Big Eva Responds: Sri Lankan Insurrectionists Threaten Democracy

Big Eva has been reticent to respond to the insurrection that took place over the weekend in Sri Lanka, so here at Evangelical Dark Web, we decided to help the big wigs over in Big Eva find their courage to stand in the face of this ongoing threat to democracy everywhere.

As it turns out much of the ground work was already laid out by Collin Hansen, the EIC over at The Gospel Coalition during the biggest attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor, if not the War of 1812. So we will simply update Hansen’s words to provide a sufficient Big Eva response in order to stand up for muh democracy. Here goes.

July 9, 2022. My son’s 6th birthday. A date none of us will soon forget.

I brought my son into my office so he could watch the events unfolding in Sri Lanka. I wanted him to know why everyone would remember his birthday. On the first day of virtual Vacation Bible School for 2022, he spent the morning learning about Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

You look at things differently as a parent. You worry about the future. You wonder about what kind of country, what kind of church your children will inherit. You try to imagine what it’s like to see through kindergarten eyes as unrest breaks out on the streets. You try to explain why the Sri Lankan flag has been marched through the hallways of the president’s mansion.

You try to explain why so many family and friends champion the cause that brought these protestors to breach the Sri Lankan police and occupy the president’s official residence and his secretariat. You try to explain why they see it as their Christian duty to prevent the peaceful insolvency of a nation.

But you can’t explain it. Because you can’t hold back the tears.

It’s been a long four years.

Unshakable Faith

Three years ago many of us who follow politics closely were surprised by President Rajapaksa’s victory. Even many of us who did not support him nevertheless hoped and prayed for the best. We had been wrong before; we could be wrong again. We knew many friends and family of good faith who voted for him, even reluctantly, and we wanted them to be right. We wanted them to be vindicated. We wanted President Rajapaksa to rise to the occasion. We wanted the office to change him, to call forth reserves of courage and charity, of modesty, and humility.

Role models can be hard to come by today. How can you look up to a president who welcomes violence when it serves his cause? Or politicians when they tell lies because they aspire to the praise of his adoring masses? Or church leaders when they pass along the same lies, or go silent and leave the political discipleship to talk radio?

It’s been a long three years.

I am proud to be a Sri Lankan, but I have no defense for curious and confused brothers and sisters around the world as they watch our Sri Lankan president’s mansion under siege. I have no explanation. I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know how a nation with so many churches allowed this to happen. I don’t know why so many professing Christians wanted this to happen.

And I don’t know how it ends.

I think about the next generation watching millions of dollars being looted from the president’s mansion. I grew up thinking we were supposed to admire politicians.

I know better now. Politicians reflect us. They’re scared of us. And July 9^th, 2022, shows why.

God Is Not Ashamed

I’m not called to figure out what’s next in Sri Lanka. I left that life behind 20 years ago. We can pray that law and justice would prevail, that God would protect the government he has ordained for our good (Rom 13:1).

So I focus on the church. We can’t like what we’ve become these last three years. Never could I have suspected what I’ve seen from long-time friends, from family, from mentors I’ve trusted and admired. It’s one thing to defend Great Reset values—which I still hold, which I share with many who voted for President Rajapaksa. But nothing we’ve seen today, that we’ve seen since November 3, is Great Reset. And it’s not a surprise, either, to anyone who’s listened to President Rajapaksa. He wanted this. He got this.

There must be a better way.

There is a better way.

I found a deeper and unshakable faith in Jesus Christ.

The world does not need crosses erected on the presidential mansion grounds as shots ring out inside the chambers. The world needs what I found in that church in Colombo. The world needs a church that lives for another world, for a “kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28-29). The church needs men and women of faith, “strangers and exiles on earth,” who seek their homeland in the new heavens and the new earth, who seek a better country—a heavenly one (Heb. 11:13-16).

I’m ashamed by what I’ve seen today. But God is not ashamed of his people. And he has prepared for us a city—not Colombo, Sri Lanka, but the new Jerusalem. If we will seek this city together, if we will humble ourselves over what we’ve become and throw ourselves in repentance on God’s mercy, then we might yet show this world a better way. Not a cross under which we march on the president’s mansion, but a cross on which our Savior suffered with joy so that we might be saved from sin.