Matthew 14 – Courage to Speak

Day 14! Halfway through the #DailyMatthew journey (be sure to read the first posting before you start this series). 🙂

Well, as soon as I saw the heading* to Matthew 14, I knew what I needed to reflect on and write about. Courage to speak into contemporary culture.

In just a few short verses, an amazing story is told. A powerful and insecure leader (Herod) is confronted by a fiery and controversial prophet (John), and the prophet ends up dead. Simply because he had the courage to confront the moral and ethical decay that he saw in the political leader. John’s spirituality motivated him to speak up politically and it caused his death physically.

Do I have that kind of courage? Do you? Not a confrontational or arrogant attitude that is looking for a fight (there is already way too much of that in our political, social, and spiritual arenas!), but rather, a deep-seated moral compass grounded in scripture that you and I are willing to express.

Do you and I just watch the moral and societal decay around us, or do we act? Do we play it safe and protect ourselves (temporarily, anyway), or do we stand up for ethical, moral, social, and biblical values? History shows that societies that keep quite are societies that spiral down into dysfunction and destruction.

So really, there are only two questions:

Do you and I have a moral and ethical compass that is grounded in truth and scripture?
If so, will you and I have the courage to act according to that compass?

Canada desperately needs Christians to have both.

Mark