It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s…
Bisexual Superman is generally not something I would notice, however, a picture of Metropolis’ LGBT superhero and his new boyfriend recently came across the screen of my family’s Alexa while my young son was playing nearby. Each week seems to bring news of another pastor being arrested for following the 4th Commandment, and pressure to take a vaccine made using the cells of murdered babies continues to mount. Now my kitchen was being invaded by a bisexual superhero, and my family was the target. As a dad, I want to protect my family, and I’ll joyfully throw away our Alexa if that is what it takes. Nevertheless, watching the world’s rejection of God’s Word and society’s blatant rebellion against King Jesus makes it clear that we have bigger problems than gay Superman. What can we as Christians do when the cultural elites seem intent on driving us all headfirst into God’s judgment?
Lessons from the Early Church
In the early chapters of Acts, we see the cultural elites of the apostle’s day, harass, and persecute the early church. The Chief priests and the Sanhedrin repeatedly arrested the apostles and beat them for preaching the gospel. However, in Acts 6:7, Luke tells us that when the apostles and the early church rededicated themselves to prayer and the preaching of the word, many of those very same priests became obedient to Jesus. Why would these men abandon the priesthood and follow Jesus?
It is likely that many of these new converts were rural priests. A quick glimpse of the trials of Jesus and the apostles makes it plain that the chief priests were notoriously corrupt. They also regularly sent out slaves to steal the tithes owed to the poorer rural priests. This corruption was so bad, that many of the rural priests starved to death, because they had no means of providing for themselves or their families.
The Supernatural Hope of the Gospel
Why would these entrenched enemies of Christ and His kingdom abandon the priesthood and follow Jesus? Because the gospel gave them a true hope in what was otherwise a truly hopeless situation.
1. Hope for justice. Because Jesus is alive on the throne in heaven, they were assured that He had the authority and the desire to punish the evils of the Sanhedrin. We can see that justice take place in the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.
2. Hope for a way to fight back. Because Jesus is on the throne, these priests could go to Jesus in prayer and that He would not overlook the evil that was taking place. Through the preaching of the gospel, they could push back against the corruption that surrounded them.
3. Hope for a new community. The community of the priests let their rural brother starve. However, the church provided for one another, making sure that there wasn’t a needy person among them.
4. Hope for salvation. Because Christ saved them from their sins, and made them heirs in His kingdom, their future immediately became brighter than their past.
The Basis of our Cheerful Resistance
Satan and his kingdom seeks to discourage Christians by tempting us to believe that resistance is futile. The culture war is already lost he mutters, what hope do you have against the combined forces of the Media, Academia, Fortune 500 companies, and the armies of lawyers ready to do their bidding? Through the gospel we have the same hope that the early church had, the same hope that turned priests, who were once dedicated to the destruction of Christ’s kingdom, into obedient servants of King Jesus. Let us recognize, that Amazon’s projection of gay Superman into the kitchens of countless homes across America is their attempt to target you, your families, your neighbor with their counterfeit gospel of sin and darkness. As Christians, we resist these forces by preaching the good news of the hope we have in Jesus to a world that is lost and starving for truth. Just as the early church rededicated themselves to prayer and the faithful proclamation of the gospel, let us, with hope and good cheer do the same, remembering that they might have gay Superman, but we have a resurrected King Jesus.
Cruciform Media 