“Get Off Your Backsides and Rise Up!”

Paul Derengowski, ThM

That was the theme of a recent rant from a women (Jayda Fransen) in Great Britain in the aftermath of the most recent Manchester suicide bombing that took the lives of 22 young people at an Ariana Grande concert.

Citing corrupt government policies that have aided and abetted the allowance of the Islamization of Britain, Ms. Fransen made an impassioned plea for Brits to “rise up” and take back their country.

Interestingly, she confesses that the average citizen has contributed to the corruption.

Several problems, though, abound in Britain, like they do around the world, which render the plea dead on arrival.

First, while it is okay to “rise up,” she never stated how that was to occur.

As she looked intently into her camera, she offered up the deceased children as the pretense to her argument, assuming that guilt should serve as at least a reason for everyone to “get off [their] backsides and rise up!”

While guilt may serve as a powerful emotional motive, if the same people she is appealing to were guilty of political, social, and moral apathy that led to the rise of Jihadism in the first place, should we really believe that emotional guilt will all of the sudden make them turn from their wicked ways and oust the Muslims?

I doubt it.

Second, Britain, Europe, and much of the west for the past two hundred years has been in a steady decline into secular humanism.

What was been popularly called “The Enlightenment” has been really nothing more than a gradual darkening of the human spirit and mind, as more and more people have thumbed their noses at God and worshiped the creature, rather than the Creator.

Ms. Fransen’s rant is also ironic in the sense that on her Twitter bio she partially references John 15:18, where Jesus says, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.”

Although Ms. Fransen has gone to great effort to post video after video after video on her Twitter feed, railing on this, that, and the other, in respect to the Manchester massacre, there is nothing about why Jesus is hated, why Jesus is or is not the solution, or why the world is the way that it is.

The point is, until there is a miraculous change in the hearts and minds of so many that have swallowed the lies and distortions of humanistic thinking, especially among those claiming to be Christians, then these impassioned pleas on social media are ridiculous.

They only embolden the Muslim cause, which sees Christians and Christianity as irrelevant, in its conquest to rule the world—and that with the secular humanist’s help, which is played out daily in the media’s running monologue and the training of young adults in our colleges and universities.

In other words, there is no objective basis in Ms. Fransen’s appeal, just like there is no objective reason for anyone to be griping, mourning, or being angry over what the Jihadis are doing.

Instead, it is simply more of the same humanistic autonomy reacting out of frustration that someone else is doing what the “enlightened” want to do, which is to establish a Utopian paradise on earth without God’s interference.

It is just that the Muslims have substituted their idol for the human idol and are using deadly force to temporarily win the day.

Therefore, until there is a real reason to “rise up,” what needs to occur is a celebration of what both secular humanism and Islamic jihadism have consistently brought to the human stage, and will continue to bring, which is hell on earth.

Please remember, amid all the revelry, what God said, though, after all the smoke has cleared and body parts gathered.

“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Ps. 9:17).

About the Author

Paul Derengowski, Ph.D.
Founder of the Christian Apologetics Project PhD, Theology with Dogmatics, North-West University (2018); MA Apologetics with Honors, BIOLA University (2007); ThM, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (2003); MDiv, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (2000); BA Pastoral Ministry & Bible, Baptist Bible College (1992)