When I went to college at a small Christian school, there were people who routinely left their car doors unlocked. Their justification for doing so was to ask if locking the door would really keep out a potential burglar who really wanted the car, and then follow up by asking if the door being unlocked would keep God from protecting it, turning their indiscretion into an act of faith.
Which never really followed, at least not to me. If someone doesn't steal your car on a given night, it doesn't really prove that God was protecting it, rather than it proves that whoever would have potentially stolen your car either found one before yours or didn't like yours enough to want to steal it. On the other hand, if said car WAS stolen, it does kind of definitively prove that God wasn't protecting your car that night (I don't know, maybe He was on the toilet?).
And my college was in an area where there was a REALLY high per-capita population of former sex-criminals (rape, child molestation, etc.), which really is similar to forms of theft, when you think about it. These were people who were used to, in a sense, taking things that didn't belong to them for their own benefit. So leaving one's car unlocked in such a place was almost like asking to have your car stolen. Naturally the question that follows is, Why?
And their answer, with arms flung wide for bravado and emphasis (sound and fury), was usually, "Well, if some criminal really wants the car so badly that they'd have to steal it, they obviously need it more than I do, so they can have it."
Which is really nice and faux-generous and anti-materialist and whatever, but it always struck me as being similar to saying, "Well, I'll just take these smoke detectors out of my house, because if God's plan is to kill me in a house fire while I'm sleeping, I wouldn't want to spit in His face by trying to survive."
Which isn't generous, it's fatalist. And it's a horrible way to paint a Christian.
Though it shouldn't surprise me. It's asking for martyrdom, which has been a Christian convention for about, oh, 2000 years now. But seeking out martyrdom is not something that we should strive for, and certainly not something that the God of the Bible wants for our lives.
Yes, martyrdom is very noble. And the reason for that is martyrdom is dying for a belief which cannot be proven, a willingness to stand up in the face of oppression and of uncertainty and say, this is something that I attest to, this is who I am, and I am willing to die to keep it that way.
Which is not what the other things are like. It's thinking you're able to call yourself a martyr by baiting people into wronging you in some way, and then saying that God's with you against the world when the world takes your bait. That's not martyrdom, that's teasing.
And it's a wrong way of thinking. As I've stated before, we all admire martyrs because of the nobility of their death. But the wrong way of thinking is when that admiration translates into thinking that Christianity is something to die for, rather than something to LIVE for.
Jesus did not give his followers the gift of death. He gave them a better way to LIVE LIFE, the life that we've been given quite undeservedly. And rather than living that life in a selfish fashion, watching one's own back and strictly being concerned with one's own physical and spiritual needs, Jesus of Nazareth came to earth and showed the unholy to the holy, showed the lost to the found, showed the hungry to the well-fed, showed the have-nots to the haves. And the life he lived echoes the life that WE should live, one outlined well before Jesus' birth in the words of the prophet Micah:
What does the LORD require of you?:
-Do Justly
-Love Mercy
-Walk Humbly with Thy God
And that's it. Rather than abandon one's car to being stolen by someone who doesn't have, Do Justly by paying attention to their needs and Love Mercy by trying to understand what has put them in such need in the first place. Rather than giving into one's pride and announcing with arrogant certitude that God will protect your car, Walk Humbly with Thy God by thanking Him that He's given you an alarm and locks on your door by using them.
Perhaps someday you will be in an oppressive situation, where someone is ACTUALLY disparaging you and your faith and ACTUALLY has the power to kill you for what you believe. And in THAT day, you can take your stand, your last genuine act of faith, and say to these people that, no, you don't have proof, you don't have a guarantee, but what you're doing is choosing to place yourself over that fence, to cast your lot with Christ rather than with an oppressive world out to destroy what you have hope in. And perhaps in that day, yes, you will be martyred.
But until that unlikely day comes, pray for and visit those in prison. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Heal the sick. Comfort the Mourning. Give of what you have for those who have-not.
And remember, Christianity is not to be thought of as something to die for. It is Something to Live For.
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