It struck me, just recently, that I’ve been regularly promising to praise God’s Name “among the nations.” This pledge, to talk about God outside of church, out in the world, with non-Christians, comes up again and again in the songs we sing each service (Ps. 18, 57, 108, etc.).
And, just recently, God gave me an opportunity to talk about Him with more than a hundred thousand people, sharing His views on a local political issue.
God made it happen
This year our public library system asked voters to approve a roughly 66% increase in taxpayer funding. The way things work here, an official “voters’ guide” is sent out to everyone, and it includes both the reasons for and against every proposed levy. Who writes up those reasons? Whoever volunteers first. So, I recruited my wife Janice, and the two of us, along with one other gentleman from the area, became the three-person “Against Committee.”
Why was I against more money for the library? It’s because our solidly Christian town has a very unchristian library. The local branch is run by people who put on big Pride Month displays, even in the children’s section. This Spring, I bumped into a neighbor by the picture books section, and as we were chatting, she started sifting through the shelves, looking for treasures. But what she kept discovering was one disgusting picture book after another. They were about sexual development, or pushed gender-confusion and other LGBT themes, and were intended for kids barely old enough to read. Neither of us knew what to do with her growing stack. I ended up checking them all out, not because I wanted them, but because, with no late fees being collected anymore, I could at least keep these out of circulation for a good long while.
That’s all I was thinking at the time. But I still had those books on my desk when this voters’ guide opportunity popped up. Turns out, God had provided me just the ammunition I’d need for my write-up.
What kind of win?
While I wanted to focus on how the library was opposing God and what He’s said about gender and sex, the third person on our Against Committee wanted a focus on the money. Making it about the money could broaden the appeal to anyone in the county who cared about their pocketbook. Surely that was a bigger group than just the concerned Christians!
Asking for a two-thirds increase is significant, so he had a point. It’s also a familiar point. When it comes to politics, Christians tend to bring forward fiscal issues, or other generally conservative points, rather than anything explicitly Christian. In this case, if more people care about money than God, isn’t the winning strategy obvious?
The thing is, not all wins are wins. In 279 BC, King Pyrrhus of Epirus defeated the Romans at the Battle of Asculum, but at a devastating cost to his own army. Ever since then the term Pyrrhic victory has been used to describe a win that leaves the victor weaker than before. In Christians’ engagement with the world, we will, for the sake of some perceived short-term victory, overlook the long-term consequences that come with excluding God from the public square. We wonder why our culture is turning from God, but if, for strategic reasons, God’s own people won’t profess His Name in politics, who are we expecting will?
Every square inch
The world is the LORD’s, and consequently, the Devil is always and forever trying to get us to overlook, downplay, or deny that. In this library skirmish, the real issue wasn’t how much, but rather Who the library was opposing. So, what kind of win would it be if we had to shut up about our LORD to get it? If the Devil could choose to make us focus on either money or God, wouldn’t he choose money every time? The devil’s win is getting Christians to self-censor their praise and rob God of the glory that is His due.
Thankfully, while the third member of our committee wanted money mentioned, he was happy to keep God central. After some back and forth, this is what we sent out to 140,000 eligible voters:
Argument Against
In the opening chapters of Genesis we learn that God made us male and female (Gen. 1:27) and sex is intended for marriage (Gen. 2:24). Our library system actively opposes these truths, and wants more money to do so.
They oppose God in their teen section where Beyond Magenta shares an account of oral sex with a six-year-old. Despite this being brought to the library’s attention, they didn’t pull the book.
That opposition is apparent even in the picture book section. Your preschooler can pull My Princess Boy off the shelf and ask you whether boys should wear dresses too. Being You: A First Conversation About Gender will teach them that “it’s okay to wonder: Am I a girl? Am I a boy? Am I both? Am I neither?” And Everybody is a Rainbow depicts naked genitalia.
A $600,000 home currently pays about $155 a year to this system – the library wants to up that almost $100, to $252. We have increasing food, electricity, housing, and gas costs – that’s what we need our money for. We most certainly don’t need to give more money to a library that’s opposing God-given truths and sowing confusion, even among the littlest.
The voters’ guide only allowed us 200 words, but the debate was also being had in the local paper. The paper published an article arguing for the increase, touting the library as somewhere safe to go. I got 300 words, in a letter to the editor, to share how God knows best what is best for us, and a library pushing transsexual confusion on little kids isn’t safe at all.
Three kinds of objections
Objections came in three sorts. Folks noted that, if it was about the money, borrowing from a library can save you a lot of money. That was a decent point, and it underscores the danger of what could have happened if we’d made this minor point our major one – we would have wasted all our energy on a matter that doesn’t matter.
Another objection was along the lines of “Don’t force your God or your views on me.” But this objection applies better to their position than to ours. Christians don’t want to be forced to pay even more money to support views our Lord opposes. Meanwhile, the library and its supporters want to force us to cough up cash for their agenda. The irony was heavy.
The third objection was over the definition of words like “safety,” “love,” and “gender,” and whose definition we were going to go with, the Left’s or God’s.
A real win
The vote went against us, and now we’ll have to hand over even more money to a library that’s shown it hates God. In the past that kind of result might have gotten me frustrated.
This time I’m just grateful. God gave me an opportunity to praise His Name in public, and He made it easy for me. He put the committee sign-up sheet in front of my face, and so pre-arranged things to get my neighbor to track down the obscene picture books I could cite as horrible examples. Then He got a couple hundred words about Him sent out by a State that hates Him to over one hundred thousand voters who don’t normally hear about Him.
It was a political campaign with the focus on God. Because everything is about God. And He is amazing.
