Christians need to stop playing the self-flagellation game

I understand the frustration Gobry feels when the world stares at us in our pews and pulpits, rolls its eyes, and walks away. But the solution to this problem is not for Christians to pick up the whip and start taking out our frustrations on the backs of our brothers. We shouldn’t condemn our fellow Christians for being unloving and un-Christ-like when the real problem is that, as Jesus predicted, the world doesn’t love Christ and therefore doesn’t love his Christians.

We shouldn’t throw our clergy under the bus for insufficiently teaching their sheep, when the real problem is that they shepherded in an era where there were no cultural expectations or legal requirements pressuring the sheep to obey a command they didn’t particularly like obeying. We shouldn’t say, “We Christians only have ourselves to blame” as a ruse to flog the believers standing next to us that we’re convinced didn’t pull their weight in the battle. Doing so only convinces the leftists who invented the self-flagellation game that they have God’s approval to lash out at Christians who share Pope Francis’s beliefs on gay marriage but dare to articulate them without his trademark hippie doublespeak.

Rather, the solution to the problem of a culture that won’t heed the church’s words is simply to keep speaking them, trusting that the same Holy Spirit who created faith in the hearts of tax collectors, prostitutes, and Christ-hating-Pharisees will continue to do so today. God will always preserve the 7,000 who haven’t bowed to Baal. He will always restore life and salvation to those in cultures that have devoured themselves in sin.