I write this not with an accusatory, pointed finger, but with a trepidatious and broken heart.
You see, it’s Holy Week and it’s raining where I am. Immediately, I am taken back to Easter Sunday in 2020, an Easter morning like no other. We go for a drive. The only music this morning is the rhythm of the windshield wipers moving back and forth, revealing a magnificently wrapped, rain-soaked purple cloth whipping in the wind, twisting and turning at the command of the gusts, around a wooden cross in front of a random church. The church is closed. The remembrance of Christ’s Resurrection will officially go unobserved.
This, after just coming from a nursing home where we shared Easter greetings with a relative through the drops of rain pouring down her outside window. Standing under umbrellas, we wipe the window constantly so we can see her face, her eyes. They too are wet, but with her tears.
It was raining then just as hard as it is today.
We participated in a Good Friday service, online, just two days before. I was filled with intense emotion, as I am every Good Friday. I wept. I wept because of the soul’s acknowledgement of the sacrifice of the life of Christ that was freely given to all mankind, and at the demonstrations representing that solemn day in history.
Clearly, I am speaking to people of faith, the church, and those who have been placed in positions of leadership within the church. Again, I speak with a fragmented heart, not an accusing one, and to implore you to take your position in a world that has grown increasingly dark and needs the light you are commissioned to shine. But you have failed. Your light has dimmed. You have betrayed your congregants and you have deserted your mission to light the way for those who do not yet know Christ.
Fear has obscured your light. Fear of death, fear of men, and a surrender to a culture that has bowed at the altar of moral relativism for decades have taken precedence over a life of obedience to Christ – no matter the cost.
You have removed yourself from being truly relevant to the culture by actively modeling a separation from politics to your congregants. You have kept silent – even refused to speak – about anything political, and that has been to the detriment of the very culture and people who are at the other end of your “life-saving” eternal mission. You should have been leading, but instead have been following, shamefully nipping at the heels of a society that is destroying itself from within.
Politics are not separate from life. You cannot separate yourself from politics no matter how hard you try or fool yourself into thinking you can. Politics are in your school boards, your local government, state government, federal government, sometimes your family, and even in you, the church – all dictating who is in charge and how people live their lives. Politics defined:
“The activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.”
For now, you have had the freedom to think that you can remain separate from politics, but the last two years have taught us many things, one being that that is no longer the case. America is in freefall. The time is here for most when the choice is either to continue to serve the culture, or serve God. It’s not about left vs. right, masked vs. non-masked, vaccinated vs. unvaccinated, Democrat vs. Republican, black vs. white, rich vs. poor, it’s about righteousness vs. unrighteousness, and what is true, honorable, and right (Philippians 4:8).
Years ago, we became good friends with a neighbor of ours. They were a sweet, older couple. Every chance he could, the husband would talk to us about Jesus. You couldn’t even mow the grass without getting into some sort of conversation about the Bible or church. But then COVID descended on all of us like a dark, menacing cloud. Little by little our sweet neighbors changed. They stopped talking to us. Doors would slam when the kids would play outside. Irrationality, fear, harsh words, and judgements regarding masks and vaccine data preceded an eventual cold, isolating silence. You could see them through their window from the street, that is, when they would open their blinds, watching CNN all day long, day after day. In recent weeks, he apologized, but things are not the same for them. You can see it. The worst part is that they seem so empty inside, like they have lost something and can’t find it. They won’t even talk about God anymore and have completely ceased attending their church. The light that was in his eyes is now gone. This story is one of millions.
Jesus said “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” Matthew 5:14
Your light is to be evident to a lost and dying world. But when you look and act just like everyone else, the light is not elevated and doesn’t shine. As the moon reflects the sun, so we reflect the source of our light – God our Father. The American church’s time to lead has come. “Loving our neighbor” doesn’t mean isolation, abandonment, and a forsaking of gathering together in exchange for the lie that technology alone will serve the needs of the body of Christ and our communities.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
CS Lewis wrote the following in 1948, and it is very applicable to today. In fact, you can even replace the words “atomic bomb” with “COVID,” or whatever else we may be dealing with as a nation and world as war, famine, and disease rage at a dizzying pace:
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
in other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
NIH Director Francis Collins, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Tim Keller, Ed Stetzer and any of the like will not save humanity. Only God can do that, and He is always leading. It’s up to us to follow.
Jesus said “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” Matthew 5:14
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7
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Holly Abernathy is a communications and creative arts professional. She works in a variety of media and lives in Nashville. For more information, visit www.6qCreative.com.