It is amazing what comes into my mind during Bible study. This week it was a quote from Jonah Goldberg, one of my favorite writers, “Bears want to eat your face.” The quote was from a column he wrote about our culture’s tendency to think wild animals are cute and cuddly, even though when given the opportunity most would eat us.
The verse that triggered this mental wandering was Matthew 10:16 “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”
Jesus was talking to the 12 apostles as they were preparing to go out into Israel proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of heaven. He taught them that while the news was good, the response of the Jews might be hostile. They would be like sheep, the world would be like wolves.
Sheep were to be wise, careful and shrewd. They were to be as nice and as polite as possible to wolves, do everything they could to appease them. Regardless of their efforts, when all was said and done, the wolves would still want to eat their faces.
So it is with Christians in the midst of a hostile world. We can be kind, humble, gentle and nice, as accommodating as possible, and people will still hate us.
Jesus told his disciples that in spite of their shrewdness and innocence they would still be charged with crimes, publicly flogged, and called to give account before governors and kings. Families would turn against one another, and they would be widely hated by others. All of this for “his name’s sake.”
This called to mind the recent story of Peter Vlaming, a Christian school teacher in Virginia. A girl student in one of his 2017 classes returned in 2018 claiming to be a boy. Peter wanted to be respectful but did not want to support or encourage something he thought was wrong. His solution was to address the student by her new chosen name but to not use male pronouns. He thought it was a reasonable compromise. As shrewd and as innocent as he was trying to be, it was not good enough. The wolves ate his face.
The student was participating in a class room exercise in which she wore virtual reality goggles, and therefore could not see where she was going. Seeing her about to walk into a wall, the teacher called out to warn the newly “male” student saying, “Stop her before she walks into the wall!” In his haste and concern he moenmtarily forgot to use the patients name and instead used the pronoun that the student had rejected.
All hell broke loose.
The student and her parents were incensed and complained to the school board. The school board voted to fire Peter, rejecting his offer to use the student’s name in place of the a pronoun. Just weeks before Christmas, the father of four was out of a job.
It would be easy for him to wonder what was happening, or where God was. Easy if he had not read Matthew 10. If he had, he would remember that Jesus had told his disciples that things like this would happen. He would see that he had been a lamb amidst wolves, and that he had been called before a court, for his name’s sake. When his story went national, millions of people learned that about a man whose faith in Christ was more important than his job. A man whose faith was real to him.
His story is sobering reality for all who bear the name of Christ. The world does not share our values. Standing up for what we believe may come at great cost. Our faces may get eaten. We will suffer, but we cannot say we haven’t been warned!
Bart
This is my midweek Bible post, shared a little late this week as I was out of town. For those not interested in religious posts, I post on other topics every weekend. If anyone wants to receive my posts in their email, just click the subscribe link on the page