Standing Firm for the Truth
Christians are called to do everything that we do, in love. And at the same time, we must stand firm for the truth. Christians have to live with the tension that can sometimes occur when—with God’s help—we strive to be completely loving and completely truthful. And trying to live both truthfully and lovingly will definitely create some tension along the way.
The Bible tells us that there are objective standards of right and wrong. Of course, we will not be perfect in our pursuit of right and wrong, ourselves, but we are called, as followers of Jesus to stand firm for what is right, nevertheless. It's okay for God's standards to be gently acknowledged, with humility, by imperfect people because it's God's standards that are being pointed to, not the people.
So, the existence of objective standards of right and wrong means that even if everyone else in the culture says, for example, that greed is good, we have to hold firm to the conviction that it’s not good.
If everyone else in the culture says, “A little bit of lying, once in a while is necessary. You have to do it to play the game.” We have to hold firm to the conviction that it’s not okay.
If everyone else in the culture says, “Hey, we’ve gotten much more progressive, it’s okay for kids in high school to be having sex as long as all the partners are consenting and as long as they take the proper precautions.” We have to hold firm to the conviction that it’s not okay.
If everyone else in the culture says, “Hey lighten up on this God stuff. You can’t make God a part of everything in your life, God is a personal and private matter, he can’t muscle his way into every part of life.” We have to hold firm to the conviction that God is God and, therefore, he does have a claim on every part of our lives.
We have to stand firm for the biblical conviction that truth exists and that there is such a thing as right and wrong. That won’t endear us to everyone (Jesus said we should expect that) but that’s part of what we’re called to do as we engage the culture.
Dan Marler
First Church of God
Oak Lawn, IL
www.VisitUsOnline.org
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