Where is Courage?

Where is courage?

Who have we become? Once called to be “salt” and “light”, we have lost our saltiness and our capacity to shine bright. We have become the very thing Jesus warned us about. We are tasteless. Lukewarm and without flavor, worthy of being spit out.
Where is courage?

We have traded moral influence and a trusted voice at the table for power-at-all-costs, and in doing so, our witness and gospel of life, grace and forgiveness has been masked by a terrible kind of hypocrisy that oozes from the pores of our speech and actions. We are the Emperor without clothes.

Where is courage?

Once proud of our legacy of faith that stood up to dictators, autocrats and other terrible people who refused to recognize the God-given value of our brothers and sisters in Christ, we have now chosen to marry our faith to a man and a political movement who have built their base on mistrust of “the other” and a clear lack of regard for choosing right over wrong.

Where is courage?

We have become unrecognizable from the man in the gospels whose grace, mercy and kindness softened each of our hearts and called us to follow Him at one point in our lives. We follow leaders whose primary character traits are boldness and brashness while claiming to follow our Lord who was known for his gentleness and meekness.

Where is courage?

What will we say to the next generation of Christians who ask us to share our role in the rise of Trumpism in the 2010s? Is it too late to turn back?

Where is courage?

We are at risk of losing in a moment what took a lifetime to build. Whereas our parents and grandparents appear content to trade long-term evangelical witness for short-term political influence, we, the younger, still have a chance to write history by choosing what we will stand for. To not “let anyone look down on us because we are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity”.

And we long to welcome our brothers and sisters of faith back home as they choose to stand for what is right. We long to do so like Lincoln said years ago, “with malice toward none and charity for all.”

Where is courage? Can anyone find it today?

We claim that Jesus is on our side, but do we really believe that? If Jesus were to walk this earth once more, what would he say to us at this moment in time?

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled”

Is there hope that our faith, once known for its unwavering courage in the face of the threat of The Empire, can once again be known as a faith that speaks truth to Power?

Or will we become like those who are left stumbling as they seek to justify their actions without any moral ground to stand on?

Like a homeowner desperately patching cracks in the foundation of her house built on sand.

Where is courage?

Where, O Lord?