Us vs. Them: KevinH

I have been immersed in conservative American evangelical Christianity my entire life.  Plenty of positive and negative aspects have accompanied this immersion, but far and away the greatest aspect is that I was guided to a faith in and relationship with Jesus Christ.  For this reason alone, the positives will always outweigh the negatives for me.

However, if I am honest, many of the negatives have become downright scary over the past ten years or so.  They pretty much always existed, but have now become greatly amplified in many ways.  One such pivotal negative is the “us vs. them” attitude.

This attitude has always been part and parcel in my environment with the world (“them”) being out to get “us” (conservative Christians):  The liberal mainstream media (“them”) is biased against “us” and out to make “us” look bad…..  The Establishment (government, universities, scientists, other experts, and big organizations or industries) (“them”) are out to belittle “us” and keep “us” down.  The liberals (“them”) are always scheming and playing dirty tricks to maintain control over society and “us”.  Of course through all of this, “we” are always the righteous, innocent, persecuted ones, and “they” are always the nefarious, unrighteous bullies.

While there are definitely some elements of truth to these feelings, the unfortunate “us vs. them” attitude that developed from these feelings has been detrimental to conservative American evangelical Christianity, and these past ten years or so, it has turned into an unmitigated blight upon our faith.

Ten years ago is when a man came along and saw a ripe opportunity to jump on the bandwagon of this “us vs. them” attitude and continuously ratchet it up for his own gain.  He told us that he would fight for us, he would fight for God, and he would ensure us protection and victory.  He told us how “they” (our enemies) were even worse than we ever imagined and told us of enemies we didn’t even know we had.  He told us how they were all out to destroy our country and our faith and only he had the strength and resolve to defeat them and save our country and the faith within it.  Many of us believed him, and still believe him.

The trade-off for buying into this belief is that we now defend, justify, and even praise the many actions and characteristics of this man and his movement that are at odds with our faith, while tormenting logic and integrity in attempts to twist reality and sensibilities and claim that this is actually all part of the faith.  Worse yet, we ourselves are even increasingly imitating his words, ways, and temperaments.  All is fair in love and war, and “we” are at war with “them”, thus we must do what it takes to secure victory, our country, our faith, and our preferred way of life.

Jesus may tell us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, and that blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, and the peacemakers, but when the Deep State, Woke Mobs, LGBTQ+ people, Immigrants, and plenty of other dastardly and despicable people are conspiring to steal our rights and destroy our country, then the rules have changed and a new game plan is needed.

Therefore:

• We will defend, justify, and even praise acts and attitudes of cruelty, vengeance, and crassness.

• We will demonize the poor, needy, immigrant, and “least of these”, even as God emphasizes caring for them.

• We will support legislation that takes away care for the poor, even life-sustaining care, as long as we get our tax breaks.

• We will preach law and order, even as we look the other way when our dear leader, who is a convicted felon, routinely disregards the rule of law while also pardoning criminals for political and monetary reasons, including those who attacked our own nation on January 6th.

• We will support and cheer on our dear leader in the firing of principled, competent government officials, and the hiring of unqualified, immoral, incompetent ones.

• Even as we long said that morality and character is of great importance in our leaders, we will now ignore the reality that our dear leader has been and continues to be grossly immoral in many of his ways and is awash in reprobate character traits.

• We will now say that it is all about policy, while ignoring the fact that we long had claimed that bad character was a disqualifier, while also ignoring the fact that some of the policies we now support are actually evil, themselves.

• We will claim to stand for truth, all the while obstinately ignoring the reality that our dear leader brazenly lies about anything and everything.

• We will then also often join in with him and our favored partisan news sources and claim lies, deceptions, exaggerations, misrepresentations, and dubious conspiracy theories as truth.

• Still more, we will refuse to even consider any evidence or rationality that supports the above assertions, dismissing them all as fake news, liberal propaganda and deceptions, or TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome).

The “us vs. them” mentality set us up for this moment.  We have now succumbed to evil, all the while claiming it to be good.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” – Isaiah 5:20

Certainly, not nearly all of the conservative American evangelical church has fallen prey to these things, but a large swath of it has.  God calls for His people to be united and avoid unnecessary division, but that union cannot take place around sin.  In the spirit of I Corinthians 5:12-13, I will continue to call out the portions of the church that unrepentantly persist in these sinful ways.

We are all sinners in need of the mercy and grace of God.  May God show me where I may be wrong in any of these judgments and other areas of my life where I may be ignorant of or stubbornly protective of unrighteousness, and may I repent.  May others do the same and rest in the grace of God.