One of the greatest mistakes we make as believers is to surrender our allegiance to Christ in favor of allowing someone else to be our false Christ.
The frantic urgency of activism assumes a self-evident course of action is the only right answer. They have built a false Christ, a broad lore of presumed righteousness in certain types of activity. Only the most active are holy; only those who risk life and limb in direct opposition to whatever is the target of the day will be called “good.” Everyone else is somehow a moral failure.
This kind of crazy nonsense shows up the anti-abortion movement, too. The whole thing starts from a conclusion that may not be so righteous as they would have you believe. They leap across a vast area of consideration from “God knows each human soul before birth” to “you have to act to save each of those souls from abortion.” Such thinking justifies shotgun murders of abortion doctors. They deny that, but then act precisely as if it’s true. We find it in all sorts of demands to true holiness, only the flavor of what is “holy” changes with one group or another. The same fake righteousness comes out of the pro-abortion groups, as well, along with the same murderous hatred for the opposition.
All of it enthrones human reason above God. It is a peculiar obsession of Westerners in general to be efficient with resources on this plane of existence. Human reason imagines it can do a better job than God at handling God’s creation. The imaginary “self-evident” course of action presumes there is no God, so it’s nutty when Christians use it. It leads to the frantic neurosis of believing God drives us to fight the government, but only within the rules government says we must follow, even though government officials themselves refuse to be bound by such rules. So you gotta obey the misinterpreted Romans 13 crap even while you really need to slaughter most government officials.
I refuse to build on such fragile logic.
This is a part of why I insist that we need to regard ourselves as alien beings. When you walk with Christ, you walk far outside the realm of common human assumptions. Sometimes you find you can’t even explain it, even with the most eloquent language, because the person on the other side of the conversation starts by excluding everything you say. You have to assume their hostility because you will most certainly get it in most cases. I’ve lost a lot of friends who simply could not leave behind their Western orientation on things.
(Note: Even the words in that last sentence should show the madness. To “orient” is to face eastward, away from the west.)
God does not hold you accountable to the madness of other folks.
Absolutely. Thanks.