Daily Verse | 1 Kings 18:21
“How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”

Monday’s Reading: 1 Kings 20-22

Monday and the start of a new week. But, it’s not just any week—it’s Holy Week. Yesterday was Palm Sunday, the start of Jesus’ final week as his meeting with the cross narrowed from three years to seven days. It was out of obedience to his Father’s will that he moved inexorably toward his death.

“I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.”

John 14:30-31

I was inspired by something my pastor said yesterday prior to the message. Without getting detailed at all, he simply drew attention to the world in which our children are growing up, and said something along the lines of, “Our children are under attack. It is evil, and it is exactly what the enemy would do.”

What he was likely referring to is what I wrote about here last week. The gatekeepers at our public schools have allowed an infestation of disturbed, biologically-confused men and women to influence our children at the very youngest and innocent of ages right through college. Our children are facing an onslaught of intentional corruption that they cannot protect themselves from.

It is, in a word, indoctrination.

It is, in another word, evil.

That word, “evil,” was what caught my attention when my pastor said it. I read a lot of news, blogs and other types of reporting. I can say, without exaggeration, that in my reading about the educational and entertainment institutions that groom children towards sexual confusion, only one of them has included the word “evil.”

I’m not saying that no one else has used it but, in my reading, I’ve only come across it once. And that particular source isn’t primarily religious but does respect the Christian faith.

We don’t use or see the word “evil” in news, blogs or in-depth reports. Nor do you hear it in everyday conversation unless you’re among like-minded people or in a church, like I was yesterday. And even there it can sometimes feel extreme.

The reason, at least from my perspective, is because our culture is no longer “Christian” in nature, but secular. The trappings of our Christian heritage still linger—for instance, you can find a bas relief portrait of Moses above the door directly opposite the speaker’s rostrum in the House Chamber—but they only function as artifacts emptied of their meaning, curious historical tokens rather than the sober reminders of a greater Law and Lawgiver that transcend the humanistic drivel that passes for law today.

We also live in a time when calling something “evil” is to make a moral judgment, and that is the one thing that you cannot do in a secular society—especially when that society is based on individual truth and the virtue of tolerance is paramount, as long as you tolerate the right things.

It is here that the Church must object. Because the church is not a building but people, it is individual believers who must object. Not only must they object to the lie that truth is relative, but they must call evil what it is when they see it.

Woe to those who call evil good
    and good evil,
who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
    and sweet for bitter.

—Isaiah 5:20

And where is the Church in all this? The Church, I’m afraid, is timid. It is afraid to call this monstrosity what it is: vile, heinous, wicked, foul, cruel and yes, evil. The Church needs to reclaim its prophetic voice that proclaims, “This is what the Lord says.”

“Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade him from his ways, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself.”

—Ezekiel 33:7-9

Unfortunately, the Church as a whole, with notable exceptions, is failing in its mission to call people to repentance here in the United States. We stand on the wall, similar to Ezekiel, watching the wicked, but not warning them that they will die for their sin because we are afraid: afraid of being different, afraid of being ridiculed, afraid of being rejected, afraid of being hated.

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own.” (Jesus, quoted in John 15:18-19)

I also think the Church has absorbed a lot more of the secular culture than the other way around.

I don’t often connect the Daily Verse at the top of the Broadside to what I write about each day, although there have been some opportunities that I’ve let go by. Today is different. The prophet Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (a mountain I’ve stood on) and says to the people of Israel, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”

Elijah then proves that the Lord is God in a contest with the prophets of Baal (see 1 Kings 18:16-40).

I think something similar has to be said to the Church. If the Lord is God, follow him; but if the secular culture is God, follow it. Otherwise, God will expel you from himself like he threatened to do with the church in Laodicea:

“Because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:16)

This is not a dainty little spritz into the sink. The word translated “spit” means “to vomit forth.” It’s a forceful ejection. In the biblical context, it figuratively means to reject with extreme disgust.

Be one or the other. If the Lord is God, follow him—and that means to be unafraid of standing for the truth, even when it means calling evil something that is evil.