I've been thinking about this a lot over the past several weeks. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say something to the effect of: "well, it seems like the majority of people feel differently, so it looks like you're in the minority".

There is so much emphasis placed on what the "majority" thinks. We see it all over the place—especially in the news—where headlines stressing this reality are commonly used to make people stop and question whether or not they are, indeed, on the wrong side of history and whether or not they are comfortable being there.

Here are some examples:

• The Majority of Americans Won't Hand Out Halloween Candy - Relevant Magazine
• A Majority Of Americans Think Democracy Is In Trouble - Forbes
• Majority of Americans living paycheck to paycheck - The Highland County Press
• A clear majority of Americans — 62% — support a nationwide law that protects the right to get an abortion. - Planned Parenthood

And when I see these headlines or receive comments like these on social media, I do feel like a minority voice. But here's another reality: I actually don't care!

THERE IS NO MORAL AUTHORITY IN THE MAJORITY
Thankfully, I came the the realization a long time ago, that as a Christian man—whose primary aim in life is to glorify God and honor his word—many of my views, decisions, words, and actions won't be viewed by the majority of people in my culture as good. In fact, many of my convictions—the things I stand for at the very core of my being—are not only seen as problematic, but are also considered (by many) to be wrong or even evil.

Don't believe me? Do you think I'm being overly-dramatic? Follow me on this thought experiment, if you'd be so kind.

THE (MORAL) BATTLE OF THE BULGE
Which of the following two people do you think has the greatest risk of being called out, criticized, or cancelled by American culture?

Person One: A man—who dresses up as a caricature of a women and has over 8-million followers on TikTok—who makes clownish efforts to normalize the phallic-shaped bulge which he suggests women can have when they put on hotpants and parade their perversion in public.

OR

Person Two: A woman, a Senator from Tennessee to be precise, who pushes back on the efforts of the aforementioned wackadoodle, and publicly rejects BOTH the pervert and those who support his efforts to subjugate God's law and reject the authority and sovereign rule of the Author and Creator of life.

We already have our answer folks. While President Biden, who self-admittedly struggles to remember he is President, has remained busy calling out the deplorable Ultra-Mega-MAGA types, he still found time to invite the TikTok Tranny, also known as Dylan Mulvaney, to the White House so he could exploit Dylan's "celebrity status" to gain a few virtual virtue-signal points with all the Americans who are hellbent on celebrating depravity.

SEX IN THE CITY
Now to be clear, this wasn't an act of hostile hospitality; as some liberal theologians would like us to believe. The demand, from the men of Sodom, was for Lot to send out the angels so the townsfolk could "know" them in the gang-rapey sense of the word.

To restate it, the majority of the men in Sodom had come into agreement that the most appropriate way to welcome new-comers into their city was to pull them into the town square and rape them. And Lot found himself on the wrong side of history. He was the only man in the entire city, willing to call out the wicked desires of the moral majority.
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Now, of course, we must also recognize that Lot was far from a model citizen, himself. Instead of giving into the perverted lust of his townsfolk, he instead offered them a consolation of his two virgin daughters. Not really a great example of father of the year. However, the point I'm trying to make here isn't how wonderful Lot was, but rather how depraved and perverted the men of Sodom were; you know, those who found themselves in the majority.

A culture which is dead set on rejecting what God calls good and celebrating that which God calls evil, will often use horizontal measurements to try and compel others to join them in their sin. In fact, that's basically what a mob does. 

Mob mentality—also called herd or hive mentality—is the inclination that some humans have to be part of a large group, often neglecting their individual feelings in the process, and adopting the behaviors and actions of the people around them.

Now this doesn't mean that individuals aren't held accountable for their own decisions or that they have no capacity to examine and then reject the behavior of the majority. On the contrary, what it actually means is that there is a psychological and spiritual explanation for why they don't.

Temptation seeks to disguise itself with many different forms of validation. For example, a piece of fruit looks good to the eyes, so it must be good for the body, right? Or a desire to be accepted or not rejected by others certainly has some immediate payouts; and how can it be wrong if so many people say it's right?

There are countless ways which sin temps us to reject God's word—which he has made explicitly clear in scripture—and make excuses for why it's outdated, irrelevant, confusing, or worse of all flawed. Yet, these are the excuses that so many professing Christians make, when they do theological gymnastics in order to justify their decision to be in the majority; even when the majority is embracing and celebrating sin.

IT'S BETTER TO FRIENDLESS AND FAITHFUL, THAN POPULAR AMID THE GODLESS  
Pilgrims, here's the point I'm trying to make in all my rambling. When it comes to the Christian journey, it is far better to find yourself on the wrong side of history, than it is to find yourself on the wrong side of eternity.

Jesus told us, in the Gospel of Matthew:
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (Matt. 7:21)

History has given us countless examples of people who rejected God, in order to be counted among the majority. However, when we stand before God (alone) on judgment day; we will not be able to give our excuses, blame our associates, or offer futile justifications about why we chose to reject God's law in order to be accepted by the lawless.

So, before you decide to lay down your cross and join the mob, remember that even thought the voice of the majority may be the loudest voice you hear, it is the voice of God—found in the word of God and the finished work of Jesus Christ—that matters for eternity.
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I know I'm going to raise some hackles with this post, so I'm trying to be up front about it in hopes that it will help reduce the shock and eliminate as much of the offense as humanly possible.

KINDNESS, APART FROM CHRIST, IS A HEAPING PILE OF ****
Seriously. Kindness makes a horrible substitute for a Savior. It's true. Whatever you want to call it—whether it's altruism, generosity, charity, goodwill, philanthropy, humanitarianism or one of the other 10,000 names we've given it over time—kindness, without Christ, is a heaping pile of poop.

Why? Because kindness can't save anyone. Kindness can't earn or restore righteousness. The Bible is very clear that even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). And not just any rags either, but rags which have been used by a woman (or for those playing silly word games, "menstruating people")—during her menstruation cycle.

So kindness, albeit it a decent way to measure character, fails when it comes to salvation because no amount of kindness can save a person from God's wrath.

THE DECEPTION OF KINDNESS
Now, please hear me out. I want to be clear. I am not anti-kindness. I may be pugnacious, and I might have the guilty pleasure of enjoying Nick Lowe from time-to-time, but I don't actually think it's cruel to be kind! 

In fact, it's cool to be kind. It's right. It's good. It's honorable. It's just. It's moral. But it's not sufficient. And that's the real rub for me on this issue.

There seems to be some kind of misconception about kindness and its value to the human soul. We see it all over the place. Yard signs, t-shirts, bumper stickers, coffee cups, and social media posts all leading us towards the same lie. That kindness matters more than anything. So, whether you're a Christian, an atheist—gay, straight or anything in between—the one thing that matters all the time is whether or not you are kind.

Yet the Apostle Paul's words in Philippians 3 tell a very different story. In fact, his quest for righteousness crumbled, when he came face to face with Jesus. Paul's self-righteous high castle, which he built brick-by-brick in his lifelong pursuit of righteousness, was destroyed; and he was all the better for it. That's why his words have so much relevance in today's culture of kindness. Let's take a look. 
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And there you have it. As clear and plain as one could hope for, from a guy whose self-righteousness was utterly destroyed by the eternal power and surpassing worth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul tells us, in his letter to the church, that he counts everything as loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ and receiving Christ's righteousness; through faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross.

CHRIST IS THE KEY TO KINDNESS
As we already eluded to, righteousness apart from Christ is a sinful pursuit. It's roots are in pride and self-sufficiency, and arrogance, and self-righteousness. Good deeds, done apart from Christ are not good. They may be seen as good and in fact they may be tied to goodness; but they are not good because they can never be good enough.

When Jesus was called good, he immediately asked the question: why do you call me good? He then followed up his question with a statement that is so important for us to hear and acknowledge: No one is good--except God alone. (Mark 10:18, Luke 18:19).

Any efforts by man to do good fall short of the standard God has created for what it means to be good. This includes kindness. No matter how hard we try to be kind, without Christ's righteousness, our kindness is like a used tampon or menstrual pad.

I know we don't like hearing this, but that doesn't make it any less true or necessary. In fact, it might make it even more important or imperative because our sinful hearts try to reject truth and replace it with lies that tickle our ears. 

OUR KINDNESS CERTAINLY HAS TO COUNT FOR SOMETHING, RIGHT?
When it comes to eternity, everything that a man does to earn the favor of God, will burn. And if the only thing a man has is a list of all the kind and compassionate things he did in order to find favor with God, the saddest news of all is that a man's efforts will always fall short of the standard God has for holiness; namely, perfection.

Only Christ's finished work on the cross is sufficient for reconciling man to God. Therefore it is a fool's errand to seek to do kind things, if those kind things are not connected to or extensions from Jesus. And not only that, when we look at the things which the culture considers to be kind, we quickly see they often contradict what the Bible says is good and righteous and holy.

This is why the Apostle Paul can so confidently say, everything he did was like rubbish (i.e. human excrement) compared to what he received—by grace alone through faith alone—in Jesus Christ. It was not Paul's righteousness or kindness that put him in good standing with God. It was Christ's finished work on the cross.

NOT ALL KINDNESS IS CREATED EQUALLY.
It's right to be kind, but kindness is only good when it is rooted in the source of every good and perfect thing. God is the source of good and only what God calls good can, in fact, be good. Anything else is an imposter. 

If kindness is defined or measured based on how it makes a person feel, then validation of kindness is subjective. However, if kindness is measured based on what God calls good, then there is an entirely different standard by which it should be measured. 

Affirming someone in a decision they are making or a lifestyle they are choosing may leave them feeling validated, supported, and honored. But these feelings—and the actions taken by people to stimulate the feelings in others—should not be confused or conflated with kindness. It is very possible, especially in a world corrupted by sin, for a person to be validated in a choice that dishonors God and themselves; even when it feels good and seems right. In this case, the validation is neither kind nor good. In fact, by the objective standard of God's word, it is more rightly considered cruel and evil.

Sin always distorts the truth and often times leaves people feeling good about themselves and their choices, but goodness is not assessed by subjective feelings. It is assessed by the objective truth of God's Word. Our culture wants us to believe and accept that true kindness will produce happy feelings, but the Bible is clear that true kindness produces the fruits of godliness.

True kindness will always line up with the truth of God's word. Any efforts at kindness which contradict what God has clearly stated in the Bible or lead a person to sin against God or others should always be seen as evil; regardless how it makes a person feel.

God's word calls us to love one another, and love is patient and kind. However, kindness will never undermine God nor will it lead a person to sin. True kindness will always  lead to freedom and freedom is never found in the bondages of sin or enticing others towards spiritual slavery and death. 

Now, for those who are still hellbent on making kindness the chief end of man, let me leave you with this thought. A Christian can, indeed, come into agreement that kindness is man's highest aim, as long as he first acknowledges that any acts of kindness must be rooted in man's primary objective in life; namely, to glorify God and fully enjoy him forever. This can only be accomplished when a man chooses what is morally good over what his culture tells him is kind. True kindness is not the absence of feelings but rather the presence of a fuller joy. A joy which is rooted in Christ, and never cedes truth in exchange for trite accommodations like acceptance, tolerance, or celebrations of sin; which always makes promises it can't keep at the expense of a hope which could never be lost.
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