Release the Doves of War

It could be that I’m still stoked from the sermon I heard two weeks ago.

It was a solid message with dynamic delivery. You know what I mean. Like the moment the pastor opens his mouth, you know you won’t be working on your weekly to-do list until after church.

He preached on Jesus cleansing the temple. At one point, I could hear the merchants yelling, lambs bleating, disciples gasping. I could smell the dung and the sweat. I could feel the panic as doves flew, livestock scattered, and moneychangers dove for their coin.

And I could imagine myself paying rapt attention to the whip-wielding rabbi authoring the uproar.

Then, this past week, another pastor friend posted a meme on Facebook that said, “If someone asks, ‘What would Jesus do?’ remind them that turning over tables and breaking out whips is a possibility.”

Made me laugh aloud.

This is all to explain why I may have been more easily tempted to anger while I was binge-watching shows I’ve heard others rave about while recovering from this flu.

I’m not normally your table-overturning kind of gal. I like a good sit-down-sermon-on-the-mount-cared-for-sparrows-and-turned-cheeks kind of approach to conflict. Half of my weight problem is that I eat in the face of discomfort – mine, yours, theirs. I’m an equal opportunity stress-eater.

But after what I’ve been witnessing, I’m ready to flip some sideboards.

From network television to cable to feature film, I witnessed a frontal assault on God’s Word. Like, talented, creative, top-shelf Hollywood writers quoting and misquoting God’s Word for the purpose of discrediting those of us who try to live by it.

The enemy means business.

These shows are garnering awards, advertising dollars, and loyal followings.

I’ve honestly been weaving a mental whip. Not for the people behind these shows, but for us, the church.

We’re the ones awake to the truth. We’re the ones He’s trusted with salvation. We’re the ones who know we’re in a war for souls.

But, we’re investing more energy in playing hall monitor for creative Christians making sure they don’t use bad words or hint that married people might enjoy sex, than we are at making sure the truth of God’s Word is proclaimed through every medium available to humankind with excellence, integrity, and inventiveness. (I believe we can do both, if we must.)

To me, it makes no sense to boycott these shows, write letters to the producers, or express outrage on social media. That’s lame. We have better weapons, I mean, tools.

We have access to the very Words of the Living God. I would suggest we fight fire with fire but once God’s Word is ignited, nothing else can be called fire in comparison.

Christians living in countries with freedom of worship, easy access to Bibles, relative prosperity, and widespread literacy have no excuse. We’re indulgent, lazy, myopic goldbricking believers if we don’t expend energy to communicate God’s Word to the world of people being fed these slick lies.

We should be consuming God’s Word, ingesting the truth, employing biblical principals on every level of our lives, and investing serious energy in incorporating it in stories, movies, art, music, theater, poetry, handcrafts, woodcrafts, and everyday life so that every soul on the planet has opportunity to encounter its power and brilliance.

To arms, loved ones. To arms. Not to attack those attacking, but to defend those in their path. Give them, at least, a fighting chance, these media-consuming fools of this generation whose only exposure to God’s Word will be these lies.

Your living room is a front-line. Your cell-phone capable of guerrilla warfare. Your local movie theater a gas chamber for unwitting souls too easily convinced that God’s Word is meaningless, archaic, contradictory, inhibiting, and irrelevant.

And we are the soldiers on duty in this hour.

I challenge us all. Christians before us erected cathedrals, crossed dangerous mountains and seas, preserved manuscripts at the cost of their lives, copied scripture word for word, painted chapel ceilings, composed requiems and arias, and wrote sermons that sparked revivals.

Christians in persecuted nations work labor camps, smuggle scraps of portions of verses, go without food or freedom to deliver the Word of God to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

What will this generation of believers do to use every avenue available to us to expose the world to the truth?

Live. Speak. Write. Paint. Give. Sing. Compose. Preach. Act. Tweet. Blog. Film. Stand-up. Weave scripture into cloth. Carve it into wood. Hire a skywriter. Send a letter to a friend. Give a card to a coworker. Wear a sandwich. Let loose some doves.

God’s Word is truth. Satan is renting billboards and writing mini-series to tempt everyone with the question, “Did God really say . . . .?”

We’re the ones who know the truth. How effective is it collecting dust on our shelves?

Release the Doves of War https://t.co/xN7IAIW2Zd what is our role in a world attacking the truth of God’s Word? #BibleStudy #Jesus #amwriting

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) February 7, 2018