Men like Harrison Butker could be found all over America, worshipping in churches, leading their families, loving their wives, working their jobs and raising their children…a couple decades ago. Did people disagree with them? Absolutely. But to announce those disagreements to the world would have led to their own roast. Somehow, we’ve been led to a new place in our culture, a place where it is a gravely dishonorable sin to follow the teachings of the Bible. For now, the outcry is mainly social. People are eviscerated with words only. Soon, prison sentences will follow. We will see families ostracizing the members of their family who choose faith. We will see government launching attacks against Christian organizations and the Church. We’ll see people who identify as Christians being beaten, robbed, threatened and hauled off. You think not? You think I’m going too far? You think Butker’s remarks deserved some criticism or the vile comments he’s received were somehow an anomaly? Look around you. C’mon. Open your eyes and look around. 

The US is just a generation behind other countries that look just like us, only their faith community is underground. These countries are prosperous, growing and progressive. Sure, they have their problems. We always will. But they proudly tout their achievements and rightly so. But conversations about ethics and morality are almost extinct in their daily words. People who talk like Butker are ostracized, jailed or killed. The Church isn’t silent, but it isn’t very visible either. We aren’t used to that, but we will be. 

Butker is a watermark because of his normalcy. This isn’t a radical theologian who’s left the ranks and gone rogue. He isn’t a rich philanthropist who thinks he has the right to say whatever he wants. He isn’t a politician looking for votes from the conservative right. He has no motivation outside of faith to say the things he’s said. He’s just a normal man, husband, father and football lover. But his stance is so far off the beaten path, people think he deserves to have his career taken away from him. 

Just what did he say that has our country so up in arms? He advocated motherhood as the best vocation. He called out men into the culture shaping leadership roles we were designed to have. He advocated a strong pro-life stance, took a stand against the LGBTQ movement, briefly spoke against at-will euthanasia and lamented the state of the traditional family. He wasn’t speaking on Wall Street or at the Grammy Awards. This wasn’t his Super Bowl ring ceremony or an interview with People magazine. He made these statements at a Christian liberal arts college. Nothing out of the ordinary, except the times. 

Butker didn’t misjudge the culture. He knew he would be taken to task for his remarks. The culture misjudged him. The louder the world becomes, the more they expect everyone to bow down to them. The louder they get, the more they see normal people with traditional values as radical and in need of extinction. We can lament statements like these all day long, but the fact remains, this is our new normal. Will we bend and eventually bow out? Will the Church be silenced? Will we stop going against the grain? Or will we be what Christians have always been: obedient.