It's been two and a half years since the bulk of my Indiana Revival Reports, but I've continued to follow Kyle Lance Martin and Time to Revive, as they held extended meetings in Florida, Ohio, Dallas, and now Wisconsin. An interesting update came out in a recent sermon in Wausau: at about 1:40:40 in this video, Kyle Martin tells about the Michiana farmer who lost a majority of his wholesale business after putting peel-away gospel stickers on 600,000 of his watermelons. I saw some of those rejected watermelons, donated by the crate to a local food pantry, the sticker still on them. They tasted just fine.
Like a frog in a teakettle, American Christians are experiencing such a gradual loss of their liberty that most young adults have no idea how much their country has changed just in their lifetimes. Thirty years ago, for example, women were typically addressed as either Mrs. or Miss; those titles have almost universally been replaced by Ms.--not, as far as I know, due to a single court decision--definitely not to an act of Congress--but the social pressure to conform to the new normal has sufficed to snuff out two words that were, not all that long ago, among the most commonly spoken ones in our vocabulary. And now, a six-year-old is investigated for calling a friend 'he' when he now prefers 'she'. Two even more common words are in immanent danger of disappearing themselves.
Elizabeth Elliot lived among naked savages in Ecuador--well, they were still naked savages when she met them, but contact with incarnated Christianity was rapidly changing that. She ate what they ate, lived where they lived, spake as they spake, and even let her daughter run wild with their children--but she drew the line at dressing as they dressed: a single cotton string around the waist, or--if they really wanted to dress up--one around the upper arm as well. She didn't want to just identify with their culture--she wanted to uplift it. And as they saw the three incarnate Christians wearing clothes, they all started wearing them too--and have ever since.
Christians just aren't going to be socially acceptable to a depraved and fallen culture. They needn't bother to even try to keep up with the decline. Any who continue trying to comply with the culture's escalating demands are just hoping that the crocodile they feed will eat them last.
