Chaplain Mike gets it right:___
Let me say it at the start: I don't give a rat's tail about the "Hobby Lobby" case that the Supreme Court decided the other day.
I don't buy the Chicken Little mania of the progressives who think the sky of freedom and protection for women is falling.
Nor do I buy the triumphalistic crowing of the conservatives who are hailing this as a monumental victory for religious liberty.
The culture wars exhaust me.
Both sides have bought into the "war" imagery and mentality. What matters is that we win and our "enemies" lose. What matters is that we gain power to implement what we think is right and that we strip our opponents of power so that they can't. How we get there, well, let's not talk about that. All’s fair . . .
But didn't the Apostle say, "Love . . . does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth"?
True enough, but it doesn't say that love gloats. Love doesn't rub the opponent's face in it. Love doesn't dance around singing “We Are the Champions” and waving banners. Love doesn't imitate the Roman triumph, a victory parade in which the vanquished were put on display, shackled and shamed, before the swaggering crowds.
But that's the natural result of making winning the goal and of thinking that you achieve that goal by triumphing over the opposition.
If Jesus taught us anything, it's that his followers win by losing.
By laying down our lives for our neighbors.
By loving our enemies, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, praying for our persecutors-- doing the counter-intuitive thing, the unnatural thing, the dying thing, the cross thing.
For the life of me, I've never been able to see how to be a soldier in the culture wars and do that.
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The entire post can be read here.
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