Thursday, April 27, 2023

🏴‍☠️


It really does say something about "evangelicals," doesn't it?  I know that question puts me in a position of judgment, which I should not, as a Christian, take.  But still....

"I've never understood the victimhood, constant victimhood," host [Joe] Scarborough began. "I'll just speak like evangelicals speak to each other. If you believe, then you're in on the greatest thing you ever have, the greatest story ever told. You've been taught the greatest story, the most extraordinary story ever told so why do you have to wallow in QAnon conspiracy theories? What are they compensating for?"

"Yeah, one of the most painful things for me, I think, in 2020 was seeing certainty about things that were, you know, lies," [Jon] Ward told the host. "That was, I think -- I try to tell the story through my own life, of growing up in a world in which we were pretty isolated from reality in a lot of ways. We were so far inside our church bubble, that I think we became vulnerable to manipulation; we were really in that church bubble for a lot of reasons."

"I unpack a lot of it, but we were busy getting blessed, seeking, you know, emotional experiences in church, learning how to love one another in our personal relationship," He elaborated. "There was not a lot of focus on, in the evangelical church I grew up in, or think evangelicalism writ large, on how to be a good public citizen. It's public character versus private character.

"So I think, you know, there's a lot of fear you've alluded to in evangelicalism," he continued. "People have been telling evangelicals for decades that, you know, Christianity is on the verge of extinction. I think because of that lack of stepping out of that church bubble, that lack of becoming a stakeholder in the public conversation, I think there's been more vulnerability to believe that sort of thing."

Joe gets a great deal closer to reality than Jon does.  Jon is charitable, as I should be; but I'm not going to be as charitable as I should, because what the evangelicals have embraced in Trump is precisely everything that is in opposition to the God of Abraham and Jesus of Nazareth they profess to worship, and I don't see how that statement can be contradicted or even countered.  If they think Christianity is on the verge of extinction then they should either shout "Hallelujah!" because that means the Lord is coming and coming soon; or it means they don't have as much faith as the grain of the mustard seed, and they need to look to their own hearts and repent and consider their sins.

Instead, they embrace worldly power; because that's where their treasure is.

Tell me I've got it wrong.

1 comment:

  1. Reading Raw Story on Christianity is exactly like reading Alternet on Christianity. The Christian left will be around when people don't remember those.

    ReplyDelete