By Ife J. Ibitayo
Even when my parents were struggling to make ends meet, my mother still insisted on sending me to a Christian private school. She hoped to instill in me a love for Christ through consistent messaging at home, at church, and at school. Now my faith is deeply personal, and those early, formative years planted the seeds for it.
However, I didn’t embrace my faith as my own until middle school. When I was transplanted from a private school to a charter school, my new classmates challenged my faith. They forced me to do some serious introspection and answer, “What is the foundation of my faith?” Without that jolt, I’m not certain when, even up till now, I would have answered that question.
A similar shift is occurring throughout the United States. For centuries, the USA was known as a Christian nation. We used to be “one nation under God.” Now we’re many nations under many gods all sharing the same flag. Numerous Christian values that formed the atmosphere we breathed have been uprooted, and we suddenly find ourselves surrounded by strangers.
It’s a bit like senior year of high school. We were on top of the world, but now we’ve “graduated” and find ourselves at the bottom again. The many bastions of society that we took for granted in earlier years have been overturned. Mothers’ right to choose has silenced unborn babies’ right to live. Fluid gender identity has transplanted fixed biology. And many Christians are furious. In rage, they’ve leapt onto their social media accounts and stormed the ballot boxes to reinstate the sacred principles they believe form the bedrock of Christianity.
Our Cornerstone
But that was not the focus of Christ, our true cornerstone. At the start of His ministry, Jesus described His purpose here on earth as “preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom to captives and sight to the blind, setting free the bound, and declaring the favorable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19). To put it another way, Jesus’ mission was not to transform the government but to transform the governed. He was focused not on policy change but heart change. He spent far less time with the governmental and religious elite of His day and far more time with the destitute and downtrodden.
Now Jesus was angry too. But He directed His anger at the conmen who’d taken up shop inside His holy temple (Matthew 21:12-13). He had no patience for those who saw the gospel as a means of gain rather than great treasure in and of itself (1 Timothy 6:5-6). But toward the lost—the prostitutes, the tax collectors, and foreigners, Christ’s primary response was compassion (Matthew 21:14) and friendship (Matthew 11:19).
Conclusion
Anger is justified. There is quite a bit to be angry about from this past year: the lives this virus has cut off, the dreams this pandemic has shut down, and much more. America is changing significantly in many uncomfortable and frustrating ways. But we should let that anger drive us to love others more, not less. We should use our hands to vote, but then we should use our fingers to help.
1 John 4:18 says, “perfect love drives out fear.” It has the power to drive fear out of the hearts of immigrants who’ve moved into our neighborhoods and just maybe out of our own as well.
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
(James 1:27)