Christians and Lions

Recently in my ultra-liberal city of Portland, I found myself driving behind a car with just one bumper sticker. “So many Christians,” it read, “So few lions.” I wondered what could possess a person to adorn their car with this one homicidal sentiment—and then possess my community to let them drive around, unaccosted. A friend and I discussed later what other slogans might be put on a bumper sticker.

What if it said “So many Jews, so few gas chambers”? It could read, “So many blacks, so few nooses.” Or “So many Muslims, so few Abu Ghraibs.” How long would it take for a car with that sticker to be pulled over? Twenty minutes?  

The double standard is evident everywhere.

A superior court judge recently ruled that the National Education Association can discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation—if they’re discriminating against ex-gays. The NEA refused to let an ex-gay organization run an information booth at their conference, and the judge said this was fine. The DC Office of Human Rights said ex-gays aren’t protected from discrimination because their sexual orientation obviously isn’t “immutable;” (they abandoned practicing homosexuality) . This kind of wordplay just shows the power of legal activists to manipulate discrimination laws to protect some citizens not others.

The Washington Times reports that a ten-year-old New Hampshire girl has been ordered to attend public school; the state disapproves of her mother’s firm Christianity and says she must be exposed to other religious faiths. Would they have done this to a Jewish or Muslim child? Unlikely.

By “exposure to other religious faiths,” the court really means “exposure to severe skepticism about Christianity.” In time for next Easter, children’s author Philip Pullman will treat us to his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. The book claims the apostle Paul cooked up the “story” that Jesus was divine. Pullman told The Times that Paul’s “fervid imagination” is the only reason anyone thinks Jesus was the incarnated God. A rep from Canongate Books calls it a “book of genuine importance, a radical and ingenious retelling of the life of Jesus that demystifies and illuminates this most famous and influential of stories.” But you don’t have to wait until Easter for more pseudo-history claiming to uncloak the real facts about Jesus’ illegitimacy, bastard love child with Mary Magdalene, or other attacks on the faith. Christmas is right around the corner, and it brings scholarly attacks on Christianity as dependably as supermarket poinsettias.

The double standard also extends to those notorious cartoons. The Danes’ one-panel Mohammed cartoon created a ruckus around the world. Jews fight back too: the Arab European League is being prosecuted for a one-panel cartoon less than reverent about the Holocaust. But what about Christians? An entire comic book, Prince of Pieces, skewers a zombie Jesus—and no one fears hate crime charges. By Sam Miserendino, the comic book is about “a pissed off zombie Jesus returning to devour the flesh of sinners…As one character wryly observes, "For two thousand years you've been eating His flesh and drinking His blood... Now it's His turn."” The comic book isn’t even enough; a film is in the works, too.

This is not a time for Christians to go silent. Visit www.truthtellers. org for easy-to-follow steps to protest legislative threats to our freedom: threats going forward in Congress right now. This matters far more than protesting even the most grotesque media assault.

There is something each of us can do. My youngest sister reposted one of our stories on Facebook. Sheets of letters to the president, protesting his upcoming signing of the hate bill, sit near our fax machine. I’ve been considering how to carve out twenty minutes daily to call Congress, or commit to call just twenty names.

We need to make protest part of our daily lives, as the attack only thickens. There is reason for hope. Democrats dominate both houses of Congress, making them highly vulnerable at this time of intense voter dissatisfaction. God could still reverse the insidious tide sweeping us out to anti-Christian, anti-freedom seas—if we unite our faith with action.

What really empowers rampant anti-Christianity?

So few Christians who will put lions in their cages.