Apologetics

Who Do You Serve?

by Jeff Drinnan
01/09/21
For Sale
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"But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the euncuchs that he might nor defile himself." -Daniel 1:8

Daniel had a choice, either to go along and not be confrontational and enjoy the good life, or obey God and have faith in Him and face the lion's den. Daniel choose the latter. And God was with him and in the long run was blessed by God and served Him.

Today the choice to follow God doesn't necessarily mean being thrown in the Lion's den if you don't do something contrary to God. There is, however, pressure today to go along in order to get along. In my work, one task entails receiving shipments of signage and displays to put out on the sales floor at a retail store. Someone from the company shadowed me one day to help me and to evaluate my performance. He noted that I had reported that I could not find items and added that doing this could result in points against me. "You don't have to be truthful," he said, and suggested I choose another option.  

So I was told to lie in order to further my work. But the point is that we must obey God and not man when the two conflict. Not only does disobeying God dishonor God, but it has earthly consequences. If you pretend everything is alright when it's not, in time, you have to pay the piper, and I'm not talking about the late professional Rowdy Roddy wrestler!

You cannot heal what you conceal! If a problem is not exposed it can't be corrected. In the case of the missing shipments, if I report a phantom reason for not finding something, adjustments won't be made to get the right things to do the job. If I reported there was not enough stock to support a display when there was or the structure wasn't right, when it comes time to use a similar item that can be put in a particular place, the false information won't allow the job to be done, or adjustments made.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when we engender to decieve!

Our faith is analogous to this. If we pretend everything is alright when it isn't and sin goes unchecked, then we fall into what Biblical Counseling founder Jay E Adams calls the downward spiral. To keep him from falling down the black hole, King David confessed his sins to God and was retored to Him.

Even in the church at large, I've had to take an unpopular stance. Someone asked me to "like" a particular Christian bookstore on FaceBook. On it's Facebook page was a photo of people, evidently with some connection to a church, that had in the picture a politician who is antithetical, inimical to Christian principles. I did not "like" the page because I don't like promoting someone who is favored only based on race. My communication with the people on this same page, so to speak, waned in time. The person who had asked me to like the page was from a congregation of people I had worshipped with.

I had considered marketing my self-published book at this bookstore, but I decided not to.

It is more important to go with God than to go with what is expedient and popular. Christians need to take the stance that the Henry Fonda character did in the old classic "Twelve Angry Men." In the movie, in a murder case, all but one juror wanted to say "guilty." The rest of the jurors wanted to go home and get on with their business. One wanted to watch a baseball game! The one hold out juror, who had a reasonable doubt, one-by-one convinced the others of this reasonable doubt and the other jurors said "not guilty."

Don't stand with the world when it goes against God. As the old hymn goes "Stand up, stand up for Jesus..."