Conservatism Lives!

Maybe its the fact that I’ve crossed firmly into my thirties now and have developed a sincere distaste for the fundamentalism of my childhood, or perhaps its just the friends I’ve been keeping the last few years, but as a conservative Christian I find myself in an odd place politically these days. You see, there has been a groundswell of liberalism inside the confines of Christianity. As a matter of fact, I would say that Christians probably represent the largest “growth demographic” for liberal ideology in recent years. Of course First Baptist this and the Wesleyan Church of that by and large are standing firm in their fundamentalism and condemnation of all those (including and perhaps most particularly, other Christians) who do not agree on their 121 points of theology and corresponding list of 363 do’s and don’t for getting into Heaven. But those aren’t the people that I’m talking about. I’m talking about the rank and file majority attending Faith Church this and Community Church that, and even more so, I’m talking about those people’s kids.

These are the people who are struggling to understand why their parents and the “traditional” church believed in the moral superiority of American ideals. These are the people who are asking why the “traditional” church can’t just let people live their lives and marry whomever they want regardless of gender. These are the people who perhaps most loudly are asking how the “traditional” church can scorn an impoverished woman for wondering how she will care for her baby when its born, but refuse to reach out and provide a helping hand. These are the people who voted in droves for Barack Obama. These are the people who rail against the “evils’ of the very companies that provide them with work and health insurance. These are the people who are pushing beyond stewardship to form an idol out of the Earth itself. These are the people who are in the process of reorienting the most basic tenants of what represents the collective worldview of the “church”. And to be honest, these are the people that frighten me.

They don’t frighten me because they represent “change”, or because I fear the loss of power or slipping into some sort of minority. Quite simply, they frighten me because they seem to be poorly versed in history, uneducated economically, content to follow popular whims, and consequently pursuing a course based mainly on temporal and emotional reactionism.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Some of the questions they ask are good ones, excellent ones even. I would even say that they have done a fantastic job of identifying where recent and even historical “Christian conservatives” have failed. Do we not, as believers, have a responsibility to “give”, and to “help” the “less fortunate”? Yes. Absolutely we do and we must. But I would ask, who are “we”, exactly in that context as it related to believers? One of the organizations leading this movement is the “Matthew 25 network” which proudly quotes Matthew 25:40 on its homepage:

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I believe this is a gross misrepresentation of Scripture and robs the believer of both the responsibility and the joy of caring for those around them. I mean seriously, the verse says whatever you did. It doesn’t say “whatever politician or Presidential candidate you voted for who promised to provide the most social programs”. Yet, that is exactly how the Christian left has made this verse to fit into their agenda. Certainly Christ also said “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”, but the left acts as though that’s the abridged version and that he went on to say “so that he may fulfill the commandments I gave you on your behalf.” Its utterly ridiculous, but that seems to matter little.