“Don’t Apologize to Anybody”

I’ve got a friend from high school that I would classify as my “grudging Facebook friend.” We used to hang out together all the time and we were pen pals when he went away to college. But he’s been pretty standoffish ever since then and he still is. I can think of two reasons why:

1) I tried to recruit him into Amway about 20 years ago
2) He’s some flavor of freethinking agnostic, and he resents religious people. He finds my annual Jesus-happy Christmas letters to be supremely annoying.

I really can’t think of any other reasons besides those two.

As for reason #1, I can’t say I really blame him. My Amway saga was a long detour, I must say. Though I do prefer that my friends eventually forgive me for my stupidity spasms.

As for reason #2, well, some people are just going to be pissy and there’s nothing you can do to change that.

Yes, I truly understand how abusive some religious people and some churches can be. It’s probably impossible to be a Christian for any length of time without getting smacked in the head by somebody’s political maneuver or legalistic 2X4. Spiritual abuse is probably the most common kind of abuse there is, and its effects are insidious and long lasting.

But people get killed in car accidents all the time and that doesn’t mean cars are Evil. It just means they’re powerful.

Power must be wielded with great care. If it’s true of 4000 pounds of steel, then it’s even more true with truth and love and peoples’ hearts.

I’ve made plenty of apologies for my misadventures in businesses, but I make no apology for being a Christian and you shouldn’t either. C.S. Lewis said, “You don’t have to defend a lion. You just have to let him out of his cage.”

If you let the Christian lion out of its cage, what do you find?

I submit to you that Judaism and Christianity are the very bedrock of western civilization. The Jewish people are the ONLY culture that has survived 4,000 years, and it is still intact. Same beliefs, same customs, same holidays, same language, same God. ALL other civilizations are in ruins.

And… Christianity is the only culture that’s intact after 2,000 years. Judaism was only for Jews. Christianity is for everybody. 2 billion and counting now.

I often ask people:

“Name 5 protestant Christian countries that have rampant poverty, illiteracy and human rights abuses.”

And:

“Name 5 Buddhist countries… or 5 Hindu countries… or 5 Muslim countries… or 5 Atheist countries… that do NOT have rampant poverty, illiteracy and human rights abuses.”

Boy, does that question make people squirm.

I submit to you that monks and nuns and pastors and lay people wrestling with questions like slavery, determinism vs. free will, the role of the church with respect to government, the role of religion in society, the way we should treat our fellow man; questions like abortion and euthanasia and capital punishment, all got argued for 2000 years. These arguments taught human beings how to THINK. They built up a tradition of intellectual debate and curiosity and investigation and battles for human rights.

Ultimately these discussions were shaped by one incredibly potent question:

“What might it mean to me if God really, actually became a man?”

Without Jesus, the world would only know how to ask the question:

“What might it mean to me if I, a man, actually became God?”

Ironically, the first question builds people up. The second question only tears us down.

Yeah, I know it’s so silly, so foolish, so childish to entertain such primitive notions as the idea that some sort of masculine biblegod copulated with a female Jewish teenager and gave birth to a god-man. Yeah, I know all sorts of other ancient myths and legends had stories like that.

But there’s only ONE version of that story that’s taken seriously today, and that’s the story of Jesus. He’s the most loved, most hated, most argued about, most reviled, most adored, most influential person to have ever walked the earth.

He stepped into the world and split time in half, BC and AD. You can’t even go to his grave. Cuz he’s not there anymore.

You know what?

The SKEPTICS are ashamed of Jesus.

But I’m not.

Don’t YOU apologize for being a Christ follower, ever. Live a life that makes THEM apologize for not seeing Him sooner.

Perry Marshall