stand in the gap

Does anyone remember Tumblr? 

It’s a microblogging website, a social network, where young millennials and particularly young hipster millennials would create pages and post and reblog, mainly in dedication to various niche fandoms, like gymnastics, anime, and various forms of music. Every blog or “page” had its own unique name, and many years ago I came upon a Tumblr feed whose name I haven’t been able to forget since. I’m not sure if it’s still there, but its name was, “Between hipsters and God, there is Sufjan Stevens.”

You see, back in the early 2000s when indie music was still indie, Sufjan Stevens was one of its best known musicians. His folk-rock albums covered various concepts in life, from cities and states to animals and everything in between. His first album’s name was Seven Swans; his next album was named after the state of Illinois (with its most famous song being aptly named “Chicago”); he had another album called The Age of Adz which to this day, I’m trying to find out what it’s about. But he got his name and his moniker because for a long time, especially in the early part of his career, a good number of his songs covered the Bible. He was never known as a “Christian artist” (and if you look him up now, you’ll know why pretty quickly), but for many hipsters, having grown up in secular society where religion was shunned and kept to the side, his songs were their first exposure to the Bible ever. He was the first Bible they ever read.

In the book of Ezekiel, chapter 22 verse 30, it says “So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found no one.” The context of this verse is very different from anything you would find today. In this verse, God is speaking to a reprobate Israel, a land whose people had been given the commandments of God to follow and instead of even trying to follow them, had spurned them and had turned to all kinds of immorality. And in this verse, God is explaining to the prophet Ezekiel why he saw fit to destroy the land of Israel at that time. He’s explaining that he wasn’t a God who ignored the people who had been loyal to him; he was looking for one person, exactly ONE, who would pray to him and repent on behalf of the land of Israel, and ask him to not destroy the land for their sake. God had done this before with Abraham, back in Genesis, where Abraham asked if he would destroy Sodom if he found 10 righteous people in the city, and he said no. He also did this with Nineveh, the capital of Assyria; he sent Jonah to them to prophesy their destruction, and they turned to him and repented, and he did not destroy them. And God is explaining that if one man could have heeded the prophecies, and had turned to him and repented, and had asked God to not bring destruction upon Israel and Judah, he could have relented.

We live in a very different era now. We have THE person who has stood in the gap for all of us, to reconcile us to God — Jesus Christ! Some Christians in the past have used this verse and this concept to say, “God is going to judge America for all of its sins, and if we don’t pray and fast and beg him, he will destroy our nation!” That’s not what this verse means for us today. If God was going to do that, he would have to apologize to Jesus! He is the true mediator, the one who took on the wrath of God for all our sakes, and through him, we are not only right with God, but we can have fellowship and be friends with God! Praise Him!

But this verse was left in the Bible for a reason, and there is an application for us today.

I previously mentioned Sufjan Stevens. He was and is an indie-folk artist. He never identified as a Christian artist, and yet, for most of his early career, his faith stood out enough for one hipster to declare on a Tumblr blog that he stood between hipsters and God. And I ask one question of you all today: “between who and God are you standing today?”

In case you haven’t noticed, our society is NOT very big on Christianity (or really any religion) today. Yeah, people call America Christian all the time and refer to the Founding Fathers and all of that, but the truth is that right now, it’s pretty secular. Church is basically taught as a place you should keep away from, despite its actual harmlessness if you go in the flesh. Not everyone is going to go into a church and hear a preacher or a priest spread the Gospel. 

But you know who the people in your world will meet? YOU.

And YOU may be the first, or best, Bible that your friends, your coworkers, and the people who meet through your profession, your school or your various interests, will ever “read”.

The Republican preacher who constantly compares the Gospel to whatever Donald Trump is on today may not be necessarily able to spread the Gospel to the liberal, young, Hispanic college student. But a similarly young, apolitical Black college student who the Hispanic college student meets in the ultimate frisbee club or in the band or in their dorm? That person will probably have a much better chance.

The major misconception that people have about “evangelization” (a big word that basically means “being open about your faith”) is that it is only for the preachers, or the most holy people who pray all the time, never sin, are super articulate in debates, and have no problems whatsoever. That’s not true. Mark 4:26-28 says that the Word of God is like a very small seed who the person planting literally throws into the field and hopes that it grows. You don’t have to be perfect, and you don’t have to be one of those people who pass out tracts in the street or yell with megaphones. If you live your life for God, people WILL notice. And if you’re really interested in God and his ways, he’ll naturally come up in your conversations, just like other things you’re interested in or passionate about. God hasn’t had anyone perfect working for him yet.

Shia LaBoeuf, an actor who was really well-known for roles like Louis on Even Stevens and Sam in the first Transformers movie, recently converted to Catholicism. Several years ago, he did an interview on how he came to Christianity. You know who introduced the Gospel to him? Brad Pitt. BRAD PITT! Do you know how I came to know that Brad Pitt was even a Christian? That interview! Brad Pitt is a famous Hollywood actor. He has never had anything to do with the Christian movie scene. But someone told him the Gospel, and evidently, he must have believed it, because when he saw another fellow Hollywood actor struggling in life, he told that other actor the Gospel! And Shia LaBoeuf believed him, not because Brad Pitt was this sinless person, but because Brad Pitt came into his world, and was dealing with the same issues he was, and told him the Gospel as a friend, as someone who wanted Shia LaBoeuf to overcome his own struggles. And that’s how Shia LaBoeuf became a Christian. (I kid you not, look it up!)

I have one last example for you: my best friend from college. She was born and raised in Southern California. Her dad is Nigerian, and her mother is Jewish, the daughter (or granddaughter) of two Holocaust victims. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she was raised by her mom in a secular (though very nice) environment. She identified as a secular humanist when she went to college. On the second day of college, we met in the dining hall and became fast friends. We had all types of good times and conversations. We didn’t talk about God all the time. Sometimes we didn’t talk about Him at all, to be frank. (And to be clear, my college GPA was worse than hers; I struggled for most of the first two years, and she supported me during that time.) But I think with time, God came up in my conversations just naturally. Talking about Him is as natural for me as talking about millennial cartoons, or about foreign languages, or video games, or about any other interest I have. So of course He came up. On my invitation, she came to church with me once, in 2015, 3 years after we met. She did not get saved that day. 

I kept on being her friend and intermittently praying for her to come to Christ. She met other Christians in college who did the same. One was a basketball star from Minnesota, a devout Catholic, who was her roommate all 4 years due to their similar outgoing personalities. One was a staunch Catholic, a whip-smart female engineer from Washington, D.C., who was her roommate for 1 year in college. One was another Nigerian-American from California, a glamorous girl who glided from the club on Saturday to Mass on Sunday without fail, all four years of college. All of us, I think, showed her how a life with God looked. It wasn’t perfect; we all had our various struggles. But we had our anchor to hold on to.

For some reason, God gave her moment to me. On December 5, 2021, over 9 years after we met, my best friend prayed with me, my brother and my mom to receive Jesus into her heart.

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls Christians “the light of the world”. My favorite version of Matthew 5:14-15 is the Message version. It says: “Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this.” As I said before, the way I see it, “evangelization” is a big word for being open with your faith. Life with Jesus is not only good, it’s the greatest thing you could ever have! It’s not oppressive, it’s not bad, and it’s not meant to be kept a secret. But it does need to be represented properly to people, and more than ever, in our nation today, Christianity needs good representatives. We have so many people who take a piece of the Gospel and go around, presenting themselves as Christians but sullying the good name of our Lord by their behavior. But as long as there are people, true Christians, who will stand in the gap between God and the people who don’t know him; people who will live unashamedly for Jesus Christ in their communities, in their schools, colleges, jobs, and world, then we have the chance to save and change the world around us.