The Partisan Paradox I: The Gospel & God Are Always The Right Answer

Well, what I vowed I’d never write about on this blog...I am now writing about. Politics. No single word dredges up more loathing and eye-rolls than politics. Except maybe religion. No, I’m not joking. I really am going to do a series on politics. As a person of the Christian persuasion, writing about things Christian is second nature. Writing about things political in nature will make this series about as pleasant as running through a minefield with clown shoes on. One mention of politics and there is immediate polarization and nearly guaranteed polemic or argument. At best you’ll get a heated debate. At worst you’ll have emotive meltdowns and violence. Two things not conducive to communication. 

Communication that is necessary for the transfer of the Gospel. It's actually quite simple with me…its always about the Gospel. It’s the first, it’s the last and its everything. Everything for me falls out from that. It is my point of origin and point of departure. Where I fall in with how you think depends if your thinking is aligned with Scripture and the Gospel. Where I fall out with you is when your thinking is misaligned with Scripture and the Gospel. I always joke when I teach or preach in church ... if I ask you a question in the congregation and you yell out, “The Gospel!”, “Jesus!”  or “Scripture!” you’ll usually answer my questions correctly 95% of the time.

The political atmosphere is toxic. Too emotionally charged and too far apart. At least too far apart to communicate clearly and logically. This makes a bad environment for one to live out their faith without compromise. Alignment to either side runs the risk of permanently alienating the other side over non-essential issues. Hostility and over-emotiveness breeds rancor and allows people to quickly devolve into dehumanizing rhetoric and name-calling and epithets. 

Snowflake. Libtards. Trumpsters. MAGAbots. Trumpettes. Blah blah blah.

Aligning to one side or another in this political charged atmosphere creates a guilt by association. Conservative and Christian are inextricably linked together in the American lexicon because of the work of Ralph Reed in the 1980’s. His brainchild is the Christian Coalition. It might single-handedly have done more damage to tarnish Christianity than Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and Harold Camping combined. People cannot see Christians as anything other than conservatives now. I am neither Liberal or Conservative. In today’s environment, this immediately erects an impenetrable incommunicable wall.

So, bottom-line, no communication, no Gospel transfer. The sides are so far apart there is no transfer of ideas or words. That’s bad. The Gospel is based in words. If something I'm doing inhibits conveyance of the Gospel, I shouldn’t be doing it as a Christian.

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. Romans 10:17

I could literally stop my series here and be Biblically justified...but I won’t. I’ll make a more nuanced argument.