Summer typically affords me a little extra time for listening to audiobooks and podcasts. One of my favorite podcasts is The Rest Is History, hosted by Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland. Back in 2020 when I started the Gospelbound podcast Holland did an interview with me on his book Dominion, one of the most important publications of the 21st century so far.

Earlier this year Sandbrook and Holland devoted their longest series ever to the greatest tale of the Wild West, Custer’s Last Stand and the ultimate defeat of the Lakota. As a South Dakotan I grew up in the world created by these events. By the time I passed through school, the standard narrative of previous generations had been overturned. We didn’t celebrate Columbus Day. We celebrated Native Americans Day. Custer wasn’t a hero. We visited the monument to his opponent, Crazy Horse.

Holland points out that only Christianity makes sense of this remembrance, where the strong shouldn’t just dominate the weak, where innocent women and children shouldn’t be legitimate military targets.

In his most recent essay published by The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, fellow Christopher Watkin considers why we think the weak should speak truth to power. It’s because the Christianity that shapes the West worships a God who became flesh and sacrificed his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Even in the aftermath of Christendom, this story determines which side deserves our support when we look back on history.

“Our instinct that truth is spoken from the margins and from below is a good one, and one shaped by the Bible,” Watkin writes.

But Watkin also offers a big caveat. Just because someone or a group may be weak doesn’t make them good. Indeed, the Lakota themselves didn’t view their defeated enemies this way. And we don’t just celebrate weakness. We want justice. Watkin argues that in order to bring justice we don’t just need an outside critique of power. We actually need someone who can wield authority to defend the weak. We need a Lamb who is slain but stands at the center of the throne (Rev. 5:6).

“This is a paradigm-shifting reality if we’ll let it sink in,” Watkin writes. “Christ in glory is the marginal center, the vindicated and victorious victim, the One from below who’s above all but in a way that doesn’t erase his marginality.”

By all means, speak truth to power! And if you really want justice, follow the Lamb.