How Can Christians Show Kindness Without Compromise Around Pride Events?
I work in an environment where Pride flags and events are everywhere, and I feel pressured to celebrate along with everyone else. How do I show kindness and respect to my coworkers without compromising my convictions as a Christian?
One could wish that every Christian had the courage and strength of will to plainly say, “Hey, I’m not into this. I don’t agree with this, and all of you can do as you please. That’s between you and God,” and I mean that literally – it isbetween you and God. It’s keeping you from God. It’s between you and God. You’re never going to draw near to God unless you get that out of the way. We could wish that every Christian will have that fortitude. But at the very least – and this is a bare minimum, keeping the weaker brother or sister in mind – we do not participate with it. At the very least, we don’t stand and salute the rainbow flag or whatever is required along those lines. No, if you’re a Christian you should stay seated. You just should not participate in the honoring of such things. I think that’s a minimum. Hopefully many believers would have the courage and the wherewithal to speak a due word in season and say, “Listen, I’m not your judge, God is. But I can’t agree that this stuff is wonderful and beautiful and powerful. It’s actually destructive to humanity, and I hope people turn to God’s ways instead.”
Rod Dreher’s book, Live Not By Lies, gets into this idea of pushing conformity to an imagined reality. He mentions that this was a real feature of the communist world. It’s a feature of totalitarian states to want you to look at something that’s white and say it’s black. They want you to look at a man and say that it’s a woman. They want you to look at something that’s twisted and perverse, and say it’s awesome and normal, and it’s just not. So, we shouldn’t give in to these lies.
The book chronicles those who courageously refuse to live by the lies of the communist state, and it cost them. If you went along with the communist system and ideology, and you espoused their lies, you advanced. You could live in better places. You could attend better schools. You had a higher standard of living. Those who refused – out of a conviction to be a person of truth, because they chose to be a follower of Jesus Christ – did suffer a cost in society, but of such is the kingdom of God.
The title of the book was based on the last essay written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which was sent to the Russian people after he had been released from prison and was actually leaving the Soviet Union. He wrote an appeal to them, basically saying, “We know that the system is a lie. Don’t live by lies.” Rod Dreher’s point in the book was that enough people said, “I’m done with the lies,” that eventually it brought down the Soviet Union.
Solzhenitsyn was a complicated figure. We wouldn’t agree with everything that he said or did, but he was an unmistakably courageous man. Earlier this year, I read his book, Gulag Archipelago. What an amazing book.