Just say no. . .

In what now seems a gazillion years ago, Nancy Reagan promoted a rather simple program to combat the use and the approval of using drugs.  "Just Say No" was an advertising campaign in the 1980s and 1990s in the U.S.-led war on drugs.  It aimed to discourage children from engaging in illegal recreational drug use by offering various ways of saying no -- a word they would have presumably known well from hearing it at home.   The whole thing was ridiculed as naive and foolish.  Already then the world had watched the popularity of marriage begin to wane and with it the popularity of children and family.  Only within the context of a family do those words make sense. 

In the old days a child heard that word from mom or dad often.  It did not come with a qualifier or an explanation.  Because I said so.  That was it.  No was no, as the Scriptures tell us and so it should be.  Matt Walsh wrote a while ago that this is something we need to recover -- the lost art of saying no.  Perhaps he is on to something.  We have instead put on a veneer of niceness and politeness which seems set against saying no to anything -- except tradition.  We do so without thinking and without consideration of the consequences.  Back in the days when long distance was costly, I found out a scam in which the long distance carrier phoned you to ask if Larry Peters was your name and when you said "yes" it recorded the simple word "yes" as proof that you had agreed to switch carriers.  I am no longer quite so naive.  No is my standard reply to such calls anymore.  No, I am not Larry Peters, I do not want to save any money, and I am not in charge of anything.  Words have consequences.  No as a word has consequences.

Before I have written of those who are too nice to say "no" to things they really do not approve of but cannot bring themselves to rain on anyone's parade.  It is part of the Midwestern and rural culture to be polite.  So some folks stay in churches which have said "yes" to all kinds of things Scripture says "no" to and the people stay because they are nice and do not want to make a fuss.  No means making a fuss.  So we say nothing and that becomes our tacit approval for the liberal direction of church and state, for our acceptance of the Woke agenda, and for our consent to the foolishness that parades as a new morality of if it feels good do it.  We need to learn how to say no.

Scripture is filled with the word no.  While some of the occasions for the word "no" are framed in commandments no one wants to hear, they are not the only places where the Bible says "no" to what we want to be "yes."  God says no not because He hates us or wishes to punish us but because love requires us to say no to that which is not good, right, or salutary.  Saying no can actually be an act of love while saying nothing or saying yes is loveless.  Saying no is also not necessarily legalistic and maybe just the opposite.  

The Church has become reticent about saying "no" and instead tries to explain instead of saying a no to what the world wants.  We have become very good at saying why something is not as good as it should be instead of echoing the words of our grandparents and saying no to such stuff.  No.  Don't do online communion.  No.  Don't presume that abortion and birth control can be positive and useful and it is up to the woman to decide.  No.  Don't hide the names for God that the Bible teaches when the room includes people who have other gods.  No.  Don't speak of the debate over sexual desires and genders as if it were some little thing.  No.  Don't speak as if the doctrines that divide us are not important while the wiggle words we use for the things we have in common are really fine and dandy.  Let your no be no.

If my mom were here, she would tell you.  No.  Because I said so.  And that would be it.  Alas, that is something we hardly hear anymore from anyone.