Living victoriously begins with unshackling your own mind.

Few topics are more certain to incite universal wrath and condemnation within the community of believers and without, than judgment. As a friend once told me before embarking on a similarly controversial discussion, “Come on, crawl out on this limb with me. It’ll be fun!” The search for truth is always invigorating and liberating.

No sane person speaks or acts without a prior intention. Many a man and woman will launch an attack the moment one brave soul suggests that the motives underlying the words and actions of others can be known. “Only God can know the heart,” they will say, and that is partly true . But partial truths are the most commonly used devices to deceive, confuse, and silence the righteous.

While God alone can fully know the motivations of the heart, evidence of the inner workings of the heart of man can be known in measure. Christ Jesus states, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” The late J. Vernon McGee used the more graphic paraphrase, “What is in the well of the heart will come up through the bucket of the mouth.”

Yes, there are risks associated with examining the motives of others, and integrity demands that we analyze our own motives first and foremost. But to believe that motives cannot and should not be questioned is foolish and false. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. welcomed honest assessment of the hearts of his own children when he said that his dream was that they would be judged, “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

With our godless culture becoming more vulgar, malignant, and violent by the moment, perhaps it’s time for the Church to stop pretending that we can dwell in a state of safe and quiet detente with the devil’s world, and face the fact that people are not basically good but evil.

Perhaps the time has come for the Christian to reclaim his legitimate authority to declare sin and its terrible reward rather than allowing the false condemnations of the wicked to go unanswered. If the Body of Christ will one day rule and reign judging the earth, should we not be familiar with the standard by which it will be judged?

Just this week, House Democrats passed the feloniously-named, Equality Act (H.B. 5). Its sponsors predictably claimed that the purpose of the bill is to end discrimination. But it does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, it creates discrimination by turning the righteous into criminals. Does this sound familiar? It should because it’s also the goal of extreme and dangerous Democrat gun laws.

The sinister piece of legislation called H.B. 5, would compel Christian organizations to drop restrictions that have protected children from dangers posed by homosexuals and “transgenders.” It would subject adults and children to dangerous sex reassignment therapies and create new protected classes of people based solely upon their behavior, obliterating biologically-determined gender through public law.

House Bill 5 would force acceptance of gender confusion and compel public sexual integration. It would eliminate any religion-based refuge in state laws that seek to protect the Constitutional guarantees of religious liberty and freedom of association through Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, coercing allegiance to the sinful and depraved demands of the LGBTQ agenda. While the so-called Equality Act will likely never be passed into law, majority Democrat support is quite revealing about what the liberal party has become.

Many professing Christians still support and defend Democrats in blind denial of the truth. Leading Democrats promote infanticide, amnesty for criminal aliens, and actively work against the safety and security of the American people while claiming some bizarre notion of a noble cause. They have made themselves a national threat that must be conquered.

But when those who call themselves our brothers and sisters in Christ, openly defend or silently permit the evil designs and purposes of Democrats, it’s right and just to question their motives and character.

Throughout the New Testament, Christ raises the bar of human conduct and righteousness. He confronts moral compromise with nearly impossible challenges that He alone can satisfy. He corrects error in the humble and broken with a soft touch of compassion, yet rebukes the proud and self-righteous with an iron rod and with whips.

Just as the antagonists of intolerance are the least tolerant of all, the contemners of the righteous judgment of the Christian, are themselves, supremely judgmental. Not only can the righteous question and judge motives, we must. Satan’s character is to rob, to kill and to destroy. His followers do likewise. And yet, Christ offers salvation and restoration to them as well.

Regardless of how vile and depraved the United States ultimately becomes, the Lord of creation continues to fulfil His purposes. It could just be that God has allowed evil to reign heavily upon our land so that the real motives of those who claim to be His people but are not, will be fully exposed. For solely in the advancement of righteousness, does extremism contain no fault.