You Have to Know to Protect
I prayed for some young Christian parents today, ones I know and love and admire, and I had some clarifying thoughts as I walked in the sun (and lost my breath going up a hill and regretted that I wore a long-sleeved shirt) as I prayed.
To protect something, whether it’s your family or your church or an institution like a school or a company, there are some things you have to know. And one of them is this:
You must know the likeliest threats to the thing you’re protecting.
A farmer has to know whether he’s in a drought or an early frost is coming. A shepherd has to know whether wolves or disease is the likelier threat in a given season. A gardener shouldn’t be looking for insects and animals to keep away if he has one little rabbit nibbling his cherry tomatoes once a day but weeds cropping up all over his garden; he should get out his gloves and focus on weeds.
To protect something you must be able and willing to identify the likeliest threats to it.
“Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. Her princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain. And her prophets have smeared whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord God,’ when the Lord has not spoken. The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the sojourner without justice. And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none.” Ezekiel 22:26-30
If a man or a family thinks the greatest danger or error to protect against for the typical family in our day and place is overly dogmatic Christian legalism or some form of overly zealous Christian patriotism, he’s going to have a lot of casualties on his watch. Our dads and our moms and our pastors and our theologians need to be mindful of the actual blight that is actually afflicting most of our gardens and the entire countryside all those gardens are situated in. If you’re more sensitive to something called “Christian nationalism” than to the sexual revolution, you’re looking for bugs to kill in a garden drowning in weeds. If you’re preparing to confront tides of white supremacy but less interested in confronting the lionization of victimhood we’ve enshrined in America, you’re preparing for a drought a week before an ice storm. If you’re looking for inhospitality towards transgendered people among your Christian peers that you can admonish but blind to the way we’ve all softened our revulsion towards sexual deviancies that kill the souls (and sometimes the bodies) of the people who adopt them, you’re giving antibiotics to sheep about to be harassed by wolves.
Protecting always involves knowing the threats most dangerous to the thing you’re responsible to protect. If you can’t assess those threats correctly or aren’t willing to identify and confront the gravest ones accurately, you will leave your people vulnerable.
“Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears.” Acts 20:26-31