God help us, but we must say, “Yes!”

God help us, but we must say, “Yes!” October 4, 2015

stephenIf a gunman invades my workplace and asks the Christians to stand, then I hope I would stand. I am not so arrogant to know what I would do, but God helping me, I would have to stand. I don’t wish to die yet, but there are some things worse than death.

Better dead than betraying the High King of Heaven.

Students often do not understand why we cannot deny Christ. After all, we do not mean what we say to the mad dictator. If Caesar asks us to throw a pinch of incense into the fire and proclaim him god, then why not? He is not god, the officials know he is not god, and we can mock him in our hearts as we do the deed. Yet our fathers and mothers in the Faith did not say, “Caesar is Lord.” They died in the thousands to Roman vanity and later in the millions to atheist “rationalism.”

This is not because we have a death wish, but because some truths must always be told.

Christians debate whether we owe the truth to everyone. There is no Christian college ethics class since 1945 that has not debated whether Nazis were owed the truth when they asked about hidden Jewish people. Nazis did not deserve the truth, they were an illegitimate state and dehumanized brutes, and a falsehood was justified in that case.

Yet we can never lie about our personal faith in Christ.

The madman or the evil man with the gun does not deserve the Truth; our own souls deserve the Truth.

We cannot deny Christ, survive, and ever know if we were merely self-justifying cowards. Lie to a Nazi to save a life and the risk is on us and the life saved is another soul’s. Lie about our love for Jesus and we will never know if we are merely craven in the face of death. There are worse things than death for a Christian and one of those things is a life of secret shame.

Death is not the worst thing for a Christian. A life that continues based on cowardice in the face of the ultimate test would be worse. The early Church was not even sure such a sin could be forgiven, though thank God, merciful pastors prevailed and those who denied the faith to save their own wretched lives were allowed restoration. Yet how dreadful a reality for the person! Even if nobody else knew that at the moment of truth you denied Christ, you would know. Why did you do it? Justifications would multiply, but the heart would never know.

Far better to die than to tell that lie.

We are not sure if the shooter in Oregon was targeting Christians. Perhaps he was, perhaps he was simply asking mad questions (like finding a girl with glasses to target), but this I know: any Christian who told the truth and died for it is a hero and a martyr. We should honor them and strive to be like them. Whatever happened in Oregon, brothers and sisters all over the world are claiming the faith and being killed for that bravery. Their blood is the blood of Christ in them, the life of the living Church.

To live is Christ, but to die is gain.

 


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