Is MAGA Apostate? : Part 2
“If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he will rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine that didn’t wander away! In the same way, it is not my heavenly Father’s will that even one of these little ones should perish.â
(Matthew 18:12-14 NLT-SE)
In part one of this article I questioned if MAGA adherents were apostate and what should the church do if they are.
In this part I wish to answer the second part of that question….that I probably shouldn’t have had to ask in the first place.
To do so, I must start from the beginning of my thought process. I was getting ready to teach on the passage above…a well worn, but beautiful statement of the Lord’s care for the stray.
To be honest, it was pretty rote and I was bored…until I heard something in my spirit….or maybe I just had a fever…in any case…what I heard was “teach on the perspective of the 99 that stayed”.
Some of which were glad that the one was gone.
Some of which thought it would be good if the one got maimed by a wolf…it deserved it.
Some of which had no intent of associating with the one anyway, so it wouldn’t be missed.
Some of which had been hoping the Lord would just throw it out before it left.
All of the above considered themselves better sheep than the one now lost.
None of the above were much concerned about how the Lord felt, as they assumed He felt the same way they did…which is how we always feel.
I didn’t have to wait long to “make my own application”…I knew I was supposed to examine my own heart regarding those who have left this place and broken fellowship over Trump and the policies of MAGA.
Let me be clear…I believe that Trump and many of his policies are anti Christian.
I believe that supporting him and those policies put someone outside the scriptural ethics and virtues of the Christian faith.
Period.
Having said that…if those deceived by heresies such as Christian nationalism choose to repent…the Lord will rejoice at their return.
So should we.
Even now, Christ is pursuing those who are His own…even those like me that are prone to wander, albeit in different directions.
We need to continue to speak the truth in love…meaning we still value the lost sheep as Christ does…as the father of the prodigal does…not how the prodigals older brother does.
When the stakes for both church and state are this high (and they are) and the damage already inestimable in in lives and faith (and it is), it is easy to become a mirror image of what we oppose…and become lost sheep ourselves in the process.
May God grant us all clarity of vision and hearts after Him…and those He loves.
Make your own application…
I’ve had all kinds of conflicting thoughts about this issue since my church dropped support for a missionary who went over the deep end on the other side of the argument. Basically, blow up the system and start over (but he has no idea what or where to start). His social media posts have been promoting violence and caused a lot of heartache in our congregation. We have people who voted for Trump and yet are concerned about what’s going on, and they don’t promote violence from either side.
Maybe I should go be a Mennonite
The one real positive in my church is that we talk to and listen to each other. I personally don’t see anything good that has come out of the MAGA movement, but I know many who voted for him didn’t think the other side was offering any viable opportunities to the post-COVID chaos, and I do understand that. I am praying that MAGA will get so ridiculous and indefensible that people will begin to look for alternatives. That’s what happened with the Communist scare of the 1950s. However, there have to be alternatives or we will probably end up in the same place again come the next election. .
I don’t anticipate many repenting. That’s not the way they’ll understand or explain any change in direction they make. They will feel they were exploited, not wrong. They will consider themselves victims.
Robert F,
I concur. They will play the victim card. It is especially ironic since most of the MAGAs decried others playing the victim-ology game. Also, don’t forget the sunk cost fallacy here. Most of these folks have invested so much of their time, emotional capital, financial support, etc. it will be EXTREMELY hard for them to leave. I would not be surprised if this results in psychotic breaks for many folks.
There is a kind of sheep that didn’t leave the flock, but was influenced by voices other than the Shepherd. He started out listening to Rush Limbaugh, and later watching PragerU videos. This sheep would stay in the flock but questioned whether “Christian Nationalism” was just a way of demonizing patriotism. This sheep formed a flock of like-minded sheep within the larger group who kept their opinions amongst themselves so as not to cause trouble. Pretty soon, the “false flock” had more sheep than the true flock. What does the Shepherd do? Do we trade this lousy parable in for the ones about The Sheep and the Goats or the Wheat and the Tares?
I’m all for receiving those who truly repent, and maybe even have a penance to pay in this life. There should be a real cost for those who promoted this. Thete should be real accountability. There could be no real forgiveness without a temporal price to pay (whatever that will look like). There is no cheap grace. I will not consider as a returned brother/sister with a simple “lip service” for repentance.
That being said, because so many have actually invested so much of their time, talents, money, and identity in this, I don’t expect a lot to come back to the light. While God can do anything, and call people back, so many will not head that call. The Elect of God can indeed be deceived, and will now refuse to see the light of Christ.
There will be a reckoning coming to the American Church. If this becomes the new schism in our country, I will be fine with that.