In recent times a phenomena known as “let’s go Brandon” has been making the rounds. If you have no idea what I am talking about, a quick internet search will catch you up to speed. In short, it’s an “undercover” way of saying “f*** Joe Biden.”<\/p>\n
Many Americans feel quite that way about Resident Biden, so they’ve been going around saying, writing, and making songs cheering on some feller named Brandon, while we all wink and nod, knowing what they’re really saying. You’d never have guessed there would be so many earnest church going evangelicals who wouldn’t dare be seen drinking wine in the Lord’s Supper or be caught listening to any music that wasn’t played on Air1 now going around chanting not-so-undercover pejoratives with the biggest smile on their face. Now, I believe such a person is both wrong and not wrong to say such a thing.<\/p>\n
I am not one who believes that words in and of themselves have certain inherent values – meaning that they are not always good or bad to say no matter what. Words come to us in a context, and are spoken from out of the heart into a context, for good or ill. If your son’s name is Brandon and he scores a touchdown at his high school football game, it is perfectly appropriate to say “Let’s go Brandon” and to say it loudly with gusto and good cheer. But, if you’re filling up your gas tank and thinking how you’d trade a few mean tweets for gas at $1.65 a gallon, “let’s go Brandon” doesn’t quite seem to fit there. Christians shouldn’t say such things about the Resident in Chief not because it’s not nice, but because it’s too nice. God does not call us to be nice to wicked and evil men. God does not call us to speak soothing words to lying and bloodthirsty tyrants. Instead, God calls us to love them as our enemies. Actually loving your enemy means you will have to greatly offend them with the preaching of the gospel, warning of judgment in hell, and calling them to repentance. We don’t get to take a way out of this either by going the derogatory route or nice route. In actually loving them, you may offend them so much that they cut your head off. It won’t be the first time it’s happened. But don’t worry, you’ll get a new one in the resurrection.<\/p>\n
“Let’s go Brandon” is a word too nice. It speaks nothing of these weighty realities of judgment and eternal hell. It offers no opportunity for the forgiveness of sins, it only condemns and judges. But the condemning and judging such a word does is not the holy and righteous judgment and condemnation that comes from a holy God. It is condemnation that doesn’t actually do any condemning because it’s judgment that doesn’t come from God but comes from another filthy sinner who’s ticked about inflation (not to downplay the serious problem of inflation and the great moral evil that the fed actually is doing there). When we speak such words, undercover or not, we are being too nice because such words are an expression of the cultural degradation and filthy sewage water we are swimming in. And frankly, cultural sewage water, is too nice. If only they had sewage water in hell. While it is too nice, the usage of these words are not honorable and noble and do not accurately reflect the judgment of God. And those who have been washed and cleansed in the blood of Jesus Christ and His baptismal waters really shouldn’t be spewing cultural sewage water.<\/p>\n
When we are angry we are prone to be too nice because we are tempted to take things into our own hands and our own words, rather than entrusting it to God who is angry with the wicked every day and will do what is right.<\/p>\n
When it comes down to it, we ought not say such things as “let’s go Brandon,” not because it is a powerful curse word, but because it is completely powerless. These are words that wicked men have used in degrading ways as curses on those they speak them too. It is not that Christians shouldn’t curse, it is that we should actually curse. Sinful men use such words at all the wrong times in all the wrong ways. When the world uses such curses on the church, they fall off of us quicker than a drop of water on a raincoat. They do nothing to us. They are completely powerless and ineffective. Why would Christians then turn around and use the same completely useless and ineffective curses? It is because the language of the Bible has become a foreign tongue to us (even when translated into English). And that is largely because we stopped singing the Psalms in church and replaced them with nice songs. Nice songs are useless for times such as these.<\/p>\n
Spewing sewage is completely ineffective when spewed on those who quite like the sewage and bathe in it. Rather, what we ought to do is speak and pray the words and prayers that God gave us to speak and pray. These words and prayers are actually powerful and effective, since they are the Word of God, which is living and active, sharper than any double edged sword, and certainly sharper than a splash of sewage water. Instead of saying “let’s go Brandon” Christians ought to be active in prayer, preaching, and song with the Words of God, where we can ask God to break the teeth of the wicked (Ps. 3), make them bear their guilt, fall by their own counsels, and be snared in their own schemes (Ps. 5). We ought to warn Mr. Biden that God will dash him to pieces like a potter’s vessel, if he does not kiss the Son (Ps. 2). We can ask God to let the wicked be like the snail who dissolves into slime (Ps. 58). This will help us to not fret on account of the wicked knowing that while they aim their bows at the poor and oppressed it is their own sword that will be thrust into their own hearts, for the wicked will soon vanish like grass and be no more, for the arms of the wicked will be broken while the Lord upholds the righteous (Ps. 37).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In recent times a phenomena known as “let’s go Brandon” has been making the rounds. If you have no idea what I am talking about, a quick internet search will catch you up to speed. In short, it’s an “undercover” way of saying “f*** Joe Biden.” Many Americans feel quite that way about Resident Biden, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":685,"featured_media":4635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[205,1611,1610,1614,1615,555,557,678,1612,699,1609,979,1613,1616,1362],"class_list":{"0":"post-4634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-bible","9":"tag-biden","10":"tag-brandon","11":"tag-curse","12":"tag-cuss","13":"tag-go","14":"tag-god","15":"tag-jenkins","16":"tag-joe","17":"tag-joshua","18":"tag-lets","19":"tag-president","20":"tag-resident","21":"tag-sripture","22":"tag-words","23":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2021\/11\/biden.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3753,"url":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/can-anything-good-come-out-of-nazareth-john-143-51\/","url_meta":{"origin":4634,"position":0},"title":"Can Anything Good Come Out of Nazareth? John 1:43-51","author":"Joshua Jenkins","date":"May 14, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Verse 43: Here we have a new day in the flow of the narrative in which Jesus decides to go to Galilee. As we saw in our passage last week, Jesus called his first disciples, Andrew, an unnamed disciple, and Simon Peter. 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