Red Letter Christian Dynasty

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? 

For 14 years I lived a few blocks from one of the largest gay communities in the country.  There have been a lot of homosexual people in my life--good friends, we’ve worked all over, prayed, marched, cried, done AA together…buried people and killed a few brain cells along the way.  It seems strange to have to paint this picture but with slurs like homophobe handed out like Halloween candy these days--I’m sure you get it.  And don’t confuse the gay community with the gay political structure.  There’s a lot more diversity of thought than you may have guessed, from faith to marriage to politics.  But my point is, I’ve never known any who wanted to be lied to.  That’s not love, that’s simply the path of least resistance.  And if I wanted to hand on the truth about salvation I’d send the Duck Commander before a Red Letter poser any day of the week.