WHY I AM GRATEFUL FOR MEDIUM
Recently, I have been reminded of the story of the cow, the pig and the chicken. The story has been recounted elsewhere but the summary is that a rabbit finds a rabbit trap in the farm, goes to warn the chicken, the pig and the cow who could not give less of a crap about a rabbit trap but subsequently that same rabbit trap leads to a sequence of events that end up with the cow, the pig and the chicken all getting killed.
The moral of the story is that perhaps we Christians, particularly those in the west, far from all the persecution and suffering of our brothers in other regions, should give more of a crap about things.
We have this philosophy of “live and let live”, “each to their own”, which is all well and good but what we fail to sometimes recognise is that there are some people out there in the world with very terrible ideas that do need to be confronted and challenged. Did the apostle Paul not write,
“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God…”
(2 Corinthians 10:4–5)
The entirety of scripture is a challenge to the thought patterns and ideas of the world on various topics. First on ideas about God, then on righteousness, on morality, on sexuality to mention a few. Jesus did instruct His followers to preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15) and make disciples of all nations and teach them what He taught us (Matthew 28:19). All of this is a challenge to the world’s ideas and standards. The book of Acts and the gospels are replete with Jesus and the apostles challenging the ideas of their audiences, see for instance Acts 17 with Paul on Mars Hill and Jesus against the Pharisees in Matthew 23.
Christians are charged with disseminating God’s ideas. This is a mission of critical importance.
For example, the recent stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari and the countless senseless terrorist activities we see each day are borne out of an idea. To be more specific, the idea that there is a god somewhere who will lavish you with virgins for blowing up your fellow man. Ideas have real world consequences and just like the cow, the pig and the chicken, some of these consequences might be fatal to us as well.
“I respect every belief” has to be the stupidest statement of all time for this reason, “What if my belief is that I am allowed to murder you and your family in cold blood because you do not share my belief?” Would you respect such a belief? And this, by the way, is a real life belief of an ideology or why else would its holy book command that those who do not share its belief be fought?
Even so, the reticence and reluctance of Christians to “stir the pot” by refuting ideas inconsistent with the gospel, far from being a recipe for “peaceable living” is a catalyst for potential disaster. Jesus said to Paul in Corinth,
“Now the Lord spoke to Paul in the night by a vision, “Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not keep silent; for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you; for I have many people in this city.”
(Acts 18:9–10)
Paul’s freedom from hurt was guaranteed because Jesus had MANY people in the city. Why did Jesus have many people there? Because His ideas had been established there, likely by Paul himself. So Paul was literally saving his own skin by his missionary work in Corinth.
And this is why I appreciate Medium as a platform. I still think it has a long way to go, its hypersensitivity to any content against the idea of LGBTQ is still a massive shortcoming, but this aside, the fact it allows you to share and fight ideas freely is worthy of commendation.
In conclusion, please Christians, as much as lies within you, and with every ounce of God given wisdom you can muster, do not shy away from sharing the gospel and refuting ideas of other worldviews (particularly Islam which Sam Harris has, in my view very correctly, called “the motherload of bad ideas”) if you have the capacity to. You have no idea whose children you might be saving in the process.
