As per usual, after an election and an inauguration take place, one side of the political aisle is rapturous and the other side is licking its wounds in the corner. Right now, we are hearing all the talk about how Biden is going to unite us, and right wrongs, and blah, blah, blah. Four years ago, we were hearing how Trump was going to make us great again, and right wrongs, and blah, blah, blah.
I am not and will never be convinced that one person can fix a country. It’s pretty easy to destroy one, but totally healing it and fixing it is another story. Unless we are talking about Jesus, and neither Biden nor Trump is He, obviously.
But, long before Biden and long before Trump, our country has been morally sick and it’s nobody’s fault but our own, my fellow Christians. Why us? Well, for one reason–we always give up the moral high ground in the name of niceness. We don’t want to be called big-meaner names and we don’t want to be rejected by people. What this has led to is morally bankrupt people coming up to Christians and saying, “Look, all we want is this teensy little thing and once you give us that, we’ll walk away and leave you alone.”
Christians have caved every time. And every time, we find that the morally compromised want more, and more, and more until they have sunk the soul of our country into decay.
Then we whine and bemoan all the corruption, lies, murder, violence, sexual impurities, etc. It happened on our watch, though. We were too concerned with playing nice and not getting labeled a ______ist or a ____________phobe. (You fill in the blank.)
And I’ll tell you, it is going to be a hard-fought battle to win the culture for Christ. There are some that are put on this earth to be our gentle souls. And then there are some that are meant to go into the fray and be a wall that blocks evil. We need both.
So, last week, I was scrolling through social media and a friend had posted a meme that said, “The Bible–The Original Bulls$*t.” Can you imagine for one second anybody posting anything like this about another religious book? No. No, you can’t because you would be attacked viciously by people telling you that you are the world’s worst. Facebook would probably take it down. But, Christianity’s book? Feel free to offend away.
This meme, of course, was posted by a person who continually claims to be tolerant and open-minded and yada, yada, yada.
I’ve learned to just glaze my eyes over when I see Christian-bashing, but this one caused something in me to snap. I felt righteous anger. Insult me all you want, but the Bible is the Word of God and putting it on the level of bowel movements was more than I could stand.
However, I wasn’t rude, spiteful, or ugly when I responded to it, but respond I did. And…to my surprise that person removed it. I couldn’t believe it. But, I was thankful that I spoke up so that it wasn’t out there on Facebook anymore…at least coming from her.
That got me thinking about the tactics that the non-believing/leftist crowd uses when trying to shut down Christians. I have a lot of experience with this now having been a blogger and a social media presence for eight years. So, I talked with my husband about it and I asked him how do we as Catholics combat the tidal wave of the non-believing/leftist crowd?
So, we brainstormed. We talked over all that I’ve experienced and we discovered that there are four definite tactics used to put Christians in their place.
- Show Christianity to be stupid.
- Show it to be evil.
- Show it to be outdated and not progressive.
- Attack and play any victim card you can.
Now, the strategy is to diminish Christ’s authority and put doubt into people’s minds thereby getting people to drop Christianity. Usually, but not always, they will not attack specific points of argument. The goal is to be the loudest voice, the most humorous (read snarky), and to appeal to some other authority, like science in an effort to appear super intelligent. They accomplish this strategy by using the above mentioned tactics.
Now, I’m not writing this because I want us, as Catholics, to play the victim. Nope, I am not about that. It is our duty as confirmed Catholics to fight these spiritual battles–we know this is part of the calling of a Christian. I’m writing this for the purposes of educating and showing how to counter these tactics in order to start being that wall I mentioned earlier. This is going to be a series of blogs and I will take each one of these tactics in its own separate blog and show how to respond to them whether in-person or online.
But, before I end this blog post there are three things I want to say:
- Don’t waste too much of your time on social media trying to win back the culture. It can be a fruitless wasteland which I’ll touch on in my upcoming blogs.
- Above all, if you do engage, remain charitable. That does not necessarily mean you need to be Mr./Mrs. Nicey-Nice Magee. There is a way to stand up to evil in a charitable way without being a limp noodle. But, more on that later.
- This is not about scoring points. This is not about one-uping people. Our responses must be coupled with prayer. If you ever feel you’re going to answer in the same vein as they would, walk away until you can compose yourself.
All I’ve done in this post is laid out my case, but I needed to air out my thoughts and the context behind them before diving in to the meat of what want to say. We all want to know what we can do to change things and I’ve got a lot of thoughts, but we will have to be equipped, prepared, and willing to commit to long-term efforts. I hope we have that kind of stamina, Catholic Pilgrims.
Stay tuned.
