Listen to the radio, watch any amount of news or a T.V. show; read just a smidgen in a newspaper or almost any magazine and you can easily get a sense of the divide in our country. Depending on what spectrum you are looking through, it may appear to be purely political, social, racial, gender, or even a religious divide. However, any way you look at it, there is a divide, a significant one. And there is a reason for it. The question for many Christians today is “Whose side is God on in these issues?” In many of these issues, the answer is clear. Yet when political correctness, groupthink, and other cultural pressures bring emotional chaos into the mix, it happens, Christians who once knew which side they were on become swayed, not by intellectual arguments, not by scripture, but by the emotional pressures of the culture in which they live. 

During the Civil War, that great divide in our nation’s history, President Abraham Lincoln, commenting on a statement made about God being on the Union’s side in the war said:

“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side, my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”

Exodus 32 tells the story of the children of Israel’s sin in creating and worshiping the golden calf. Not very far removed from their miraculous deliverance out of Egypt by God, the Israelites, with the blessing of Aaron, decided that making an idol was OK. They had disregarded their earlier covenantal agreement with God.

“Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” Exodus 24:7

The LORD brought to Moses’ attention, while still upon the mount, the people’s willful corruption and disregard for God. When Moses came down and saw the division that had occurred that day in the camp of Israel, not only a religious, but arguably a social, cultural, and political divide as well, the bible records what Moses did next.

“Then Moses stood at the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the LORD’s side? Come to me.” Exodus 32:26

 Over 3,000 men, those who refused to be on the LORD’s side died that day, and those that committed to the LORD’s side did so at a very high cost. So then for the Christian, the question concerning the constant ebb and flow of the cultural, social, political, and religious landscape should not be; “is God on my side?”, but rather “Am I on God’s side”? “Am I in God’s will”? “Am I believing and living my life, amid the political, social, and cultural pressures of this world, according to God’s word”?

Jesus said:

“For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. Luke 9:26.