Just a sampling of the familial interactions in our day of apostasy.
Years ago, I was sitting at the dining room table at my parents-in-law's house. There was nothing on the table, and all the chairs around the table were empty except the one in which I was sitting. The table had not yet been set for the buffet food.
As I sat there, a young niece, about 12 years of age, walked up to me and in a rude tone declared that she had been sitting in the chair I occupied and wanted that chair back.
I politely pointed her to the rest of the empty chairs in the room and invited her to sit in one of them. As an adult, I was offended that a bratty young girl would "kick me out of my chair" just because she thought she could. There was no reason she had to have that chair; it was an ill-mannered attempt to display control over someone, and I guess I was it.
Even worse, an adult in the room comforted her for not getting her way and scowled at me for not giving up my chair. The adult who coddled the child leaned over and comforted her for not getting her way. There were others in the room who saw the exchange but said and did nothing.
This was only one exchange like this among these people; there were other equally foolish and brutish exchanges. I was the one Christian in the house at the time.
I was polite but not willing to give up the standard that children were to be respectful to adults. This encounter was one of many silly personal attacks that were designed to make me angry. I didn't become angry; I calmly invited her to sit in one of the other chairs.
This example of rudeness and disrespect is one of many in these family situations in which a Christian is fair game for bullying. The adults used similar tactics as well, and even worse, endorsed the rudeness of the one who should have been corrected and made to apologize.
My point in this article is that the culture in which we were raised and the next generation after was narcissistic and selfish to the core. I now understand what it must have been like to live in Sodom and Gomorrah, or in Noah's day when God had to destroy the entire world because of the wickedness upon it.
The Pacific Northwest is one of the most ungodly places on earth, full of rudeness that people think is normal. The challenge is to stay so close to Christ that we do not become like the culture around us.
In a culture such as this, we are chastised for correcting and calling out rudeness, even by other "Christians." They have been misguided by the psychological teaching of most churches that a good Christian "just lets everything go," as though instruction and correction are the new hate speech.
Growing up in a community with standards of respect and politeness, a child would never demand an adult move from their chair to give it to a child. Just the opposite, a child would be expected to give up their seat for an adult if it were the only chair left in the room. Children always sat on the floor to leave the chairs for the adults. So you can see my astonishment at the rudeness of this untrained child.
Leviticus 19:32 "You shall rise up before the gray-headed and honor the aged, and you shall revere your God".
I was not aged in this encounter, but I was an adult mother of children. The lack of support for the principles of God in this environment influenced our own children to become much like this ungodly family, only much more covert so as to conceal it, having plausible deniability if ever confronted.
I write these things to encourage other believers who have seen this same thing in their own lives so that they realize it's not them, it's the culture and the world we live in.
We are free to remove ourselves from those who pretend to be Christians but act like the world, even if they are family members.
Matthew 10:35-37 "…35For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ 37Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me;…"
Just remember this: we are free to remove ourselves from family when they gossip, come against the principles of God, and when they resist us, attempting to divert us from our life with Christ.
Never allow the influence of worldly family members to shape us into their likeness. If there is danger of continual pressure to be like them, we are commanded to stay away from them.
2 Timothy 3:1-5
Difficult Times Will Come
"3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
4 treacherous, reckless, conceited lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 holding to a form of Godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these. "
Notice that last verse 5? "avoid such people", they will even claim to be godly but deny Christ through their rejection of His word and lifestyle.
