Guest Editorial
By Matt Barber | JUNE 8, 2016
Why I had to write 'Hating Jesus'
“Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.”
~ John 15:20
The answer had to be yes. The Holy Spirit made it crystal clear. When Tristan Emmanuel, managing publisher and CFO of BarbWire Books, called me and said it was time for me to put pen to paper and write a book on the anti-Christian left’s demonic war on religious liberty (and all things godly and good), I immediately agreed.
And so with the tireless help of my project partner – author, researcher, editor and veteran intelligence expert Paul Hair – I have now released my new book, “Hating Jesus: The American Left’s War on Christianity.”
Why did I write the book? Because it had to be written. God’s natural created order, His immutable, scientific and transcendent moral precepts, as well as the very lives and livelihoods of Christian Americans, are under vicious attack today at a level unprecedented in American history.
I had to sound the alarm. And I had to lay out a clear defensive strategy as to how we Christians might preserve our American, indeed our Christian, way of life.
What a mess our world is in. What a mess America is in. What a mess the church is in.
Depressed yet?
Isaiah 5:20 encapsulates, I believe, the cultural condition of much of the world, most of America and an alarmingly high percentage of those who belong, or at least claim to belong, to the body of Christ. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
Calling evil good. That sums us up.
There are evil blasphemies beyond imagination being foisted upon the American people today by our own godless government in the name of “progress.” Things like presidential edicts that open up little girls’ showers to grown men; the sin-centric and oxymoronic notion of “gay marriage”; forced taxpayer funding of child sacrifice; and forced participation by Christ’s followers in all the above sins, under penalty of law, to name but a few.
Amid the final sprint to election 2016, the secular left’s utter disdain for both our Creator Christ and His faithful followers is fast approaching critical mass. Self-styled “progressives” – that is, America’s cultural Marxist agents of ruin – typically disguise their designs on despotism in the flowery and euphemistic language of “reproductive health,” “anti-discrimination,” “civil rights” and “multiculturalism.”
Just a few short decades ago a churchgoing man who publicly supported the right to life, backed laws protecting marriage and spoke freely of Christ’s love for fallen man would be universally recognized as a fine and upstanding citizen. He would be welcomed anywhere, including at the highest levels of power.
But things have changed. In today’s America, the progressive left actively endeavors to destroy such a man. Modern American liberals start by vilifying Christians. They then begin scheming, quite often with success, to get Christians terminated from employment and forever marked with a scarlet “C” to inhibit any future prospects for employment.
Next, they simultaneously attack their family and work to tear it apart, at once sending a warning shot over the bow of other Christians and pushing them to the fringes of society.
The ultimate goal? Conform to their pagan demands, or face incarceration.
American progressives have co-opted every elite institution: schools, government, the media, Hollywood and the arts – even, at an increasing rate, many conservative organizations. What’s worse is that progressivism has, like a deadly cancer, fully metastasized into what passes for the church in America. There is a great falling away afoot, and apostasy is widespread.
The secular left doesn’t merely have a disagreement with Christianity. These are not people with whom one may reason, compromise or even disagree. They are dedicated to evil. They demand nothing less than the abolition of the biblical worldview and the destruction of Christ’s followers right along with it.
Now is the time to fight back. If you are someone, Christian or not, who refuses to see Christianity wiped out (like it ever could be) and your children indoctrinated into pure evil, then sitting on the sidelines is no longer an option.
In “Hating Jesus,” I first document how successful the American left has been in its War on Christianity and then conclude by providing both hope and a simple action plan on how the body of Christ can fight back against the enemies of God.
We live in dire times. But, with Christ, it’s never too late to turn the tide.
The American church has a problem. It’s one part fear, one part confusion and one part apathy. Pastors, priests and rabbis have long swallowed the false notion that all things religious and all things political are somehow mutually exclusive – that never the twain shall meet.
Nonsense. They’re one in the same.
Leading up to Ronald Reagan’s landslide presidential victory in 1980, Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founder of Liberty University, captured the crux of the church’s apathy problem. “I’m being accused of being controversial and political,” he said. “I’m not political. But moral issues that become political, I still fight. It isn’t my fault that they’ve made these moral issues political. But because they have doesn’t stop the preachers of the Gospel from addressing them. …”
Nor does it stop those of us in the pews from standing right alongside them.
Indeed, it is not just within the church’s purview, but it is the church’s duty to insert itself into state matters relating to morality, public policy and culture at large.
The push back has begun. Christian governors, lawmakers, business owners, lawyers, parents, judges, county clerks, organizations, universities, hospitals, adoption agencies and other individuals and groups have been given an ultimatum by the anti-Christian left: “Keep your Christianity at church and away from our culture!”
To which we say, “Not on your life.”
“Or our own.”
Will you join the fight?
Matt Barber is founder and editor-in chief of BarbWire.com. He is an author, columnist, cultural analyst and an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. Having retired as an undefeated heavyweight professional boxer, Matt has taken his fight from the ring to the culture war. (Follow Matt on Twitter: @jmattbarber).
