Friday, June 12, 2015

Threshing the wheat


Christian Americans live in a threshing time. The Obama regime has created a legal and social climate in which nominal Christians feel it's safe to express their true views. The current state of the culture wars is having a sorting action on the evangelical church (as well as the church of Rome). 

i) On the one hand, you have "progressive Christians" like David Gushee and Tony Campolo who feel right at home in the new climate. 

ii) On the other hand, you have professing Christians like Michael Bird, Andy Stanley, and Adrian Warnock who are morally and theologically confused. 

Take Warnock. He seems to be a nice, sincere Christian. But he's playing checkers in the Hunger Games. He has no inking of how campaigns against "homophobia" and "transphobia" are just a cover for a secular pogrom. "Gay wedding cakes" &c. are the iron fist in the velvet glove. Start out with some seemingly innocuous demand. But that's not what it's really about. It's a prelude to repression. 

That's a different sorting effect than (i). Warnock is well-meaning, but he can't rise to the challenge.

There are people who can function well within a moral structure which is imposed by a tradition that's wiser than themselves. When, however, that structure is removed, and they must define the moral boundaries on their own, they are at a loss. 

iii) Then you have many Americans of various ideological stripes who disagree with political correctness, but keep their mouths shut for fear of reprisal if they buck the system. Although that's a win for the fascists, it's like the waning days of communism, where very few people believed in the "revolution." That accounted for the precipitous collapse of communism. There were so few true believers left, since it was based on intimidation rather than persuasion.  

Political correctness has to be coercive because it's so unnatural. So counterintuitive. Without coercion, the pendulum automatically swings back to its natural center of gravity. It takes constant vigilance, constant coercion, to enforce political correctness. For that's not how even most unbelievers normal think and behave. 

In that respect, political correctness is always at a disadvantage. Beleaguered Christians who feel that we are losing the culture wars need to keep that in mind. 

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