Victims or victors might be more biblical terminology, but I’m not sure. Jesus was a straight talker, and I suspect that if He was addressing a National Association of Evangelicals today he might refer to those propagating and embracing the victim mentality as wimps. And there is a lot of the victim mentality floating around evangelical circles today.
It is of interest to me that conservatives in general and evangelicals in particular tend toward being wimps. Isn’t it amazing that conservatives control the White House and both houses of Congress by a substantial margin and still fund Planned Parenthood, National Public Radio, and all sorts of other liberal causes?. One gets a little tired of seeing a majority of conservatives being bullied by a minority of liberals. It’s sort of like a Chihuahua chasing a German shepherd down the street. It would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic.
We are still waiting to find out if the Republicans have the intestinal fortitude to exercise what the liberal media refers to as the “nuclear option.” It is sad that the party has to go through all these theatricals to pass what should be a no-brainer and should have been passed several years ago. The conservative movement needs less wimps and more winners.
That’s one quality we loved about Ronald Reagan. He was willing to call the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” and endure the smirks of Sam Donaldson and the intellectuals, who still owe him an apology.
Unfortunately, evangelicals tend to possess the same wimp mentality. For example, if somebody gets offended we are sure that the offender must be in the wrong. For contemporary evangelicals the first commandment seems to be, “Thou shalt not offend.” The offender might be wrong, but then again he might have said or done the right thing in the right way at the right time, and the person who got offended might just have reacted sinfully.
Christ offended plenty of people, in fact so much so that they finally killed Him. In Mark 9:32 and Luke 9:45 it is recorded that the disciples were afraid to ask Jesus a question. When is the last time you heard a sermon about that Jesus? And notice that Jesus did nothing to assuage this fear. We read nothing about him saying, “Oh, don’t be afraid. Feel free to ask anything that is on your mind.” The fact is that Jesus is a strong personality who at times, certainly not all the time, was intimidating and offensive.
Please don’t misunderstand. The New Testament commands us to work at not intimidating or offending. But as with Christ, in the process of doing God’s will at times this will be the outcome. Contemporary evangelicals in their effort to be inoffensive regardless of the cost have lost their strength and become wimpy. Instead of allowing the example of Christ to be a corrective for us, we have recast Jesus into the image of Mr. Rogers, that is, into our own image.
Not only does our fear of offending make us into wimpy ministers, but it produces wimpy followers. Instead of exhorting the person who gets offended without legitimate cause, we coddle him, encouraging him to feel sorry for himself instead of challenging him to face his faults and deal with them. In so doing we confirm him in his weakness rather than helping him develop strength. We allow him to see himself as a victim rather than encouraging him to become a victor. We produce a wimp instead of a winner.
The fear of offending at all costs is just one of the ways in which evangelicals are inclined to be wimps and engender that quality within the evangelical community. Tomorrow we will consider another area, and in future days we will identify the force that is influencing us in this direction. We need to eradicate that influence. God calls us to be overcomers, victors. Evangelical reformation requires the transformation from wimp to winner, from victim to victor.