Mammon, Barabbas, Christ, and Pride

1,987 years ago or so, the world put God on trial. When offered a choice, the world surrendered up God to be tortured, crucified, and killed and asked that Pontius Pilate to free the criminal Barabbas instead. Ironically, we can surmise based on the population of Jerusalem at the time that many of the same people who were laying palm branches before Christ on Palm Sunday were there on Friday morning yelling “crucify, crucify him!”

There is no compromise between Christ and the world. Evangelicals, complacent in the United States and un-harassed, would be wise to remember this.

As Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City noted, young evangelicals are trying to rationalize their way around the world with ideas like “you can believe homosexuality is a sin and still believe that same-sex marriage should be legal.”

Keller disagrees with the sentiment, but he and other evangelical leaders have noticed this trend among young evangelicals trying to find some middle ground with the world.

Christians in America have gotten soft. We’ve turned the nation into an idol to be worshiped. We’ve become so convinced by the “shining city on a hill” rhetoric we think “it can’t happen here,” regarding the persecution of Christians. We’ve turned the American ideal of liberty into an idol we worship. The religious liberty in the first amendment is meant to protect the religious as they seek to draw people to them. But the world demands instead that the first amendment be used to draw the religious to the world and silence those who refuse to go along for the ride.

Today through Sunday, a whole lot of American Christians will bristle that they cannot go into their church buildings. Some will make a show of defying local governments. They’ve turned their churches into idols. They think they cannot connect with God or with each other without that building. Meanwhile, globally, most Christians will be meeting in the shadows to avoid being hunted and killed. The Chinese will throw more Christians in jail merely for believing in God while some American Christians will hope to get thrown in jail for spectacle.

After Constantine marched into Rome and Christians stopped fearing persecution, those who wanted to prove how strong their faith was would go into the desert and live a solitary lifestyle, called monos for one. We call them monks today. In the United States, Christians could become missionaries and work to spread the gospel in dangerous areas of the world. But some will instead choose to encounter no danger, just TV cameras and cops, to prove their faith by going to church during a global pandemic when they could live-stream.

What Christians in the United States of America, who’ve had it pretty easy for a long time in the USA, have forgotten or never learned is that the world is deeply hostile to the things, and people, of God. Remember, one thousand nine hundred eighty seven years ago, the world chose to spare a criminal and crucify God himself.

Many young evangelicals who are making the decision that gay marriage conflicts with their personal beliefs, but it’ll be okay under the law, are making a compromise to avoid conflict and be liked by the world. “I’m not one of those Christians,” they think and often say. Many others are setting bad examples by showing off and defying the common good of their communities convinced they cannot worship without being in a building. They think, “Those Christians are not like me.”

The one wants to be liked. They want the world to like them and to think them a part of the world. They view Christians who are seen as too hostile to others as inferior in spreading the Gospel or too judgmental. They fall victim to the sin of pride that their gospel is greater.

The other wants attention. They know the world will never like them, but they don’t much love their neighbors either. They view Christians who comply with the law and stay away on Easter as timid or cowardly. They fall victim to the sin of pride that their show of faith makes them greater.

The world is not on its way to Christ. The world hates Christ. The world will not allow a compromise between Christians and the world.

Christians are called to love their neighbors. Loving their neighbors does not mean turning a blind eye to their sin or giving tacit approval to sin or behaving like braying jackasses who go into a church, lift their heads to heaven, and boast about how they bothered to show up on Sunday unlike those other Christians.

We must live our lives with love toward everyone and be friends to all who are open to being friends. But we should not delude ourselves. At some point the world will make us choose. If we choose Christ the world will accuse us of hating, condemning, and judging. The world is deeply hostile to the Christian idea of loving the sinner, but not the sin. The world believes we cannot love the sinner if we do not fully affirm them, which means loving, or at least tolerating or accepting, their sin.

Concurrently, the Christian who lacks humility is a Christian who will turn even more off to the faith. We must love sinners, hate sin, but never think ourselves better than others. God will no more save us if we jump off a building than he will save the unbeliever who does the same.

There is no accommodation on the issues of morality with the world. There will be no compromise with the world.  Those who seek such compromise will be made to care. But Christians need not go to war with the world either. We can stand firm in the faith and let the Holy Spirit work without our sinful pride getting in the way. He can live our faith with humility.

Mammon chose Barabbas and too many evangelicals are choosing Mammon, some without even realizing it.