A few of you have let us know about a couple of blogs and forums that are trashing us.
As usual, I’m getting called a bigot and racist, someone who “obviously doesn’t read his Bible”, just a man pretending to be a conservative so I can be popular. I’m a blowhard full of self-important blathering… a self-righteous know-it-all jerk who thinks I’m never wrong. I’ve heard it all, been called it all.
Let me tell you folks, if I wanted to be POPULAR, I would become an ear-tickling, feel good motivational story teller like many of our current “successful” Christian personalities and wildly popular “pastors”. You don’t get popular taking stands on issues, presenting confident opinion that flies in the face of popular culture, and being unashamedly Christian. To the contrary, that is a sure fire way to assure yourself of a very limited and small readership (which I resigned myself to a long time ago; I will not trade my integrity or my Christian mission for money or popularity, ever).
If I wanted to be popular I’d waste my writing skills putting out fluffy, New Agey, pop culture, “make you feel good” drivel. There are bloggers out there with MILLIONS of loyal, adoring readers who produce the worthless (and eternally dangerous) content which does nothing but stroke the ego and feed fleshly desire. I could be 100 times more popular (and wealthy) by delivering that kind of entertaining but useless garbage on my blogs.
As well, the haters are saying we are exploiting our adopted children for popularity, using Abby to beg for money, blah, blah, blah. They are spouting all the usual verbal vomit about how we “use” our kids, and only adopt because we want to make money off them (any of you people out there who have adopted and MADE MONEY off the whole thing, please email me and let me in on your secret). Apparently, we constantly beg for money, manipulate people, exploit children and kill small puppies for personal gain.
I appreciate our wonderful blog readers letting us know when someone is trashing us, but to be honest, we could CARE LESS… unless there is some legitimate criticism (which is defined as a solid argument showing that something we teach, practice or write is not Biblical).
We could be handing out thousand dollar bills and there will always be someone out there who will criticize, call names and label us. The blog-vampires will always be there. If you have a blog, get used to that fact. It’s not IF you get “hated” on, it’s WHEN. And that’s really the only reason I’m even taking time to write this. I want to let you know that you can EXPECT to be the target of haters if you have a blog, and especially if you are a Christian or conservative blogger.
Strike one is just having a blog. There are people out there who LIVE to leave nasty comments and criticize.
If you are truly conservative, freedom loving, patriotic and family oriented, that’s strike two. You get a whole new crowd of name callers and blog trolls.
Finally, strike 3, 4, 5 and 6… if you dare proclaim your Christian faith publicly AND ACTUALLY BELIEVE AND PRACTICE THE INSPIRED WORD OF GOD, then you just hit the gold standard trifecta of stereotypes, rejection and hate. All Christians who actually take their faith seriously are automatically bigoted, racist, greedy, homophobic and uncompassionate hypocrites who deserves nothing less than the ire and hatred of all those who are enlightened and free of the myth of God.
Christians stand for everything that the world and pop culture hates. We KNOW people are going to hate us, leave nasty comments, fire up forums full of lies and distortions, spread rumors and do anything they can to get people to reject us.
John 15:18-20 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.
As soon as you present this Bible verse, everyone starts howling about you being a “conspiracy nut”. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just a fact of being a Christian in a world that hates Christ, and hates God’s authority over His creation. ALL Christians will face the hate of this world. Any Christian choosing to have a PUBLIC presence invites a quadruple dose of that hate. We understand that.
We always appreciate our wonderful blog friends who look out for us. We don’t want you to be upset when you read nasty things about us. Just ignore it. We hope people come straight to us for answers when the time comes that they hear a rumor about us. The lies never end, and never will until this old creation is made new.
We are always transparent on our blogs about who we are and what we are doing. If you ever hear something and wonder if it’s true, just email us and ask. We have nothing to hide. We have a decade of Internet presence that speaks to the consistency and authenticity of our life and mission.
We won’t spend one second responding to the blog trolls and haters (unless it serves a purpose to help our readers), but we’ll always have time to respond to someone with an honest question or concern about anything we do.
Teaching Moment
Are you facing any persecution or criticism? A sure fire way to avoid it is to NEVER take a stand for God or good. Criticism and naysayers are a good measure of whether or not we are making a difference. The more we go against the rapidly disintegrating standards of this world and make a stand for Godliness, the more people are going to criticize, persecute and lie about us.
The Bible doesn’t say we MIGHT be persecuted for being Christians and standing up for “right”… it says we WILL be persecuted.
I often have people evaluate their life to see whether they are facing any criticism or persecution. If not, is it because they are not doing anything that will draw criticism or persecution? It only takes the slightest public proclamation of a love for Christ or a modest stand for “good and right” to put a target on your back. So if you are not, or have never, faced any persecution, perhaps it’s because you aren’t doing anything that lets the world know that Jesus is Lord.
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Thanks for letting us know about the hate forums who are trashing us, but really, don’t worry about it. We can’t do anything about them, nor would we even try.
We want to spend our time ministering, serving and helping people. We don’t expect everyone to agree with us about everything, not at all. Lot’s of our friends and readers disagree on occasion with things we teach or write. That’s fine. We aren’t all the same. God didn’t make us all as robots. We don’t claim a monopoly on knowing everything but we have no reason not to be confident in what we do believe is right and true (neither do you).
Ironically, the haters and trolls are wasting their time and helping us. We don’t care what they write, and all they do is cause good and decent people to come to our defense. If someone believes the lies they read on hater forums without coming directly to us and asking, then 1) we can’t help that, and 2) they aren’t really people that would be open to our message anyway. Either way, it doesn’t end up mattering.
God is our defense and the only thing we have to be concerned about is answering to Him… not to a bunch of people hiding behind keyboards tearing down people they don’t even know.