“Fair-Weather” Christians are tepid believers, following Christ only when it suits them and offers material advantages – i.e., when the sun is shining. When persecution comes and there is a real cost to following Christ, they quickly fall away (Matt 13:20-21). During my time in Saudi Arabia in the early 90s, working with the underground church under severe persecution, I encountered no fair-weather Christians. They were “all in”, and had to be. Unfortunately, western Christendom has seen more than its share of fair-weather believers, who can also be categorized as “cultural christians”. As prevailing attitudes change towards the Way (Acts 9:2) and become more hostile, we are seeing them drop away, like flies exposed to bug-zappers.

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author who became an advisor to Roman emperor Constantine I, guiding his Christian religious policy in its initial stages of emergence, and a tutor to his son Crispus. His most important work is the Institutiones Divinae, an apologetic treatise intended to establish the reasonableness and truth of Christianity to pagan critics. He is best known for his apologetic works, widely read during the Renaissance by humanists, who called Lactantius the “Christian Cicero”. Lactantius was no “fair-weather” Christian but boldy confessed the faith amid the fires of last and most terrible of the great persecutions – the persecutions of Diocletian and Galerius.

Lactantius was held in high regard by the early church fathers. His principal work is The Divine Institutes also known as The Christian Institutions, composed of seven books. In them he undertakes a vigorous defense of Christianity. It wqas not until the 18th century that this work was discovered nearly complete (earlier editions were fragmentary.)

He begins The Divine Institutes with an emphasis on the eternal value of truth. Lactantius regards objective truth to be of infinitely more value than riches or the accumulation of honors, both of which are “frail and earthly”. Truth is to be desired above all things, bringing a perspective on Jesus’ claim to the truth incarnate (John 14:6).

The defining characteristic of “fair-weather” Christians is their attitude towards and understanding of truth. Truth for them, is malleable and bent to accomodate whatever the culture is espousing. Rather than being grounded in the immutable nature of God, their version of truth is sifted through a culture that is engaged in full-scale rebellion against the Architect of truth (reality.)

Fair-Weather Christians have no anchor and are subject to ever-changing, prevailing cultural winds. They are like ruddrless ships, adrift with shifting cultural currents and tides. As such, the Holy Spirit can sometimes use an effective apology for objective, transcendent truth to figuratively “slap” fair-weather Christians (who often fatally glean their understanding of truth from social media) in the face with reality and awaken them . . . something that Lactantius effectively did some 17 centuries ago.

“And this they will assuredly do if they shall at any time see for what purpose they were born; for this is the cause of their perverseness,—namely, ignorance of themselves: and if any one, having gained the knowledge of the truth, shall have shaken off this ignorance, he will know to what object his life is to be directed, and how it is to be spent.” – Lactantius, Divine Institutes, Book 1, chapter 1, p. 17, Kindle