How many times??

Bob Dylan wrote a song recorded by the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary in 1963 called Blowing in the Wind. Written as a song of awakening to social injustice and the inhumanity of war, the song includes one line that recently impacted my thinking - "How many times can man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see".

Today, the Christian community is turning its head - but the Christian community is you - and me - and others who are prone to say "what can I do" or "it's just too big too change". Is that right? - or maybe, just maybe, could change actually be begun by a man who chose not to turn his head but to speak truth into our society.

Mary Ann Glendon, Professor of Law at Harvard Unversity and former Ambassador to the Vatican was invited to speak at Notre Dame commencement and to receive a very distinguished award. She accepted the speaking invitation only to find later that President Obama would also be speaking and that she was to be used to "balance the event". Her being used in this way - as a pawn to balance a man whose views she, and supposedly the Catholic Church, despise - was unacceptable to her. She declined both the honor she was to receive and the commencement speaking engagement. She elected to not turn her head.

Recently Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean, declared her oposition to same-sex marriage on the pageant stage in response to a later-admitted loaded question from homosexual activist Perez Hilton, a pageant judge. She was first runner up but lost - not surprisingly - as a result of her answer.
She later said that when she gave the answer she knew it would cost her the crown. Following the pageant, Hilton bashed Prejean for her answer. Prejean has been attacked viciously for having the courage to speak her values yet her courage may inspire a nation and a generation of young people because she chose to lose the Miss USA crown rather than be silent about her deepest moral values. She elected to not turn her head.

There are other examples of men and women who chose not to turn their heads. The question to you and to me is are we brave enough, tired enough, concerned enough and Christian enough to stand and speak.

Or will it be said of us "How many times can Mike or Bill or Jennifer or April just turn their heads and pretend that they just don't see?" Our society is on the eve of moral destruction - are you focused to speak truth into that society? Or will you just turn your head?