By Christ in you, you are called to be a miracle

By Alan Keyes

Talk is cheap. People are unlikely to believe this old taunt if they have ever experienced a regime of totalitarian repression, where "free speech" is a criminal offense, or ever looked into the lives of people like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or the myriads of Christians severely persecuted or killed for bearing true witness to Christ in areas where Islamist practitioners of violent jihad deploy terror to repress such evangelization. In such circumstances, talk, in spoken or written form, may cost people their livelihood and their lives, not to mention the mental anguish of relentless fear.

Here in the United States, the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution is supposed to preclude laws that abridge freedom of speech, including its publication in written form. But a specious understanding of rights is being applied by usurping judges and justices in our courts. They have developed it to provide a pretext for suppressing, in speech and action, any views that effectively counter the agenda aimed at destroying the God-endowed rights of marriage and human family life. People who seek to secure and conserve those rights are being censured, ostracized, and attacked in ways intended to discourage others from following their example, or even hearing what they have to say.

Meanwhile, the would-be tyrants of the elitist faction lavish support on any and all activities that attack and seek to dissolve the moral and institutional supports for constitutional self-government, of, by, and for the people. It happens that the very people who seek to maintain or restore respect for God's authoritative endowment of human nature are also staunch opponents of the elitist faction's agenda to re-establish the prevalence of oligarchic tyranny. They are the very people striving to make sure Americans do not forget the sound moral and practical reasons that support the crucial sovereign powers of the people, or their elected representatives, under the Constitution of the United States.

What happens if we starve those who are the instructors and champions, in speech and reasoning, of the people's understanding of what it means to exercise the sovereign powers the Constitution allots to them? It will not take long for republican self-government to falter and fail. But the champions of the people's constitutional sovereignty must be nurtured by the people themselves. Otherwise, though they outwardly appear to be friends of the people's constitutional self- government, their reliance on the resources of the elitist would-be tyrants, binds them to serve the elitist agenda that seeks to overthrow it.

This background of thought came to my mind as I was reading a column by WND's editor, Joseph Farah, in which he replied to someone who reproached the notion that Christian people may properly seek financial support for their efforts to provide information that reflects the moral understanding Christ imparts to our lives. "If you believe that WND is God's work, then why do you seek help from man?... If God wants WND going and you are forced to close it, it is the best thing that can happen to WND and you. May God give you faith to believe this. You and WND are in my fervent prayers."

Though the last statement of Mr. Farah's interlocutor may be meant to leave the impression that he prays to Christ and his Father God, the logic of its argument goes to prove the contrary. It brought to mind the words of Psalm 22:8, which expresses a thought later used to taunt Christ as he hangs upon the cross (Matthew 27:43):

"He trusts in the Lord," they say,
Let the LORD rescue him
Let Him deliver him, since He delights in him.

When it comes to Christ's ministry of salvation, those who receive and follow him are not supposed to wait for some miracle of God. They are to act the part that God has imparted to them through the continual miracle of Christ's presence. On account of that miracle, they have the grace to renew what Christ first began when he stood up in the Temple to proclaim the acceptable day of the Lord, and the Good News of liberty for the captives of sin and iniquity.

True followers of Christ who are blessed by God with the wherewithal to contribute to support his work know that it is not they who live but Christ lives in them. Just as Christ used his voice or his hands in healing, so they come to be used as members of his body on earth. If some other member of that body is moving hearts with the wisdom of Christ, or lifting up God's Word in Scripture to spread the teachings of Christ – or seeking in politics, business, or some other vocation to represent the rule, good will, and justice of Christ – it makes no sense for them to expect God to sustain Christ's body in these works by some other miracle, when, as the human body's stomach or lungs are filled with nourishment or air, He has miraculously filled their lives with what is needed to do so.

Christ made this emphatically clear when he observed:

"Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me." Then the righteous will answer him, saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?" And the King will answer them, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:38-40)

The WND reader who adopted the logic of Christ's detractors to taunt Mr. Farah for fundraising may not have pondered the implications of Christ's teaching in this passage. He may not have considered that when true followers of Christ are walking in his way, when they are striving in good faith to represent Christ's mind and good will to others in some aspect of human life, those who contribute to their sustenance do what they do for Christ himself. Christ, and those who consent to be his body's members, do not have to wait for some miracle of God because, when those contributors act on Christ's instruction, they are a miracle of God, already complete through Jesus Christ. Not content ceaselessly to pray, they have begged and been granted the mercy to be, like Christ, God's answer to prayer, raised up to provision His will.

© Alan Keyes