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Home/Featured/Sometimes It’s Healthy to Be Known for What You Are Against

Sometimes It’s Healthy to Be Known for What You Are Against

When being "winsome" is a cop-out.

Written by The Laymen's Lounge | Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Abraham Kuyper didn’t like the depraved Dutch political system, and so, he did something about it….He started a new political party. He united different groups. He started newspapers, a college, and eventually became the Prime Minister. We can learn a lot from seeing somebody not just being a theorist but an actual doer.

 

“Christians should be known for what they are for rather than what they are against” is about as bad as other folk-Christianity sayings like “God helps those who help themselves.”

Sometime I think “winsome” is a get-out-of-jail free card that releases the Christian. Folks like Luther and Kuyper were intense, often a little rude and a bit bombastic, but everyone knew exactly where they stood. Having drawn their lines in the sand they brought about actual change because there was a clear call to action. Indeed, we all need to draw lines. Without a clear target we will miss every-time.

Friendship with the world is enmity with God (and, though you might not be a spiritual “adulterer” fornicating with the spirit of the age and wokeism, many of us are guilty of “innocent flirting” by allowing the woke masses to rub up against us, and instead of holding up our wedding rings we instead offer up a little smile and giggle with passive-approval).

Abraham Kuyper didn’t like the depraved Dutch political system, and so, he did something about it. Not only did he do something about it, but he was pro active. He started a new political party. He united different groups. He started newspapers, a college, and eventually became the Prime Minister. Kuyper was very clear with his program, in fact, he wrote a book that outlined in detail his program. I share a selection from it here because:

1. We can learn a lot from seeing somebody not just being a theorist but an actual doer.

2. We see that his situation was not much unlike our own.

3. He didn’t cave to the myth or “winsome” and failed to repeat the tired old phrase “Christians should be known for what they are for rather than what they are against.”

Read More

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