by Patrick Rees
When I was confirmed some people called us Soldiers of Christ. That seemed strange to me. Did God need soldiers? Was He building an army? Of course we are talking soldiers in the spiritual sense. Make no mistake about it; we are in a type of spiritual warfare. Never in my lifetime has the church been under so many different attacks from so many different sources. Evil knows we are the physical body of Christ here on earth. Evil knows scripture. Evil knows Christ is Lord and rejected Him. Anything associated with Christ is subject to attack.
Christ warned us we would be subject to persecution. No one is better than the Master and evil influenced people to kill Him. We are the one constant in an ever faster changing world. We do not define who we are by polls, the latest news, or moral trends of the day. A word used today is Relativism. I will get back to that. They also use the word enlightened. The French went through a terrible period called the Enlightenment. Today many people in the world and in this country see themselves as being „enlightened‟. They portray the church as outdated and out of touch. We are in the way of their objectives, their goals and their vision of what they think the world should be.
We are not of this world. We live in this world. The evil in the world, which actually does rule this world, sees us as an obstacle. This is why we come into conflict to the ever changing vision the rulers of this world have for it. Picture a strong light house in the midst of a raging storm. Remember Christ called us the light of the world. Evil loves the darkness, the confusion created by the darkness and hates the light. We illuminate the actions of those who want their deeds hidden. We unify the world. They operate by divide and conquer. They pit everyone against everyone. A recent development is they make victims of the accused. The victims get lost or worse somehow blamed for the evil perpetrated on them.
Soldiers of Christ, indeed we all are. Be brave. Have courage. This spiritual war is grueling; but remember, the outcome is known. We all have our parts to play but the Master has already won the victory for us.
I call it a war. Yes, there are victims, casualties of this war. One of the brightest lights of the modern era was the late Pope John Paul II. He survived an assassination attempt on his life. We would have lost a great pope. Divine intervention saw to spare his life. Less dramatic but all too real victims happen all the time. Any chink in the armor of the church is exploited. How very few priests were actually part of the abuse scandal but evil portrayed the church as endorsing the abuse and we were all abusers. See how they work? It is war.
We support all life. We abhor abortion. They portray us as against women. How far from the truth is that? We are the first to help the helpless. We do not support the same-sex issue because it is against God’s command. It is against the natural order of things. It is not a design or an
‘alternative’. We do however, try to love everyone. We even try to love these people. Christ did not condemn the woman caught in adultery and he told us ‘judge not and you will not be judged’. He did not tell us to turn a blind eye to sin. They celebrate sin and say how dare you judge us?
We were told to be kind to the sinner. The best I have heard it is ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’. We all have our challenges. Without Christ we all fall short. It is out of love we do not want these people to condemn themselves. They force us to accept their sinful choice as a natural
‘choice’. They want our children, is what they want. The real battle is in the schools. Not only drugs at an ever earlier age but a perverse ‘sex education’ in grade school no less. The battle for souls was traditionally in college and at the college age when young people wanted to claim an identity for themselves.
We send them out as sheep. They usually are not prepared. How can they be if they came from loving homes? Yes, wolves amongst the sheep. Here is what I say. What if the sheep learn the ways of the wolf? What if a sheep can defend itself against the wolf? Then the game is changed. Arm your children with Christ. Arm them with the word of God. Arm them with a solid family tradition and background so they too are Soldiers of Christ and can fend off the inevitable attacks on their very souls.
I mentioned the word Relativism. This is not the subject of Einstein. It is the simple reasoning away the guilt of anything. They change their moral compass to adapt to anything. It is said if your stand for nothing you will fall for anything. They like shades of gray. There is no black and white. In that thought there is no right and wrong. They teach a perverse type of inclusion and acceptance. Yes, acceptance of anything perverse and a total hatred of the church. Tolerance? What tolerance to the church? They try at every turn to fight the church. In Chicago, the first chance they got they took the right from the church to help in the adoption process because the church would not allow those poor children to be indoctrinated in their sinful ways. Our late Pope called same sex adoption a terrible form of child abuse. Did they report that? Only what they want to be relative is relative, anything else which conflicts their goals must be challenged and eliminated if possible. That is us.
We are not relative. We are as constant as the light house in the storm I mentioned. God protects us. He guides us. He puts His words in our mouths when we need to defend the truth. Into the valley of death we shall fear no evil. Only true Soldiers of Christ can gladly march into this valley of death every day and be glad because we know Christ has already triumphed over death. We only pass through death to be with Him in life eternal.
For me I will be glad when I can say to my Master, ‘I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.’ He will say well done you good and faithful servant, enter into your reward. Amen.
73 Books of the Bible