Perhaps you have heard of the frog and the kettle? Basically, the boiling frog is an apologue describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly.
I highly value the fact that I was born in a democratic America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. For the past fifteen years, we have enjoyed the unique privilege of living in the only free and democratic country in the Middle East, the nation of Israel. As a follower of Christ, I am extremely grateful for the freedom that I have received through His love and grace. Freedom is a gift from God to the human race, to ultimately fulfill His purposes on earth. I don’t believe it is an exaggeration to say that these freedoms are under attack by sinister agendas of control and conformity, all in the name of equality and the betterment of humanity.
I like the word, galvanize. It’s a word that means to incentivize, energize and vitalize. This word is used metaphorically of any stimulus which results in activity by a person or group of people, such as to "galvanize into action" meaning stimulating a complacent person or group to take action.
A group of truckers in Canada are currently capturing the attention of the world. They are the most recent stimulus that has galvanized many who have been marginalized by the mainstream and stirred them to action to challenge the pervading political and social script. This form of protest is catching on in other countries as well, including Israel. People are pretty fed up and are actually rising up and speaking up to communicate their beliefs with conviction, taking a stand of non-compliance and no compromise as it pertains to protecting personal freedoms and challenging excessive governmental overreach. The truckers call it the Freedom Convoy.
Like many of us, I have been thinking a lot about what is happening in our world and wrestling with the rising challenges to the freedoms that most of us have long enjoyed. I think it is a timely and worthy consideration to try and determine whether you are living by compliance, complacency or conviction. Let me start with defining these terms, not to insult you, but to hopefully inspire you to take a look inside your own heart and determine what is the driving force behind your personal decisions.
Compliance is the action or fact of complying with a wish or command. It’s similar to the word acquiescence. In law, acquiescence occurs when a person knowingly stands by without raising any objection to the infringement of their rights. It’s the reluctant acceptance of something without protest.
Complacency is a feeling of being satisfied with how things are and not wanting to try to make them better. It’s usually unaware or uninformed self-satisfaction.
Conviction is simply a firmly held belief or opinion.
My sense is that these strange times we are living through are shifting people into one of these three categories from which they are making their decisions. Maybe there are more, but these three seem to be the most common that I have seen.
I’d like to share a personal story. It has to do with our daughter, and the first three years of her life. Without getting into all the detail, she basically suffered from a severe neurological condition, as a baby, and there was little hope offered to us regarding a successful treatment path. It was a vaccine injury. It was a very scary time for us, and we really didn’t know what to do other than to pray and ask God for help, which He graciously provided. My point in sharing this part of our story is that if we had followed conventional, certified, mainstream, medical advice, we wouldn’t have achieved the result of a completely healed and healthy child today. The fact was, that there was only one treatment path being offered for a child with our daughter’s diagnosis, and there were zero success stories for those who accepted that treatment path. We knew something wasn’t right about it, and so we resisted that mainstream narrative. The result of our decision to resist gave way to being divinely guided onto an alternative path, which ultimately led to her complete healing and wholeness.
During those years, we fought off apathetic resignation and passivity, and we learned the supreme importance of not making decisions out of fear, frustration, or finances. Instead, we learned to make decisions based in faith on God’s word and the leading of His Spirit in our lives. We learned to listen for His practical leadership and to follow His directives. The result? Against all the odds, she completely recovered and is thriving to this day.
It wasn’t easy for us to go against the flow — it never is. It challenged some of our very close relationships. We risked our reputation, and were probably misunderstood by many. It’s pretty hard to know what to do when there aren’t many footprints to follow. We had to learn how to purely trust God, to research and be informed, to humbly listen for His voice, and not violate our conscience or our inner peace. Looking back, our resistance back then can be respected now because everyone can see the result, and it is a good result.
I’m not going to specifically address the elephant in the room. I’m pretty sure that we are all quite fatigued with information and misinformation about viruses, vaccines, masks, mandates, restrictions, 5G radiation and the impact of these things in the future. What I am specifically addressing is, what is driving your personal decisions in the midst of it all? Is it carte blanche compliance? Is it a complacent acquiescence? Is it conviction based in truth? Or is it something else?
Why is it so easy to praise the courage and boldness of pioneers, protesters, reformers, and resisters from generations ago, but be so unsupportive of those who stand up, speak up, and challenge the mainstream narrative today? The ones who are speaking out are being vilified, marginalized, and cancelled by cultural influencers and leaders, but worse yet, they are met with compliant silence by some prominent leaders of the very household of God. What’s crazy, is that if Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident was alive today, he would probably be labeled a wacko conspiracy theorist, and completely silenced on social media. The very ones who endorse his defiance a generation ago, are the very same ones who promote full compliance with government mandates today. I think there is a term for that, and it’s not complimentary.
So, here’s the bottom line as I see it. If you are living in reluctant acceptance of something without protest, you fall into the compliance category, leaning toward acquiescence. You are knowingly standing by without raising any objection to the infringement of your rights and the rights of others.
If you are satisfied with how things are and not wanting to try to make them better, then you are dealing with a complacency issue, living in a state of unaware or uninformed self-satisfaction and distraction.
If you are speaking out and walking out a firmly held belief or opinion, based on truth, then you are living a life of conviction, and that’s a challenging thing. Conviction is the definitive starting line for real change to take place in our life and in our world.
I truly hope that you understand the message that I’m trying to convey. I’m not asking any of us to operate outside of our spheres or to fight battles that we are not called to fight. This is not about endorsing political activism, or being a cultural dissident, simply to incite further division. This is mostly about encouraging us all to live with a greater sense of conviction and to find the courage to do the right things even if it challenges the popular narrative today. Our time is now and the water in the kettle is heating up.
“It’s not enough to believe in something. You have to be ready to stand for something, if you want change.” —Edward Snowden
If you are interested in an article from an American Journal that addresses Civil Disobedience from an historical and biblical perspective, written in 1970, check this out. In my opinion, it addresses the issues and provides some relevant insights for us today. The link to the full article is below, which I encourage you to read in its entirety. https://academic.oup.com/jcs/article/12/3/373/816846
Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem.