Dan Quayle Was Right (some notes on Savage and savagery)

Dan Quayle was right.  No, I’m not talking about the infamous Murphy Brown thing, for those even old enough to remember.  I’m talking about a comment he made about the direction of our country as it relates to discrimination and persecution.  He basically said that we’re coming to the place where it is wrong to discriminate against any and all groups, except conservative Christians.   He’s right.

In fact, things have become so skewed, that in trying to find the exact quote from the former Vice President I did a google search.  Yet, no matter which search words I entered, the results all came up as pages bashing and ridiculing Quayle.  So I never did find the exact quote.  (BTW, I’m reasonably sure it was in his book Standing Firm, but since my copy was loaned out and never returned, I couldn’t track it down. If anyone has the quote, I’d love to find it again)

Anyway, the point is simply that this idea has become somewhat of a prophetic statement.  We do indeed live in a culture where saying anything derogatory about anyone is frowned upon, unless that “anyone” is a Christian.

Case in point.  You’ve probably heard about “anti-bullying” guru Dan Savage speaking at a conference for teen journalists.  In what was supposed to be an address about stopping bullying, Savage went on a rant against Christianity and the Bible.  He said to “ ignore all the (expletive deleted) in the Bible.”  Imagine if a Christian speaker had said something like that about the Koran in the same setting.  Can you imagine the outcry.

Worse yet, when some students had enough of the rant, they got up and walked out.   They were exercising their rights, peacefully leaving, not making a scene about it.  But the “anti-bullying” chief started heckling them, bullying them, and calling them obscene names.  And the mainstream media says nothing, sees nothing wrong with this.  Again, imagine if roles were reversed and a Christian speaker heckled gay students for leaving his presentation.  You’d hear about that for months.  But since we’re just making fun of Christians, no big deal.

Furthermore, the sponsors of the event never apologized.  Savage was invited to speak on bullying.  He instead makes obscene sexual references (to a teen journalism audience), bashes Christians and the Bible, bullies students who choose to leave, and all they can say is that they wished “he had stayed more on target for the audience of teen journalists.”

Folks, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  It’s not that far from looking the other way as things like this happen, to looking the other way as Muslim extremists attack a Christian worship service, tossing a bomb in to the meeting and shooting worshipers as they flee.  Think I’m exaggerating?  That’s exactly what happened yesterday in Nigeria.  Hear about it on the news yet?  And yet this kind of savagery is repeated almost daily around the world: Christians being tortured and killed, beaten and mistreated, most often at the hands of Muslims (you know, the "peaceful" religion).  Yet most of the liberal media is silent, because after all, it's just Christians they're killing.

Here’s the point.  I’m not just whining about “unfair” treatment.  The truth is, the Church should expect this.  We’ve been far too spoiled for far too long in this country.  While our brothers and sisters in Christ have endured horrendous persecution down through the years and even today, we’ve enjoyed a relatively blissful existence.  Jesus told us to expect it, in fact.  So I’m not just complaining.

I am suggesting that we wake up.  The Church needs to stop being silent.  We need to speak up for truth and stop trying to be friends with this world.  This world hates us, because they hate our God.  Stop trying to “fit in” and make the world think you’re “cool.”  Speak the truth, preach the Gospel, and be prepared for the persecution that will surely come as a result.  

We live in a sinful world, a world of double standards.  A world that rips the Quayles and Bushes of the world for being “dumb” while ignoring the idiocy of the Gores and Bidens and others.  A world that cries “intolerance” if we preach the truth about homosexuality, but has no problem with “Christian-bashing.”  Remember that we are “in the world, but not of it.”  We are here to be salt and light, and both are hated by sin and darkness.  Be prepared for the days ahead, because I’m pretty sure Dan Quayle was right.