Jordan Peterson Podcast with Eric Metaxas- Wakeup Call to the American Church

I recently listened to this podcast.  Doing so led me to reevaluate how I am living the Faith and how the Church should be interacting with our contemporary secular culture.

I often tell myself, "I can't expect non-Christians to act like Christians."  This has allowed me to respect people where they are and seek to serve and love them just as they are.  This has rarely involved challenging their behavior and beliefs.  Many Christians are where I am because it avoids conflict, and we all (well, almost all) of us want that.

Metaxas challenges this way of being a Christian in his book, A Letter to the American Church.  I think he is right.  His book brings to mind one of my favorite Bible stories, the Samaritan woman at the well in John's Gospel.  I love its gentleness, but at the same time, Jesus is unequivocal in challenging the Samaritan woman's lifestyle.  I seldom do such things.

In today's climate, it is more than just avoiding conflict; it is trying not to get cancelled, censored, or censured.  Metaxas' thesis is, however, if we have faith, we will do the right thing, stake our lives on the Truth, live with the courage to stand against what we know is evil, and trust God to deal with the consequences (shades of Dietrich Bonhoeffer).  As Christians, our silence in the face of evil can and will be a catastrophe.  The Church is in a battle we all need to fight.  We are called to speak up for those caught up in the extremes of our contemporary pagan culture.  

Eric draws the parallel between our silence and the silence of the Church in Nazi Germany in the 1930's, a very uncomfortable parallel indeed.