The Duck Dynasty controversy
has passed. Phil Robertson was figuratively crucified for his blasphemy
against the religious leaders of our day (TV executives) and resurrected
victorious to sell airtime, merchandise, and remind everyone that GQ still
exists.
Critics on both sides of the duck debate fought as
vigorously as they always do on such issues, but I started to see a series of
blogs calling foul on only one side, voicing a litany of criticisms towards
conservative Christians and their attitudes and opinions over the core subject
in contention, homosexuality.
The various writers had a lot to say about how mean and
argumentative these terrible Bible believing Christians are, along with a host
of other complaints:
They urge compliance of some commandments but neglect to
mention others.
They speak too plainly about intercourse.
They are overdoing literal interpretations of the scripture.
They focus on sins that don’t apply to themselves to avoid
being fingered.
They insist on recognizing a sin as wrong under all
circumstances.
They’re homophobic, dismissive, ignorant, racist,
embarrassing, obsessive, power hungry, gluttonous, judgmental, cynical,
pessimistic.
Whew! Almost
sounds like the tone of the jeering mob at the foot of the cross. Pretty tough stuff, but that’s the
life--persecution is part of the deal.
The only thing is, these overly critical blogs weren’t written by
atheistic or anti-Christian voices.
These blogs were actually penned by those espousing to be
Christians! I have to admit this
realization sucked the life out of me for a minute. I wasn’t mad, just…bummed--hollowed.
All of the blogs seemed to push grace and love. So consistently, in fact, that it
almost seemed like a predetermined talking point. Another commonality was that most of the entries were from
the organization, Red Letter Christian.
I poked around to see who they were. After a few minutes it was clear that Red Letter was just
another left wing activist group except they hid behind a cross, figuratively
speaking, of course. Not a literal
cross. That might offend a sinner
and usher in a politically incorrect wave of conviction. In short, their declared goal is to
diminish Christianity’s criticism of homosexuality and abortion and embolden
its criticism of capitalism, war, and other ills the left has deemed as
such. They consult presidents,
hold rallies, and infiltrate colleges.
Be certain, this is
Christianity with a “K”.
And that’s the cleaned up version. Attacking a substantive view of the Bible always starts out
as a deemphasizing of this or that to acquiesce to a new cultural norm. Then the more sensational historical
accounts are no longer deemed literal.
In time, less and less is taken as serious truth. God is no longer the creator, sin is
largely speculative--heaven and hell become metaphoric. Traditional salvation is just a
historical ritual that has no bearing on a modern age. Sound ridiculous? Yale and Princeton used to be the Bob
Jones Universities and LU’s of their day.
But the Red Letter Christians of decades past got their hooks in and now
Christianity is merely a faint, flaccid accompaniment to a progressive
political agenda that is motivated lastly by the Word of God, if at all. At present, colleges coast to coast are
well on their way, becoming institutions that desire proliferation of their
brand of social justice rather than confronting the injustice of man’s betrayal
of a righteous God and the dire implications therein.
Nonetheless, I imagine there are many sincere Christians in
the Red Letter movement. It seems
to me there are two obvious reasons they find appeal. I think many do identify with the politics and I must admit
I find this awfully perplexing. My
leanings are fairly public and I’m not going to get into that now. But I’ll just make one point on the
matter. If the school of political
thought I favored was also favored by an overwhelming amount of atheists I
would really have to take a moment to make sense of the inconsistency. In other words, as a dedicated
Christian, I am supporting the policies of the most threatening demographic to
my faith--in essence, supporting atheists’ policies and voting for atheists’
candidates. And this is exactly
what’s happening. Do you see the
rub here?
The other reason, which I would imagine is more common, is
the gentle tone of the love and grace message. It’s certainly compelling especially in this world of so
much vitriol and anger. But I
don’t think God’s love is what many make it out to be. It’s not always a big hug and a warm
smile. Sometimes Jesus’ love is
flipping tables, offending sinners great and small, or even telling his disciples
to go buy weapons; selling their cloaks if necessary to do so. I consider Christ’s love to be
salvation from eternal death. If
we’re not upfront and truthful about sin can we really call that love or is it
just mere niceties riddled with deceit and dishonesty?
