son to be the Saviour of the World.

3. That God is the sovereign Lord of History, providentially guiding everything and everyone in the entire world for the purpose of creating the desire in people to seek Him.

4. That because God made man in His image, the male-female distinction is spiritual, physical and purposeful (baked in, you might say).

5. That the one God is eternally three Persons, i.e., that at the heart of existence dwells a perfect, loving community of divine Persons who will stop at nothing to raise human beings into their Forever Family.

6. That Christ is King over the earth, that He reigns now, and that the providential guidance spoken of in point 4 is directed by the Son of Man as he reigns from His heavenly throne.

7. That this same Christ will someday return to sit upon a throne and judge everyone who has ever lived, and that His judgement will be just and final.

8. Finally, through His Son Jesus, God has made a way to escape from judgement, a miracle the Bible calls “salvation.”

GIVE TODAY!

As I said above, this is my attempt to summarise the themes that are mentioned in Paul’s Mars Hill address. Each of these points is worthy of a lifetime of study, but what fascinates me today is how much each of these eight ideas is hated and rejected, not just by unbelievers like AOC, but by too many professed Christians. The confusing thing, however, is that the world’s hatred of God is often disguised as something else, usually some form of accusation that God hasn’t spoken clearly enough. So let me finish this blog with an attempt to show how the world, including many “Christians,” expresses its animosity toward God while, at the same time, trying to hide it. Remember, truth is what corresponds to reality, meaning, if people reject truth, they are rejecting the very world in which they live.

1. That God’s Word is our sole authority is the most hypocritically affirmed part of reality. “Of course, we believe the Bible,” many say, except the part about man’s depravity, sexual morality, the Lordship of Christ, and so on.

2. That God created the heavens and the earth is the most often rejected part of reality. Even to most modern Christians, the Bible’s affirmations of God’s immediate and direct creation are rejected in favour of some form of Big Bang evolution.

3. That God is Lord of History is the most neglected part of reality. Even our most “Christian” scholars spend their days explaining the flow of history, not in terms of God’s sovereignty, but in terms of weather patterns, trade routes and geo-politics.

4. That God made man in His image and for His purpose is the most defied part of reality. “I’ve Gotta Be Me” is the underlying theme of the LGBTQ+ agenda, and a surprising number of Churches have joined in the song.

5. That God is One and Three is the least appreciated part of reality. To me, one of the most shocking outcomes of the world’s response to the destruction of the World Trade Centre was the quickness with which prominent Christian leaders came forward to declare that Christians and Muslims worshipped the same God. Nothing could be further from the truth. A god who is explicitly not the Trinity is no more God than Baal or Zeus.

6. That Christ is King is the most hated part of reality. Oh, most Christians give lip service to the Biblical truth that Jesus is Lord, but how many of us, myself included, are prepared to obey our King, even when it will cost us everything?

7. That Christ is Judge is the most feared part of reality. How badly do we fear it? The coming judgement at the end of the world is likely the least talked about aspect of our faith. We talk about it least because we fear it most.

8. That God saves sinners is the most mystifying part of reality. Who really understands salvation? Can you, for instance, sketch out what the theologians call the ordo salutis, that is, the order in which certain things must take place for salvation to be effective, or biblical? In your opinion which comes first, faith? Or the New Birth? Can you defend your answer with Scripture? And how much does the individual contribute to his or her salvation? Sure, it’s all of grace, but shouldn’t the individual have to do something? See what I mean?

I began by talking about the widespread hatred expressed toward Christianity among unbelievers. Then I mentioned that too many “Christians” are right there, too, speaking contemptuously of the faith they profess. When you read in Acts 17:32-34 how Paul’s message was received you might be tempted to think his evangelistic effort foundered on too much truth!

But before leaping to the wrong conclusion, note that some were saved, and we can be assured their salvation was genuine, because it was not based upon a watered down approximation of the Faith. It seems to me that in the end Paul is a better role model for gospel preaching than the “He Gets Us” crowd, and it may also be true that before we do more outreach to the world, we need to shore up the faith foundations of those who already attend church, those who claim a faith they neither understand nor follow. Above all, refuse to join the hate for eight crowd. Ask God to birth in you a love for His truth.

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