Tales of the Talking Tiger

If I dishonoured or spoke poorly about someone you loved, you wouldn’t stand for it.

Depending on the particular comment and your personality you might respond with “take that back now”, or “how dare you speak about him/her in that way”, or perhaps you would just punch me in the face. I wouldn’t blame you.

We love to talk about being tolerant of the opinions of others. We espouse the importance of relative truth (”what’s true for you is nice, but isn’t necessarily true for me”). But if I told you that your mum is a joke, or that your wife is lazy and useless, all concepts of tolerance and relativity would get thrown out the window. You would rightly stand up to defend your mother or wife against what you know, from your personal experience, to be untrue.

So Christian brothers and sisters, why isn’t this also our reaction when people speak falsely of our God, slandering and dishonouring his name?

Why are we happy to sit back and say nothing when people accuse our God of being evil, or being impotent, or being uncaring, or even not existing? We know that our God exists, is good, powerful and all loving – so why do we so often lack the desire or courage to defend our God from these attacks?

I have had this discussion several times this week with people from Church by the Bridge who have been challenged on this topic. This was prompted by a great sermon by Paul last Sunday on 2 Samuel 1 – I recommend you have a listen.

This post is tagged missional living