When you speak truth, your critics do not answer you as an equal. Emotions rise, and their air of superiority is only surpassed by the disdain in their tone. They will not abide the light shone into their darkness. They have no space for you.
When Zachariah’s eccentric preacher-son come back from the wilderness he drew large crowds. Though he baptised the repentant and preached that the Messiah was near, his critics dismissed his extreme diet and sobriety as proof of having a demon (Luke 7:33).
Naturally, John the Baptiser’s critics soon became Jesus’ critics. Knowing their harsh judgments against him, Jesus told the Pharisees and the experts in the law:
“The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children” (Luke 7:34-35).
The religious leaders took the worst stereotypes of the tax collectors and sinners and deemed Jesus ‘guilty by association!’ Jesus, in turn, deemed those self-same tax collectors and sinners the “children of divine wisdom; proof-positive (vindication) that his plan of redemption was working.”
Our detractors also overlay the worst stereotypes upon us. They accuse us of alienating our families from mainstream society and subjecting them to restrictive beliefs and practices. Like Jesus, we waste out time trying to change their false narrative. But what cannot be silenced nor hidden is the fact that the teachings of Christ are vindicated by the fruit they produce.
“The LORD judges the peoples;
Vindicate me, O LORD,
according to my righteousness
and my integrity that is in me”
(Psalm 7:8).
John Staiger
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