Last November when we celebrated Thanksgiving, after being thankful for family and friends, for health and comfort, for food and shelter; I hope we didn’t forget to be thankful for the Left (or liberals).
Light shines brighter in the darkness and without bad, the good often fails to find their voice. In the presence of slavery we remember the value of freedom. In the clamp of coercion, we remember the value of a free and clear conscience. After all, soldiers are tested on the battlefield and the ideological wars of ideas we are in teaches us to stand up for what we believe.
Because conservatives are basically hopeful and confident we are also prone to extremes of despair at times. I have observed on Fulcrum7 that many of us were shocked at the decline of our society because we had too much confidence in it. To the degree that conservatives have faith in America, it makes them vulnerable to being crushed by the latest victories of the left instead of remembering that these cultural changes were predicted by God for the last days (2 Timothy 3:1-9).
I have seen too much despair and defeatism, too many comments that suggest there is no hope for the country or the church, and the only thing left to do is pop some popcorn, pour a glass of grape juice and watch the sun go down. These comments testify to how sheltered most of us Americans are from the struggles against tyranny around the world.
Four years of Joe Biden has been bad, but try sixty-nine years of Communism on for size. That's what generations of Russians had to live through. Ask some of the conservatives in Europe or Canada who have never had any of the freedoms that we still take for granted, whether they've given up hope. Ask people from countries where criticism of Islam can mean death, whether they've given up hope.
There are countless tales of courage over the last century of men and women who did not stop fighting evil, who taught God’s ways their children so that they would continue seeking the Lord after the parents were gone. Those stories have not ended. They continue today in Europe, Asia and South America. Those people would envy the conditions under which we live, where people can protest without being shot or sent to prison (January 6 notwithstanding).
We face a tough task, not only for our freedoms, but the freedoms of the world. We learned this in 2020 and have re-learned it daily, since then. The international left has made America its special project. It knows that if it can extinguish the flame of liberty in this land then it will drive the rest of those who hope for freedom across the ocean deeper into despair. And it wants your despair. It wants you to give up so that the rest of the world gives up and bows under its chains. A despairing populace is after all, easier to control (Revelation 13-14).
And yet this eschatological struggle is a glorious one. As Adventists, this fight is our birthright. And we should be thankful for the fight. Light shines brighter in the darkness.
It might be more pleasant if there were no Soros, Schwab or Obiden. If Alinsky had never been born and Marx had never been weaned. It would be nice if we lived in a world where dark blue and red was just a color and political parties were a rural movement suspicious of the Federal government and dreaming of an agrarian utopia. We know it isn’t. But these things can help us find our voice to share the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ after getting up out of bed each day. King Herod and incarnate Jesus existed simultaneously, ultimate goodness alongside of tremendous badness. And this brings people to a choice.
Life is challenge and we face all kinds of different challenges. We get up early in the morning and drive to work. We rise in the middle of the night when the baby cries and we go to the hospital when our loved ones need us there. We do dreary things and terrible things that seem so different from the life we imagined as children. And we do them not only because they are duty, but because these challenges, the daily ones and the once in a lifetime ones, make us who we are (1 Peter 1:6-7).
Besides these prosaic challenges, the daily routines and the occasional tragedies, there are uncommon challenges that we face when the foe comes to our gate and demands that we bow and become slaves (2020, riots, mandates and the political enablings of the LGBTQ mob etc..). This is a challenge that we face as a society, a nation and a body of believers. It demands more of us and it ennobles us. It makes us a better people rather than those who seek to live only in comfort with no thought for anything else.
Good emerges in response to evil. We need our enemies to remind us of who we are and what God can do when our backs are against the wall. In this life, evil reminds us of the good that God can produce in us, shaping us for the next life (James 1:12). As a whetstone sharpens a sword, so evil sharpens us into a weapon against it. It makes us morally stronger and teaches us the stark truths that we cannot take refuge from evil; we must confront it in the fear of God (James 4:7; Ephesians 5:11).
"The greatest want of the world is the want of men--men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall" {Ed 57.3}
If there were no tyranny against freedoms would there be as much love of freedom among us as there is now? And if there were no technocratic or corporate left, how many of us would really contemplate the core principles of freedom and free enterprise? If there were no evil, how many of us would ponder what we truly believe and what compromises we are willing and unwilling to make? If there were no hard left, would we be the same people that we are today?
For those of us who believe in the Bible, the Lord created both darkness and light (Genesis 1:14). And if it were not for the darkness, would the light be as precious to us? Imagine a world without sunrise or sunset, where the sight of rays of light clearing away the darkness would have no meaning. And then remember that things are treasured to the extent that they can be taken away from us.
Would we value freedom as much if we did not have to defend it? Would we hold it as dear if we did not fear that it would be taken away? Would we even be aware of what freedom is and what a free conscience must be if not for the dark hand of those who wish to strip us of those freedoms?
It is the left's opposition that has added urgency to a hundred issues, from the unmeasurable national debt to the War on Terror to assaults on freedom of speech and religion to the demonic tyranny of sexual and gender perversions. It has made us think about those issues, to take them out of the back of our minds and hold them up to the light as a reminder of how important they are and what must be done about them. It reminds us that the only color that matters is not red or blue political distractions, but the white righteousness of Christ.
These dark corruptions remind us of the need for purification. As it gathers the worst of all around it, we find ourselves called to be better than we are (Matthew 5:16; James 4:8). As the darkness works to doom our world and as we suffer defeat after defeat, these defeats only serve to remind us that we must be better, that we must do more, learn more of God and become more in order to reflect His glory (Jude 24). We are after all, looking for a better country, and the things happening here deepen our longing for it (Hebrews 11:16).
War is the great teacher and this is an ideological war, short on bodies and heavy on minds. It is a war in which casualties are not taken in the chest or the arm, but in our minds, hearts and emotions, and against these weaknesses, we can and will prevail by His grace (1 John 5:4; Revelation 14:12; Philippians 4:13).
As we fight the darkness, we become stronger, more dedicated and more purposeful. We become the men and women that our Creator meant us to be.
As you reflect on all that you have gained and lost over the last year, remember and be thankful for the left, for as the winter ice gives way to the summer sun and bitter defeat gives way to sweet victory on that last day (John 6:44), it is defeat and hardship that teaches better than comfort and ease. We can learn more from our trials than we ever could from our victories. Our defeats teach us endurance and fortitude, they teach us that defeat can be borne and that its sting can be turned into the weapon of truth that unseats the foe. And our foes help make us who we are.
Evil teaches us to find good in our Lord (2 Corinthians 12:9, 10). Their strength teaches us to find our own strength (Ephesians 6:10; 1 Corinthians 16:13). And their plots against what we have teach us how many treasures we have, foremost among them, the Pearl of great price (Matthew 13:45-46).
Their war on Christianity is teaching us to be better Christians. It may not feel that way right now, but we are privileged to have this opportunity and this battle (James 1:2-4).
So we should be thankful for the hostile left, its assaults on us are teaching us how to resist evil and its plots against our freedom are teaching us how to be free (John 8:36).
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“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials” (James1:2).
