Feeling like The Three Stooges

In an old Three Stooges skit, our latter-day musketeers (sans the nobility and tabards) find themselves at attention in a military lineup, as the commander calls for a volunteer for a dangerous mission. He then turns away for a moment, and at that precise instant, Moe and Larry take one measured step backward, leaving the feckless Curly standing alone and exposed up front, looking as if he has just taken a step forward. When the officer turns around again to survey the line, he thanks Curly for volunteering for the mission.

I am feeling that way as a Bible-following Christian in the 21st century. When I started out in life I was pretty much in line with everyone else’s thinking in America—Christian as well as unbeliever. We all agreed that homosexuality was wrong, and men dressing up in women’s clothing was creepy, and that people who performed such acts were either sick or depraved but definitely needing help, not civil rights and parades.

In more recent decades it was only the Christian churches that stood alone as a bulwark against the insanity. You could still count on that at least. Then gradually—one renegade church here, one far-out denomination there—the churches started to get friendlier to the idea of homosexuality. But still, there were more of us than there were of them. But at some point in the culture critical mass is reached regarding a once unthinkable idea that accelerates the wholesale acceptance of the idea. No one wants to be the odd man out.

I was once introduced to now-retired U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., in Washington, D.C., and he cut right to the chase. Why is it, he asked, that whenever the world slides deeper into depravity, the church is just two steps behind it? WORLD’s 2014 Daniel of the Year pantomimed the situation with his two raised hands, showing first the movement of one hand through the air to a new position, and then the movement of the other hand in the same direction. Although the distance between the two hands remains constant, both have moved away from their original position. The illusion is created that the church is standing fast. It believes it is not becoming worldly because it is still at a fixed distance from the world, but in reality it is following close behind.

I now find myself, as do many of you, disdained by friends and family members (one recently called me “insane and delusional”) for espousing opinions about human behavior that were nigh universally held by Americans less than a hundred years ago. Those who believe that Christians are unenlightened haters should take a tip from The Three Stooges and Frank Wolf and understand that it was not we who moved, but they.