Tag: Biden

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Evangelicals for Biden Get Their President-Elect (not yet)

The AP and other sources are declaring Biden our new president-elect. I keep wanting to move on to the strategies for the post-election season, but counting the votes of the 100-125 age group is tedious work and I still want to see this thing come to a peaceful close, because if there is one thing we have learned thus far is that the only good and true word is whatever is said outside of the headquarters of big media.

I also try to relieve my inner tension by writing some satire once in a while. The thing about satire these days is that it looks too much like the real thing which gives people convulsive reactions. But that is really the heart of the issue in our day. When we are having a hard time discerning between Inigo Montoya and a real journalist it’s because reality and fantasy are too close to one another. We have lost our corporate sense of place. We don’t know if we are riding the The Babylon Bee train or on our way to the New York Times station. It’s all too funny and sad and satirical all at once.

But since I wrote satirically about the “Evangelicals for Biden” group yesterday, I want to give you the skinny on trajectory once again. If you get tired of it, hit the “unfollow” button quickly ’cause I am on a row and I ain’t stopping.

I first wrote about the “Evangelicals for Biden” group some weeks ago as a warning (just go back on my page to see that post). It has come to my attention that Biden received over 240,000 votes from evangelicals in Georgia. Now, if you know what’s going on when the devil went down there, it’s a real battle, people! You should know that the difference between Biden and Trump is small. Let’s say, it’s less than 240,000 votes. In some ways, if Georgia is as central to this election as Arizona and Pennsylvania, we could say that the evangelicals, Bible-believing, altar-call singing, Just-as-I am hummin’ people essentially pushed Team Biden over.

This bothers me for a number of reasons. I will tell you the first. From my perspective it is sheer ignorance. There is no way to rationalize a vote for Biden unless you are ignorant of facts or you allowed your emotional state to reason your way out of the facts. I will stop right there and get to my other point. And here it is…

If you are an evangelical and voted for Biden, there is a high degree of chance that you are slowly drinking the leftist kool-aid on some very big issues. For instance, my dear readers, the main signers of the movement are men who have a long reputation of cheering for the wrong things and accepting of the wrong trajectories. Most of these theologians/pastors have bought into the notion that abortion is a symptom that can be treated in various ways. “Conservatives,” they say, “want to end abortion through legal means, but we think we can re-adjust the system so that women will no longer seek out abortions.” The logic goes like this: if we can provide more government assistance to these young ladies, then they won’t be tempted to seek abortions. It sounds noble, doesn’t it? Except, that virtually every hero of the pro-life movement I know is involved in peacefully protesting and offering guidance to young women at every stage. The notion that conservatives only stand outside to protest and seek no other alternative to help and console women at every stage is absurd! We have been doing both for a really long time.

But the second point to make is that these same pastors and theologians are also opening the gates into a more liberarilizing view on homosexuality equalizing homosexual sin as if it were the same kinds of sins as coveting your brother’s toy gun. One liberal approach to ethics is always to make certain sins less hideous than others. And if you attend such a church know that evangelicals in such churches are going to be comfortable with movements like REVOICE and other groups that seek to legitimize homosexual desires, even if they remain celibate.

The environment that these evangelicals breathe is not leading them to embrace more inerrancy dogma, more creedal theology, more traditional categories of human sexuality, but the opposite in fact. Instead of helping victims, we end up damaging them even more by giving them a pass. Why is it that these leaders who eagerly voted for Biden in Georgia and Pennsylvania find more in common with liberal elites than the country pastor in Alabama? It’s because they have chosen “niceness” as an ideal and forgot the consequences at the door of confrontation.

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Voting and Tempers

We are now entering these closing days before the election. Everyone who accompanies politics as a personal pastime is somewhere between disoriented and optimistic. I often play the role of a pastor to a small flock in Pensacola, whom I love more than anything. By now, they should know that politics is important as long as it submits to Zion. But I also acknowledge that there are a few dozen folks who don’t breathe my theological air but find the sort of things that I publish to be fruitful. I am grateful for all the positive feedback I have received through COVIDness, and I am incredibly thankful for all the private comments made. But pray tell me, why the preface, sir?

This entire preface serves to illustrate that disagreements will prevail in the coming weeks as they do at every Thanksgiving table in America about the nature of the turkey. The bad news is that our disagreements should prevail, and we ought not to run away from them. Of course, this is not the time to speak of rhetorical tricks for these upcoming days. But we should note that tempers will be running towards zealotry faster than Michael Phelps at a pool, and to quote grandma, “Be careful, children!” Good friendships should endure far beyond our disagreements on face cloths, political strategies and the superiority of a Chick-Fil-a sandwich.

For the record, ever since I have started caring about the political process, there comes a time in the days leading to an election that people suddenly become legal scholars and trained political philosophers. They become more passionate about the process than St. Nick when he slapped Arius at the Council of Nicaea (so the rumor goes!). That’s the nature of things!

To be clear, I have made subtle and precise observations throughout that this election is about trajectory. In other words, the things we care about like life in the womb, and the second and third thing after that shape our diagnosis of the problem. For others who find the abrasiveness of Captain Orange to be too much and who are overwhelmed by his tweets (count me in!), and who operate under the premise that the “pro-life” issue is too minimalistic to expect from an election and that racial issues and a greater call to unity is a more desirable approach and that we should contemplate a broader approach to politics that may give us a more sound understanding of life, like for instance, the “Pro-Life for Biden” fan club, then I have a few words for you. If you don’t happen to like that enormously long run-on sentence, you are not going to like the run-on sentence they have for you once you embrace that position.

For starters, as Biden said tonight, the idea of an 8-year-old seeking out a transgender surgery is par for the course. Or as he eloquently stated, “There should be zero discrimination!” Oh, and if you didn’t pick up that hidden mic during the ACB hearing, sister Feinstein said she is concerned because Amy Barrett seems to hold too closely to her religion when it comes to pro-life. BeYes, that dogma thing! And remember also that Biden wants cops to shoot people on the leg like a nerf gun fight in my living room. And finally, do not forget that leftist ideology embraced by the vast majority of Democratic politicians are woker than a puppy. These things should give you a great pause.

Let’s be honest, friends, we don’t live in the Puritan era anymore, so you don’t have to live by your pastor’s counsel when it comes to voting (though I hope you will at least respect your local pastor more than any politician), and you don’t have to vote to be a trusted member of a community. But you do have to cherish that when you do vote, you are voting for the trajectory of language to go one way or another. You either are voting for the continuation of the familiar language of traditional social norms (see my previous post on the “Horses and Chariots” principle), or you are voting for the degradation of classical categories. As my friend Gary DeMar stated, our vote is not a love commitment; it’s a chess move.

As for my line of work, don’t worry, the church will be all right. Hell hath no fury like a Church scorned. If anyone should mess with her, God has his ways, and they are a lot more severe than ours. Yet, we ought not to forget that our ability to seek the good, or at least the continuation of the common good, does not come through abstract conversations but it does involve at the very least speaking your mind between now and November 3rd. Life is hard and thinking through life is also hard and making decisions in life is even harder. It’s all a part of that glorious growing up thing. So, let’s behave, kids! But let’s not be naïve.