So do we think that this road that leads to destruction is marked as that? No, it is marked as the road to paradise, prosperity, and success physically and spiritually. That is the problem with the “wide gate” it is a lie.
God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if He found ten righteous people there. He did not find them. Sodom was destroyed. I sometimes wonder if He would be able to find His ten here in America, the new Sodom. It is clear that we are no longer living in a Christian country. Christianity is dying here and dying rapidly. The Christian faith can never pass away from the world, but it can be rejected by men and by nations. A man cannot remove Christ from the universe, but he can remove himself from Christ. A nation cannot chase the church from the face of the earth, but it can chase the church from its borders. Today, around 70 percent of Americans claim to be Christian. Even this number represents a marked decline, but the problem is not the decline in professed believers. But the problem with the 70 percent is that it is not really 70 percent. The 70 percent is mostly composed of the sort of Christians who cannot be readily distinguished from atheists.
Indeed, the average American believer shares many similarities with the average American unbeliever. If you were to follow him around, track his movements, listen to his conversations, observe how he spends his free time (much like our iPhones already do), you would find no hard evidence that he believes anything at all lies beyond the veil of physical existence. He speaks just like the non-Christians, dresses just like them, carries himself as they do, watches all of the same television shows, consumes the same kind of media, indulges in the same vices, and feels the same lack of guilt for those indulgences. Everything is the same. It is a life of Self-Deception.
Ask the average American Christian to tell you how his life would be different if he didn’t believe in Christ, and I believe he will struggle to provide a single example. And this fact will not trouble him. He is supremely confident in his own spiritual complacency, and he is encouraged to continue that thinking with sermons that never mention sin or re categorize sins in the bible as nothing to worry about or even things to celebrate. The modern American Christian laughs at the very notion that God might send him to Hell. He has no problem believing that some people are damned—a lot of people, even—but not him. He lives in a fog of cowardly and comfortable delusion, and it grows thicker by the day.
The fog consists of a whole tangled mass of self-deceptions, some that we say out loud and some that we think to ourselves but would never say. It is those self-deceptions, those comforting delusions propelling us along the broad road that leads to destruction, these self-deceptions, ironically, do not originate with the self. If we take our faith seriously, we will recognize them as Satan’s handiwork. They are part of the extraordinarily effective battle plan that the Evil One has devised for the West. It is quite a different plan from the one he has been using in other parts of the world. Indeed, the enemy has only two strategies, and they lie on opposite ends of the spectrum.
The first tactic is the simplest, oldest, and most direct: kill the Christians. We see this unfolding across the world on an unprecedented scale. We hear about it on the news only sparingly, and never with the word “persecution” attached. But still the ground all over the globe is soaked in the blood of Christian martyrs. Of course, the extermination of Christians in the East is ignored by American Christians and the church in this country just as completely as it is ignored by the media. We don’t care. Not really. It is all too far away for us to notice. Too distant both in geography and experience. We carry on, then, as if the church is not under siege, as if war is not being waged upon us all. The situation brings to mind the scene surrounding the Battle of Bull Run at the start of the Civil War.
For those who are not familiar with the Battle of Bull Run, the Union so expected to win, and to win so easily, that Union sympathizers came out to the battlefield with blankets and picnic baskets, as if for a performance of some entertainment. They sat off on the sidelines, lounging in the shade and drinking tea while an awful battle was fought in the distance. The picnickers would soon be grabbing their blankets and their baskets and running for their lives—the fight did not play out as they had anticipated— but the silliness, arrogance, and obliviousness of those spectators reminds me of our silly, arrogant church in the West. We are relaxing, having our picnic, and eating our sandwiches, even as a violent and desperate fight rages on. Men are bleeding and dying and crying out in anguish while we nap comfortably in the shade. I would say that we are like the apostles in Gethsemane, but that would be giving us too much credit. Their spirit was willing while their flesh was weak. Our spirit is weak and our flesh even weaker.
A recent report tells us that Christian persecution is worse now than it has ever been in history (160,000 estimated killed for their faith last year). Christians in Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Egypt, Ukraine, China, Gaza and many other countries are regularly imprisoned, tortured, beaten, raped, and martyred. Their churches are destroyed. Their houses burned. They meet and worship in secret, risking their lives in the process. They live every moment in constant danger. There are many examples of this persecution, but I’d like to point to just one example from a couple of years ago, because I find it especially tragic and instructive, and I think it provides a striking contrast between the Middle Eastern brand of Christian and the Western brand.
A group of Egyptian Christians were in buses headed to a monastery in the desert. Islamist militants boarded the vehicles with guns, but they did not begin shooting right away. Instead, they pulled the passengers out and interrogated them. The pilgrims were first asked if they were Christian and then told to abandon Christ and convert to Islam. When each person refused to renounce his faith, he was shot in the head or the throat. Apparently, all of the victims, even the children, died heroically in this way. They would rather die than let go of Christ. And so, they did die, and now they are forever in Our Lord’s embrace. They let go of the world and fell straight into the arms of God.
Now, imagine confronting this yourself. Imagine what would be happening in your mind as you kneeled there in the sand with the cold barrel of a gun pressing against your temple. There are two questions, remember, not one. You must choose martyrdom twice.
First: “Are you Christian?” You can escape death right here. All you need to say is “No.” One word. One syllable. One syllable will save your life. That’s all it will take. Just tell them no. You don’t even have to believe it in your heart. It’s just a word. No. Say it, you scream to yourself. Say it. No. But the Holy Spirit comes over you and steadies your soul. You reach into a reservoir of courage you didn’t know you had available, and you speak the simple truth. “Yes.”
Second: “Will you renounce Christ and convert to Islam?” Perhaps you didn’t know there would be a second question. You thought they’d kill you after you answered affirmatively to the first. But now you have another chance to save yourself. Another chance to avoid a violent death out here in the middle of nowhere. The enemy (The Devil) whispers to you, “hey this may be a message from God. He wants you to live. You have things to do. You have a family. You have a purpose on earth. Just say yes. Also, one word, one syllable, Say yes and renounce. Say yes and betray Christ. He will understand. He does not expect you to be unreasonable.” Most people would say yes, wouldn’t they? It’s a perfectly normal response. You mustn’t be extreme. But again, the Holy Spirit gives you strength, and you see Christ on the cross looking gently down at you: Stand firm, Christ says in your heart, and today you will be with me in paradise. So, you take a breath, the last you will ever take on earth, you look your persecutor in the eyes, and with great calm and something almost like joy you say, “No.” How many of us have a faith like that? The Egyptian martyrs were willing to give up everything for Christ. How many of us are willing to give up anything—let alone everything? Most of us will lash out bitterly if we are asked to make any sacrifice at all, any adjustment to our lives, any change to our lifestyles, any ridiculous annoyance in traffic. We will shriek in horror if anyone suggests, say, that we give up watching certain television shows, movies, or listening to certain music. We will explode in fury if anyone questions whether a Christian ought to watch pornography, or dress provocatively, or use profanity. We will laugh and mock and practically spit at any critic who dares to look at something we do, something we enjoy, something that gives us pleasure, and question whether it is proper. Most of us, if we are being perfectly honest, cannot think of one thing—one measly thing—that we greatly enjoy and have the means to do yet have stopped doing because we know it is inconsistent with our faith. I do not believe that it is an exaggeration to say that the average American Christian has never given up one single thing for Christ. In fact most believe it somehow will just be nothing but adding to every pleasure and success in life. If I honestly look at my own life, I see that I seem to be in a constant state of flight. Fleeing from almost all sacrifice. Fleeing from suffering, running to comfort. I have rarely felt any pain or undergone any trial without kicking and screaming and trying to wriggle myself out of it.
Our culture actively fosters this kind of cowardice. And now many of us western “Christians” have descended into a state of total worldliness. We have compared God’s program to the world’s program and opted for the latter, because it does not involve suffering. So, would we give up our lives? Not a chance on earth. Put a gun to our head and we will do whatever you ask. There really is no need for the gun to our head. You could just put it to our televisions, or our phones, or video games, sneakers even. Christ has already told us what it means to follow Him. Give up everything, He commands. Embrace your suffering. Carry your cross. Go hungry for Me. Bleed for Me. Die for Me. “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:25). Christians all across the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia have found their lives because they heard these words of Christ and took them literally…actually believed them. Just think of what these martyrs in Egypt were doing in the first place when they were killed. They were traveling out into the desert on a pilgrimage to pray at a monastery, despite the enormous risk that such a journey entails in a Muslim country. However, many of us can’t even be bothered to get up on a Sunday morning and drive twelve minutes to church. Our churches aren’t in the desert. There aren’t any Islamic militants patrolling the area, looking to put a bullet in our skulls and turn our children into slaves. What’s our excuse? We don’t want to get up on a Sunday or Saturday morning. It’s a hassle. It’s boring. The seats aren’t comfortable. We had an argument with someone at church and it might be awkward to see them. We don’t like the sermons. The pastor was rude to us once. We don’t “feel welcome.” And so on.
We are pathetic….