Moment of truth: Why Christians must stand now

Moment of truth: Why Christians must stand now

This week, our hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, will decide on a transgender bathroom bill once again. It was defeated in 2015, yet it’s back – and, according to many council members, it’s here to stay.

The bill effectively opens women’s bathrooms and locker rooms to males who self-identify as females. (Ouch.) In addition, the ordinance, if passed, threatens the religious liberties of people of faith in the marketplace by forcing them to endorse and/or promote events and messages (not individuals) that are against their deeply held beliefs.

Should we sit quietly on the sidelines, safely huddled in our church buildings – or should we stand for what is right?Needless to say, we’re against it. But what are we as Christians supposed to do? What is the proper response when something like this lands in our own backyard?

There comes a time in everyone’s life when you have to take a stand – when you’re called to lay down your reputation, risk it all and stand up for truth. Because truth is the only thing that sets people free. Changing bathroom signs and baking wedding cakes doesn’t bring the healing and help that this world needs.

Now is the time to stand.

Thank God for those that have gone before us, who showed us that standing for truth is worth the cost.

Check out this powerful excerpt from one of Dr. Martin Luther King’s sermons at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Nov. 5, 1967 – just five months before he was assassinated:

“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you’re afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.

“Well you may go on and live until you are 90, but you are just at dead at 38 as you would be at 90.

“And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right. You died when you refused to stand up for truth. You refused to stand up for justice.”

Dr. King’s words are as relevant today as they were in his day. Life, marriage and religious liberty are great “principles, issues, and causes” worth standing up for. If we refuse, we’re just dead men walking.

Thankfully for us, our dad modeled how to stand strong when we were kids. In 1994, he and dozens of pro-life Christians spent time in the same Birmingham Jail as Dr. King. There were so many arrests that they placed everyone outside the jail in the courtyard.

In the back of the courtyard, behind a fence, was a large white, weathered sign on which was written with large black letters: BULL CONNER SHERIFF – the very man who arrested Dr. King in April 1963. It brought tears to his eyes when he saw it.

That year, he had given a copy of Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to the pro-life community in Alabama; and on this day, while staring at Bull Conner’s name, he was inspired to follow even harder after Christ by standing for the unborn.

There were seven abortion mills in Birmingham in 1994. Today, there remains only one.

When you stand up for what’s right in God’s eyes, it’s only a matter of time before good prevails over evil. It may not come today, just as MLK never saw the full victory of his witness as we know it today, but victory will come in time. Just stand!

We’re living in a moment of history that is exclusive to us – let’s not waste it by refusing to stand up for what’s right. Although it’s never totally safe to stand, it is right.

In the words of Dr. King:

“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?
Expediency asks the question, is it politic?
Vanity asks the question, is it popular?
But conscience asks the question, is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”