Opposition

You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

(1 Thessalonians 2:1–8, NRSV)

Christians don't have universal opposition in our country, but we do have opposition. Make no mistake about it. The opposition we have is far more subtle than it was in Paul's time. We have people that don't think much of us, or our gospel. There are some people – I mean you don't need but to turn a few pages in a newspaper or magazine or turn on the radio or television, or look on the computer for just a few minutes to notice the opposition, which is very real, but is very subtle. We have in our culture, as we all know, many people who really want to go a different direction than the church wants to go. We have people who wish to completely eradicate in the public square any reference to religion. We have the so-called "culture wars" in our society. We don't have many arrows, slingshots, guns and bombs going off at this time about these wars, but these wars are real. We have attempts to simply eradicate any reference to Christianity from public life. Certainly from our public educational system religion is expunged. Actually, religion isn't expunged; we have an alternate religion that is functioning many times.

We face this on an individual basis also. Some people just really think we're wrong. Some people don't think it's worth arguing. They treat us as if the things we hold dear are not that important - that religion was important at a previous time maybe, but we've outgrown that and don't need it any more. "It's too bad you're so caught up in that." If you talk to some college students they might say, "Good grief, I don't know anybody that goes to church on Sunday."

Now, what are some responses we can have to opposition, both corporately and individually? One response is we can give up. And many people do this. We may have had a stage in our own lives when we did this. By giving up there is no tension between us and some elements in our culture.

Another response is that we accommodate; we can change our views so that they form a thin veneer of religiosity over our lives, but essentially we've made an accommodation to those who utterly disagree with us. Yet another response to opposition is to see our Christianity as a purely inward matter. Religion is personal, we say, and it never should be talked about and we should just keep it to ourselves.

Another alternative that Paul rejects is the use of deceit or flattery. We can try to trick people into believing the gospel. Paul says that his intentions are pure, He says, in effect, "I'm not going to flatter you; I'm not going to say how great you are - trying to get an "in" with you so that you will agree with me." This is a form of manipulation. Paul says, in effect, "I'm not given the gospel in order to please mortals. I'm here to please God." One of the things that one can notice about Paul and about Jesus, and also Peter and some of the apostles, is that they really put it on the line. Paul goes into a town and he proclaims the gospel and when you read it, you say, "Paul, you're being so blunt; you're going to get run out of town." He doesn't shave it. Sure enough, Paul gets some opposition.

We need courage in the Christian faith, the courage which acknowledges differences, which is true to our beliefs, without being obnoxious. We simply live our lives sometimes knowing that there are people who don't agree with us, people who maybe don't even like us, partly because of what we profess. If we have a gospel that is continually being modified in order to make us acceptable to other people, or to make us fit in, that gospel isn't worth much.

In the face of opposition, we are not called to give up, or to accommodate, or to make purely personal our beliefs, or to manipulate. We are called to have the courage to stand for what we believe, to recognize and face differences between ourselves and others, and to seek to please, not others, but God.

The foregoing is from a sermon preached at the United Parish of Bowie on October 23, 2005, by the Pastor, Carl Bickel.

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