2020 Strikes Again...

2020 has reached epic meme status in our culture, and it’s affecting not just our secular world but even Christianity itself.  So I guess it shouldn’t surprise me too much that after spending a portion of this evening laying some careful groundwork in evangelizing a friend, that after we were finished with our conversation I would discover that Jerry Falwell, Jr. has taken an indefinite leave of absence from Liberty University. 

That’s not too unusual.  People take leaves of absences all the time and—

Wait, this was actually demanded of him by the board of trustees?  Why would they…. Oh.

Ooooooh.

Falwell posted a picture on his Instagram—a picture that I cannot repost here.  It’s not overly graphic from the world’s standards.  It would barely get a PG rating. But there’s just something distasteful enough about it that I wish I hadn’t seen it.  To provide the bare minimum explanation needed, it involved Falwell with his pants unzipped and open to show his underpants while he is standing next to a woman—who is not his wife—similarly dressed with unzipped pants.

Set aside, for the moment, the strict rules that Liberty University has for their students.  This is something that Falwell decided to publish of his own accord on his own Instagram account, thinking that it would not raise eyebrows that he is taking such a suggestive picture with a woman who, again, is not his wife.  While all of us are sinners and I can easily foresee Christians falling into bad behaviors, I cannot understand how someone of Falwell’s experience with the media could have possibly thought for even a second that this was a good idea.  Someone would almost literally have to be drunk to think tha—

What’s that?  Oh, Falwell called into a radio station and “explained” what the picture was, saying that the woman was pregnant and couldn’t snap her pants, so “in good fun” he decided to join her.  And while providing this explanation, he was slurring his words and speaking with all the mannerisms of someone three sheets to the wind.

So 2020 strikes again.  And this leaves me with the realization that a bunch of the groundwork I just laid in presenting the gospel to a friend may have been obliterated by this news story coming out.  Because one thing I’m sure of is that it will get shared to all the skeptics out there.

Now obviously Christianity is not a religion that is predicated on perfect people never sinning.  I’ve had to go through this in the past with other failures of high profile Christians, and certainly we will all have to do so anew in the future.  For all I know, it might even involve me falling in some future calamity.  There but for the grace of God go I.

But even knowing that intellectually, and knowing that this does provide an opportunity for us to point to Christ as the necessary sinlessly perfect sacrifice, I cannot deny that there is a lot about this that is disheartening.  Not because it involves Liberty University or Jerry Falwell, neither topic of which has much relevance to my own beliefs and, in fact, whom I’ve had many disagreements with before.  But rather it’s the fact of knowing that once again we are going to have to put up with the flaming slings and arrows of people who will be launching this at us again, and a large part of me just wants to throw in the towel and be done with it.  Let the flames cleanse the Earth.

But then I remember my friend.  And the groundwork that has been built.  The hope that Christ will use it to bring another soul to Himself.  And yes, maybe our next conversation is going to be uncomfortable, annoying, aggravating, and completely frustrating because I’m going to have to go through all the reasons why Jerry Falwell isn’t Christianity.  But maybe my friend will be saved because of that conversation.  Only God knows what will happen, and there’s no reason for me to give up when only God knows.

Not even 2020 can disobey the will of God.