The unwritten law is that we must agree to disagree for the sake of peace.  Truth is relative.  What is true for you may not be true for me and what is true for me may not be true for you.  Let’s just leave it there and go on our merry ways.  In a religiously pluralistic culture, everyone must be nice. Maybe it’s time to stop being so nice. 

It seems to be a foregone conclusion among evangelicals that the persecution of Christians over the issue of homosexuality is just shortly around the corner.  Christian blogs are saturated with it.  The Aquila Report has carried some articles where the authors have warned that persecution may come.  The most recent victim of capitulation is the Boy Scouts of America.  I have even made reference to it myself recently in John Brown the Calvinist.  We have accepted as inevitable the future persecution of Christians in America.

Bloggers are dealing with the issue of how we should get ready for it, and how we should respond when it comes.  We must be willing to let goods and kindred go.  We must be like lambs made ready for the slaughter.  This is what I am hearing.

What I am hearing, too, is that Christians must be nice.  However, being nice is not a Christian virtue, no more than being sweet is.  Cinderella is nice. Winnie the Pooh is nice.  However, Christians are righteous.  Christians are gracious and kind, but Christians are contra mundum (against the world).

By contra mundum I’m not talking about shouting matches.  I’m not talking about being rude or obnoxious.  Anyone who knows me personally knows that I am a very shy and backward person.  I’m basically a coward.

However, I still believe that God equips certain men to preach and lead his church.  These men are our spokesmen.  They have the stage and the microphone.  They have been honored by the Church for their success and vision.  Oftentimes that adulation carries over into the secular culture and this gives them a platform to be heard that many of us do not have.

These men need our prayers.  May they not forget that where much has been given that much shall be required. Oftentimes, as I watch them respond in public venues to the rampant growth of homosexuality, they fall all over themselves trying to be agreeable and sweet.  After I listen to them, I’m not sure what they really said.  One thing for sure, they were nice.

In America the unwritten law is that we must agree to disagree for the sake of peace.  Truth is relative.  What is true for you may not be true for me and what is true for me may not be true for you.  Let’s just leave it there and go on our merry ways.  In a religiously pluralistic culture, everyone must be nice.

Maybe it’s time to stop being so nice.  Who knows what God might do if our Christian leaders spoke the truth plainly in public and some people were offended?  There could be a revival.  If you remember from your study of Church history, revivals do occur when the Word of God is proclaimed with boldness and without fear!  I’m personally not willing to grant victory to the other side prematurely.

If we are nice and do not speak the truth plainly, then we will be trodden down under the feet of men.  Likewise, if we are nice and do not speak the truth plainly then we may very well deny our Lord and Savior who bought us.  Either way it is a real problem.  Nice guys never win; they finish last.

Larry E. Ball is a retired Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America and a CPA. He lives in Fleming Island, Florida.