The culture of apology is enduring its greatest momentum since Tiger Woods apologized for his numerous affairs with prostitutes. The apology stock is reaching new highs. At this stage, no one is safe from the apologistas. “Apologize or face the wrath of the mob.” It doesn’t matter if you thought once that Caitlyn Jenner looked better in the cereal box phase of his career, or if you did the unthinkable and accused O.J. Simpson of being insincere in 1995. The end result will be that the apologistas will surf through your Twitter terrain to find your dose of nasties you dared to share with the world in a moment of “weakness.”
You may wonder: what’s next? Are they going to come after a Wheaton College plaque commemorating the lives of missionaries who gave their lives for Jesus? They wouldn’t dare! I come to report that they did indeed.
We all have heard of the glorious deaths of those saints James Elliot and Ed McCully, and others who gave their very lives to minister the gospel truth to the savage tribe in the Ecuadorian jungle. Read the plaque which was given as a gift to Wheaton College, the alma mater of Bill Graham, Nate Saint, and Philip Ryken:
“…for generations, all strangers were killed by these savage Indians. After many days of patient preparation and devout prayer, the missionaries made the first friendly contact known to history with the Aucas.”
The word “savage” in that plaque gave the apologistas the chills. “Savage,” they say, used in any sentence can be detrimental to the well-being of humans who may come from various places around the world and view that description as applying to them. It is de-humanizing; kinda like the way they killed those godly men. But let’s not jump too far.
It is safe to say that someone looked at that word one day and said, “I cannot handle the viciousness of such language and someone must apologize for it!” And behold, that bastion of orthodoxy is now on its way to rephrase that language. Surely whatever comes from that will minimize the barbaric nature of the Aucas in the 1950’s. Test: How would you describe the act of spearing other human beings to death?
Imagine for a moment a plaque in honor of Jonah, who despite his own frailties, preached to the “barbaric Ninevities…let’s go ahead and call them savages,” and led to a wholesale revival in the city. We wouldn’t want to speak poorly of those sweet decapitators of human skulls! Off with their heads!
The apology culture means that Wheaton and a host of other institutions must correct history as it was and modernize their entire vocabulary to fit the standard of the first idiotic college student who feels offended by any word. But to be fair, it wasn’t just a freshman, it was faculty and staff who were outraged by it as well. And this leads me to say, “Do not send your children to Wheaton!” a They have drunk the apologistas’ kool-aid and have descended into the absurdity.
We are now at a point where the martyrs need to apologize, and the sad reality is that there are thousands of evangelical leaders saying, “Yes, they do, but since they are not alive, we will do it for them.”Ladies and gentlemen, this is not just a grammar issue, it’s a grandeur issue. The modern evangelical landscape no longer allows the grandeur of the Christian story to shine without nuancing it to death.
The truth is, “abortion doctors are savages,” “indigenous people who kill others are savages,” “Nero was a savage,” and gasp: “Hitler was a savage.” But I don’t want to go all crazy here, so I will stop!
The practical solution here is to say as many things publicly as possible so that they will have a tremendous case against you when they come after your words. May it be undeniable that we defended Nate Saint and the memory of Elizabeth Eliot’s husband who fought valiantly against tyrannical and primitive, savage humans who 70 years ago did not have the illumination of the Gospel. May their memories never be erased and may we never apologize for their labors. They fought savages with the Gospel, and as a result, now enjoy the blessings of Christ in their heavenly rest.
- I speak as one writer in the Kuyperian team, and do not speak for KC as a whole. (back)
