culture Archives - Page 6 of 13

February 9, 2018February 9, 2018

Labeling, law breaking, border walls, and a living, breathing Constitution

labels

Labels. I think this word gets a raw deal. It’s been twisted and misapplied to the point of lowering it to a near expletive. I’d like to buck this political trend by restoring a perfectly good word from its smeared state.

Here goes:

We use labels and categories to organize and provide meaning. I’m a veteran. This label means that I’m a veteran, that I served in our armed forces. I’m also an American and a citizen. People like you and me who were born in their countries are natural-born citizens. Virtually every nation on Earth makes these distinctions and uses categories to organize and provide meaning for their people.

Illegal immigrant. Illegal alien. Legal resident. When it comes to immigration and citizenship, somehow the phrase “undocumented worker” is deemed more palatable and “humanizing” than the aforementioned perfectly viable labels.

Phrase swapping

Here’s the problem with phrase swapping—it alters meaning and pushes political narratives.

In the case of undocumented workers, the phrase implies that those here in the U.S. illegally are working, but are doing so under the radar. Are all working? The phrase invites us not to focus on the fact that they’re breaking the law, but rather that they’re contributing to our workforce in a desperate (yet honest) striving for a better life. They’re dreamers, you see.

After all, aren’t we all here because our ancestors dreamed of a better life in America? Aren’t we all immigrants? It’s who we are as Americans, right? I’m the grandson of an immigrant. My grandfather came here legally and jumped through all the hoops to become a citizen. He was a dreamer—and an honest one.

Phrase distortion is another political propaganda device. For example, the original phrase “illegal alien” has nothing to do with doing, but rather with being. It’s a temporary state that describes the legality of someone’s status in a sovereign nation; it has nothing to with their humanity.

The dehumanizing argument is a political construct designed, among other uses, to “label” and vilify those who believe in their nation’s immigration laws and its sovereignty and reject open borders and policies that seem driven by mere compassion (or worse) rather than compassion tempered by wisdom … and a respect for the rule of law.

Legal, precise and meaningful labels like illegal alien do not strip anyone of their humanity or God-created image. If you disagree and FEEL that they do, I’m not surprised. For years, we’ve been pelted with politically driven and partisan constructs like this one through education, social and other media, Machiavellian politicians and a subjective spirit of the age.

Rule of Law

Do you think it’s right to break the law? And I don’t mean laws you think are wrong; I mean laws that have withstood legal challenges and that the majority of citizens support—like our immigration laws.

Is it right for a father to break the law by breaching an enforced border, so he can work to give his children a better life? Good fathers would do virtually anything to improve their kids’ life chances. Should they break the law?

I applaud fatherly love and devotion, but don’t see how flaunting of the rule of law would provide a good example for one’s children. It seems to me that a father who respects the rule of law would offer an essential character building example for his kids and that this example would go much further in improving their life chances.

Here’s my advice to a father seeking to improve his children’s futures: If you can’t find suitable work to provide for your family in your country, seek employment in ours, but do it lawfully.

I’ve read someone claim that it’s human nature to put labels on people to help us rationalize decisions when we dehumanize others by categorizing them. Really? Labeling people to rationalize or dehumanize them is NOT in my nature. This is another construct and a faulty argument.

It’s faulty because it’s based on the flawed premise that labels dehumanize. I grant that there are people who use labels to devalue others. There are racists and elitists in our midst. But to say that this is in our nature is a stretch. And to say that categorizing people in terms of their legal or illegal status is dehumanizing is to buy into a cheap and transparent political ploy.

It seems to me that attempts to dehumanize come mostly from one side of the argument—i.e. those who believe in border security are heartless, unfeeling, alt-righters, uber-nationalists, and/or racists. The labels-to-dehumanize argument is lazy and partisan and a dishonest justification for anti-border security arguments.

Rubber meets road

Consider this hypothetical:

You live in a southern border town. People who chose to run the gauntlet show up on your porch. They’re tired, thirsty and frightened. What do you do? You give them water—just as I would and just as the neighboring pro-border wall ranchers would had they been standing on their porches. (And just as border patrol agents would.)

Are you breaking the law? It’s not illegal to give illegal immigrants water, is it? Now if you were maintaining water stations and, by doing so, helping people break the law and attracting more people to break the law, would this be wrong?

Now remember: These people are CHOOSING to break the law—they aren’t forced to—a lack of job opportunities in their area of, in this case, Mexico, does not justify their decision to break our laws. Aren’t we all accountable for our decisions?

Let’s consider this example:

You live in France in 1943. You’re working and living on a farm. In the dead of night, a family of Jews appears on your doorstep. They’re haggard, cold, tired, hungry, scared out of their minds and a half-day ahead of the Gestapo. The puppet Vichy government has decreed it unlawful to help fleeing Jews. What do you do?

You do just what I hope I would do—you give them food, water and shelter and a hiding place. Or do you give in to fear and close the door? Why put your life in danger? Because your government’s law violates God’s laws. You help them out of love and obedience to Almighty God and in defiance of your weakling government that’s doing the will of its evil client regime.

Big differences

Let’s review some key differences in these scenarios:

A) One describes a violation of God’s laws.
B) The people in one scenario are forced to flee and break the law; they have no other choice. Instead of looking for work, they’re looking to stay alive.
C) The American government is not a Vichy government enforcing evil immigration laws.

God and borders

To those who think sovereign nations have no business securing their borders and like to say that God is on their side; here are a few questions to ponder and a counter argument to consider:

What if God recognizes nations and their sovereignty and rule of law regarding immigration? After all, the concepts of national sovereignty and natural-born citizenship originated from God regarding his people.

If this is true, there’s a sanctity to the rule of law. And if all legitimate laws come from God and are instituted by him, as Paul says in Romans 13, all are called to obey the laws of the land—UNLESS they conflict with God’s laws.

Whether or not you accept these as truths, here’s my challenge:

Convince me that the immigration laws that we have on our books conflict with God’s, and I’ll storm the Bastille with you. I’ll resist a border wall to the death. I may even join your silly resistance.

Let’s put rubber to road: Where does God stand on refugees and widows and orphans fleeing intolerable living conditions?

I think we can agree that he stands above and beyond petty politics and weaponized partisan constructs. We’re right to extend help and compassion toward refugees, travelers and the poor and widows. God is right there with us in our compassion and love toward others.

However, if you equate border walls and enforcement of existing immigration laws and those who the value rule of law to a lack of compassion, cruelty, hubris and any other misplaced, cheap and partisan propaganda word-bomb, I say you are wrong. This equivalence (which isn’t) is a form of arrogance and ignorance.

And so is the notion that, in a little over two centuries, we’ve evolved to the point that we’ve outstripped elements of our Constitution’s applicability to our lives and laws.

Our Constitution

Our Constitution is certainly not inerrant. It has its flaws just as we have ours. I have problems with some of Jefferson’s ideas about government and the governed and some of his word and phrase choices in it, but it is nevertheless a beautifully written document. It’s also merely a document; there’s nothing living or breathing about it. But it’s just as relevant today as it was 200 plus years ago.

Here’s why: We haven’t evolved in any way that requires alteration of our Constitution. Human nature and the nature of our fallen world haven’t changed a lick. Solomon is right on—there is nothing new under the sun. People are people now and certainly haven’t evolved significantly in a mere two centuries and some change.

The living-breathing-document-that-must-evolve-jazz is yet another political/social construct. And it is so because those who espouse it arrogantly deny the unchanging nature of our nature. This concept is shortsighted and reeks of presentism. And to some it has evolved from an element of their ideology to a core belief of their secular theology.

Ideology vs. theology

Ideology is an important component of one’s belief system. So is theology. Which has the preeminence in your worldview?

I try to make sure the ideas I embrace regarding government and politics are ruled by my understanding of God’s take on government. When I examine them in this light, I always return to Romans 13.

There’s something liberating about laying my passions and feelings about what’s wrong or right with government next to the black and white words found in the only truly living and breathing document and one that never needs nor allows adaptation to the spirit of the age.

Disagree with me? Bring it.

But do so with substantive, ad hominem attack-free arguments and honest discussion. Don’t take the easy, lazy, low road. It requires little effort to pour to page emotive, amorphous, feel-good and universal-sounding truths; it’s much more difficult to provide logical, thoughtful defenses of ideas. The former is another aspect of our shallow spirit of the age; the latter is a lost art.

Let’s rediscover it.

January 16, 2018September 29, 2018

For me, marijuana wasn’t just a gateway drug—it was an exit ramp to wasted opportunities.

marijuana

Marijuana as a gateway drug is a decidedly one-sided argument. It goes like this:

Cannabis is no more a gateway drug than alcohol or tobacco and has no business being a Schedule 1 drug. If we can get the Feds to reschedule it, we can study it more carefully and prove that its positives outweigh its negatives.

Yes, let’s reschedule it. Let’s study the tar out of it and see what we can squeeze out of it medicinally. I’m all for harnessing natural products for potential health benefits. But I’ve already studied its effects in my own laboratory—my teenage brain.

Here are my findings

My use helped kill my motivation to earn more than solid Bs. It also helped ensure I scored pretty well on the SATs, yet not good enough for Ivy League schools.

Pot transformed my high school graduation ceremony into a hazy, silly experience in which I forgot that my name card was in my shirt pocket and had to hastily tell the handler how to have the announcer announce me.

My cannabis use helped me stay in my introverted shell. When I wasn’t stoned, I felt even more awkward. My English teacher asked me in front of the entire class, “Are you going to laugh your way through life?” “Yep,” I giggled. I was bombed that day.

Getting high was a way to laugh more and have more fun—grades and future college opportunities be damned. When I wasn’t wasted, I felt like a ghost—like I was there, but not really, if you know what I mean.

It made me feel like a faded version of myself—like Bilbo Baggins’ feeling “thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” Remember Bilbo, the hobbit? He enjoyed his weed—Longbottom Leaf (nerd alert), which was likely a nicotiana tobacco blend, not indica or sativa cannabis. Sorry, stoners.

I remember doing homework at home once—when I wrote my senior theme paper. Otherwise I did it during the class before the class. My using inspired me to skate through school with the least amount of effort. It clouded my mind, degraded my scholastic performance, sapped my drive and enhanced my introversion. For me, it was a gateway drug to nowhere.

Opening the marijuana gate

It happened when a waiter at a restaurant where I worked invited me to smoke a doobie in his car. My mindset before the puff: Drugs were a loser’s game. They were bad, and if you tried them, you were a fool. At the moment of truth, I took a drag, obliterated the taboo and opened the gate.

For most, marijuana is a gateway drug. Not because it makes you want to snort or shoot up, but because it breaks the barrier. Once it’s broken, what’s to stop you from trying other drugs in search of other highs?

It’s not that pot makes you want to try harder drugs; it’s the seemingly harmless lever that opens the gate. Once you take your first draw, you’ve crossed over. You’ve cleared the hurdle—you’ve become a drug user because you used a drug.

A fellow blogger and childhood friend of mine sees things differently even though we grew up in the same church and community and attended the same junior high and high schools. He writes that he only transitioned to harder drugs because of the marketing skills of his dealers.

I respect and validate his experience. But what he claims is after the fact: He blew coke after he opened the gate and stepped through. Would a dealer’s marketing prowess have been as effective had he not smoked pot first? Maybe. I wonder.

For the record, I also snorted cocaine, dropped acid, and took crank. But I did so because I opened the gate to these drugs with that first joint. The people I got harder stuff from didn’t have to market it to me at all. I was all in for new experiences because I’d smoked pot. There were no more taboos because my gate stood swinging in the wind.

Weed your life, not your mind

In my case, marijuana was a gateway to stronger stuff because it greased the skids. It slew the giant of fear and overcame all the warnings from people who tried to steer me clear of a teenage wasteland. Maybe these well-meaning folks need to improve their marketing skills.

I’m not sure about my skills, but here’s my message:

Hey, punks—take it from a doofus like me who wasted his high school years toking with his doofus friends. Don’t do it. It’s stupid and a waste of time. Plus, it sears your lung sacs and does much more damage to them than filtered cigarettes—like five times more.

Do this instead:

Guard your gate. What you think is harmless could let in a flood of wasted opportunities and drown your potential. These friends of yours who are getting high and think you should too will be somewhere in ten or twenty years.

Will they be in solid marriages and be loving, effective parents? In fulfilling jobs? Will they be in rehab?

Junior high and high school can be an exciting and essential time of your life. Play sports. Play an instrument. Get good grades. Talk to your school counselor and find out how to get accepted into colleges you’ll be proud to earn a degree from. Enjoy your prom by not taking it too seriously. Be sober for your graduation ceremony, so you’ll remember it clearly. It only happens once.

And for parents who don’t mind advice from someone who isn’t one yet:

Fill your kids’ lives with you. Take them camping, hiking, shopping, to sports games, and on walks. Watch movies with them, invite them to make dinner with you, help you change the oil, or plant a garden.

Be in their lives when they’re young, and maybe they won’t go looking for kicks with foolish friends. Maybe they’ll respect your decision to value them over your work, which is a reflection of your character. Perhaps they’ll respect your anti-drug stance and want to be like you rather than like their clueless friends.

Say no to stupid

Don’t listen to the nonsense about the harmlessness of marijuana. No drug is harmless. Even moderate pot use can make you harmless. Or worse, it can open the door to drugs that can make you dangerous—like meth.

When you’re young and dumb, getting wasted seems like fun. But after the laughs and munchies, it’s just a fake, drug-induced sensation that doesn’t last. Taking your first drag can easily lead to a first snort, drop, or injection.

People who care about you will tell you it’s a waste of time, talent and life. Ask yourself: Whom will you listen to? Those who want to sell you a phony, drug-fueled loser experience or those who resisted and kept their gates closed and are so glad they did?

It’s your life and your decision. Don’t blow it.

January 2, 2018December 8, 2020

Stuff that needs to be said about John Pavlovitz

Pavlovitz

John Pavlovitz, the blogger/pastor behind “Stuff That Needs To Be Said” first came to my attention when a Facebook friend shared his January 2017 “Let the Record Show…” post in response to Trump’s election. I read it out of interest and respect for my friend. Plus, at first blush, it looked intriguingly over the top.

Some days I wish I hadn’t. John Pavlovitz’s post is a thoroughly overwrought partisan political piece of poo for which I can only attribute my friend’s sharing it to severe post-election angst. Curious, I visited Pavlovitz’s Facebook page. After a few months of reading his posts and interacting with him and his followers, I’ve come to these conclusions:

1) He doesn’t genuinely engage those who challenge him, but instead replies reactively with childish taunts of trolling and shutdowns rather than defending his positions.

2) He’s so angry over the Trump presidency and with those who support him that he employs emotionally overcharged comparisons and tactics to oppose them (Trump is a terrorist; GOP wants to deprive poor people of health care; Christians hate LGBTQ folks).

3) He’s drunk with his own social media popularity and views it as a validation for the liberal, emergent church-based theology that got him fired from a pastor gig.

I don’t care much about his political postings on his website and social media pages, but I care very deeply that he mangles scriptural truth and misrepresents Jesus in order to weaponize him.

Pastoral panache

Pavlovitz tries to lend credibility to his political (and spiritual) attacks on Trump, Republicans, “Evangelical” Christianity and 2,000 plus years of accepted theology by citing years of pastoral experience.

In his roles as pastor in “the resistance” and “social justice warrior,” he resists an illegitimate and odious president and the evil evangelicals who support(ed) him. And while he’s at it, he champions the marginalized (as defined by his Democratic party).

I pray for Pavlovitz. And for some reason I feel a kinship—maybe because of our similar ethnic backgrounds/former Catholicism. Or maybe something about his idealism and passion makes me feel for him because he’s chasing his tail by mistaking political activism for spiritual mission.

Speaking of the spiritual, Pavlovitz doesn’t seem to understand Jesus at all. To him, he’s all love, all the time. Of course, Jesus is love. How can he not be—he allowed himself to be tortured and crucified in order to take the sins of the world literally on his back. Because he loves, he died for us, but he’s so much more than merely love: He’s the Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah.

Lion and lamb

As C.S. Lewis’ Lucy in The Chronicles of Narnia asks and learns of Aslan (Jesus):

“Is—is he a man?” asked Lucy.

“Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion.”

“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will, dearie, and no mistake” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Pavlovitz

Pastor Pavlovitz doesn’t write about Jesus as Savior, Lord and King. He writes of him as his standard for social justice. To justify his attacks, he assumes a self-appointed role as temple table over-turner and compares his angry rants to Jesus’ outrage over merchants’ peddling their wares in the temple of his “Father’s house.”

In Pavlovitz’s view, Jesus is only dangerous to John’s perceived political enemies. Instead of seeing him as Savior, he sees him as merely a model for social activism. Pavlovitz seems to repudiate Jesus’ loving sacrifice and willing atonement because both do not fit his desired perception of God.

Messy is the new sin

It seems that Pavlovitz prefers a loving Jesus who doesn’t hold us to any standards other than that we “fight” for “the marginalized.” Instead of acknowledging sin and our fallen nature, Pavlovitz propagates the emergent church’s version of sin as a “messiness.”

What does that even mean? Okay, we’re messy, but why? What causes us to live messy lives? What drives us to murder, steal, kill, cheat and commit a world of other messy sins against each other?

Pavlovitz fails to acknowledge the source of evil and rejects sin by turning it into an amorphous and innocent messiness. Instead of following Jesus by taking him at his word, acknowledging a universal, self-evident truth that we are broken because of our propensity to sin, helping others embrace a loving, sinless and holy Savior, he rejects the very reason Jesus became a man, lived a sinless life, and died so that we might live.

To Pavlovitz, Jesus is less a savior and more a slingshot to slay his giants. And though he writes about mercy, he only expresses it toward those he and his party consider marginalized. He doesn’t seem to understand mercy’s ultimate expression nor does he accept our need for it in response to a holy God.

Pavlovitz

Real mercy

Consider Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant who owed his master 10,000 talents, the equivalent of 160,000 years of wages (as one talent was worth 16 years of wages). This would be like a $60k per year employee owing his employer $9,600,000,000. Obviously, neither debt could ever be paid.

By law, the servant could be given life in debtor’s prison. But because of his tears and please for mercy, his master’s heart was touched and he forgave the servant all he owed. The staggering debt was wiped out with mercy.

God’s mercy wipes clean ledgers and settles accounts. It dissolves debt and saves those whose hearts are open, tender, and penitent. His mercy is powered by love. And it’s the essence of grace. Mercy is something Pavlovitz says he feels and shows to others who are politically marginalized, but how can he when he doesn’t accept it from God?

It’s easy to write about loving others, but I don’t see any hope in Pavlovitz’s posts about death. Nor do I see any love in his obsessive attacks on Trump. Nor in his incessant attacks on other believers. We’re all sinners, but if Pavlovitz doesn’t believe in sin, how can he see himself as one? And if he believes that truth is something one feels is right for him or her—even when one’s truth is diametrically opposed to another’s truth, how can truth be true?

Stuff that truly needs to be said

Here’s an unavoidable truth: We simply cannot do enough or be good enough to atone for our sins and sinfulness. If we could, Jesus died for nothing. HE is the only one good enough to atone for our sins, and He did so out of love and mercy.

Some people are like the unmerciful servant (sinner) who failed to show mercy to his fellow servant (and fellow sinner), but instead had him thrown into debtor’s prison because he owed him next to nothing (a single day’s wages)—and this AFTER having been forgiven of his staggering debt. It shows that he didn’t have the slightest concept of mercy, but instead was a grasping, greedy, graceless person.

I don’t think Pavlovitz is like this. I use this parable as a way to illustrate God’s wonderfully loving and forgiving mercy and grace—a concept that I struggled with as a cradle Catholic for years (and still do so a little). I had the toughest time viewing God as a loving, forgiving, smiling, merciful Father-God who loves me no matter how much I disappoint Him. But my struggle makes me appreciate His loving mercy all the more.

Pavlovitz

God as child abuser

From Pavlovitz’s words, it seems that instead of embracing God’s love and mercy, he has embraced this lie: If God allowed or appointed his own Son to die and atone for our sins, he is guilty of “child abuse.” This is a humanization and rejection of God’s perfect nature. And it’s a favorite justification of emergent church leaders for their (only) loving (yet politically progressive) Jesus.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why a just, loving, perfect God is so repugnant to them. We want our judges to be just arbitrators of the law and issue just verdicts. We want parents to establish boundaries of behavior and hold their children accountable for their actions. I’m confident that Pavlovitz is a good father who has standards of behavior for his children. Here’s my question to him: Why wouldn’t a much better (perfect) Heavenly Father have standards for us?

God’s standards derive from his perfection and are for our good. His mercy flows from his love for us (like any good father for his children). And His grace, through his Son’s willing and loving sacrifice, covers our sins. What a beautiful love story. What an amazing grace.

Amorphous grace

Sadly, Pavlovitz, like the unmerciful servant, doesn’t seem to understand our need for God’s grace. Not because he’s grasping and greedy, but because he’s graceless. And he’s graceless not because he writes that way, but because he lives without God’s grace.

For Pavlovitz to accept God’s grace means that he must accept that He is holy. And to accept this means he must accept the necessity of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins in order to satisfy this holiness. And because he has humanized God, he no longer sees Him as holy. He has lowered God in his mind by rejecting his nature and replacing it with one that he can accept.

Pavlovitz has also replaced Jesus’ Great Commission (sharing God’s mercy and grace with others) with a Captain Ahabesque obsession and silly “resistance” to a foolish president. This is like trading a diamond field for a dunghill. And this is the difference between living life with forever in mind and settling for the vanity of the here and now.

What I mean by vanity is what Solomon (the man to whom God gave the gift of wisdom) meant by it: Anything we strive for in this life that—compared to God’s plan of redemption and eternity—is valueless and a waste of time. Vain pursuits distract us from truly loving others and from sharing God’s mercy and grace.

Picking the wrong fight

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t fight for the marginalized. Faithful Christians (and non) hid Jews during the holocaust and defied an evil tyrant. But they also did so without losing sight of the ultimate plan. Can we agree that someone’s eternal soul is more important than a tax reform or an immigration ban?

Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer defied Hitler not with snarky words about his hair or heart, but with a rock-solid adherence to truth and resistance borne of faith, not fantasy. Bonhoeffer was part of a real resistance to a genuine evil. He didn’t play politics; he played for keeps and died for embracing truth and resisting genocide.

Compare Pastor Bonhoeffer’s mission and sacrifice to Pavlovitz’s:

One was a pastor who died for his faith; the other is a poser who peddles politics to the faithless. One sacrificed everything to stand against true evil; the other plays political pastor in a wannabe resistance. One was imprisoned and executed for fighting genocidal fascism; the other suffers with ideological fear and anguish brought on by a presidential election defeat.

Pastor in a resistance? Pavlovitz wouldn’t know a real reason to resist unless it kicked him in the teeth.

Fighting the right fight

Instead of joining a worthy fight against a real enemy—the one who’s behind genuine evil—I’ll say it: the devil, Pavlovitz dismisses his existence while branding a buffoon of a president evil. He can’t have it both ways. If evil exists, and I think most agree that it does, from whom does it come? If Trump is evil, is he evil on his own? Can Trump be stupid, as Pavlovitz asserts, and also a diabolical genius who is the source of his own evil? How can a dumb schmuck like Donald pull his own strings?

Witness the glaring lack of logic in Pavlovitz’s positions: He’s sees bogeymen in the oval office and behind pulpits, not because he’s illogical, but because he’s blinded by a partisan political frenzy of anger and fear.

Meme crazy

Here’s a prime example of Pavlovitz’s arrogance and delusion. From a recent meme on his Facebook page titled, Cultivating the Activist Heart of Jesus:

“When professed Christians call me a ‘social justice warrior,’ as if I’m supposed to be insulted, I just ask them to read the gospels to see who I’m taking my cue from.”

Let’s break it down.

First, Pavlovitz’s use of the word “professed” connotes hypocrisy. It implies that if a Christian disagrees with his take on Jesus as social justice warrior, he or she has not properly read the gospels.

Second, he assumes that Christians who call him a social justice warrior mean it as an insult rather than as a misapplication of his gifts. Everything is a petty fight to him. His snarky social media style resembles an arrogant teenager rather than a mature adult … or pastor.

Third, Pavlovitz ignores the real enemy and instead makes enemies of Christians because he conflates their opposition to his mangling of truth with political opposition of conservatives and republicans to his progressive positions.

Dear John,

Social justice is political, not spiritual. Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords, not a party pawn like you. His justice is over sin and death; it’s not consumed with presidents and politics.

Don’t try to lower Jesus Christ to the level of your ridiculous resistance and identity politics. And no, pastor—the gospels do not back you up, and the only cues you’re taking are yours.

I’m a Christian and have the read the gospels. Nowhere in any of them do I see a Jesus who acts or speaks like you. I see a Jesus whose words beautifully transcend ugly politics, supposed social justice and an us-versus-them war of words and stuff-than-needs-to-be-said ego trip.

I see a Jesus whose mission is essential and profound and not all like your silly social media rampages. Jesus is after hearts and souls; you’re chasing likes and shares. You aren’t taking any cues from Jesus; you’re taking them from your own deluded and deceived heart.

Questions

Let’s think this through:

If God is God, is he sweating a Trump presidency? If He’s God, does he applaud Pavlovitz’s obsessive vilification of another sinner? Does God think a political party’s platform involving social justice is more important than his plan of ultimate justice and universal atonement?

Do you think God approves of this aspect of Pavlovitz’s party’s platform—that killing unborn babies is okay? This is another issue, but it illustrates a colossal contradiction of his social warrior mantra of fighting for the least of these.

I’ve read too many of Pavlovitz’s political rants and attacks and can’t imagine any of them coming out of Jesus’ mouth or with his approval. I think Jesus would say what he said to one of the disciples when they wanted him to lead the resistance against Roman rule, and I paraphrase:

There will come a time when I’ll return to set all things right, but it isn’t now, and it’s not in the way you want or think. I’ve come to lay down my life, not take up a sword.

Mad man

Pavlovitz is a former advertising art director. This is another similarity between us—we’ve both worked in advertising, which is why I know that he knows how to get clicks with his blog, Facebook and Twitter posts. I can also tell by the graphic quality of his memes. His wife is also an art director.

There’s nothing wrong with knowing how to get clicks. And there’s nothing wrong with applying one’s artistry to create quality messaging. Here’s where John goes wrong, in a nutshell:

Pavlovitz creates posts, comments and memes in order to “resist” Trump, Republicans and Evangelical Christians because he thinks they threaten all that is good, right and fair in the world. Are there Evangelical leaders who shouldn’t be? Of course. Rotten Republicans? You bet.

But there are also progressive pseudo-Christians and dirty Democrats—like Pavlovitz’s golden girl, Hillary. How about a bit of balance and reality, pastor? Better yet—how about joining the real resistance?

A Christian’s enemies are the world, the flesh, and the devil. Pastor Pavlovitz’s are Trump, Trump, and Trump. Or to be more accurate—Trump, evangelicals who voted for Trump, and GOP members who voted for Trump.

The truth is that Pavlovitz’s bogeymen threaten the goals and ideology of his political party and emerging church dogma. But they simply are not the monsters he portrays them to be.

Marketing minister

Pavlovitz wages his holy war by blending hatred and passion with advertising and marketing methods to caricature his perceived enemies. He does so by creating false equivalencies, straw men, silly exaggerations and outright lies while pushing a political agenda and his career as a writer and pastor in “the resistance.”

Pavlovitz is not acting as a pastor; he’s acting as a political activist. He touts his ministry experience to lend weight to his work, but as he likes to write (and as Jesus said): We can know people’s hearts by their fruit.

So be it. John Pavlovitz’s fruit can seem fresh and needful, but it’s gratuitous and rotten because it issues from a heart poisoned with fear, hate and politics. It’s absurdly over the top and unworthy of thoughtful discussion.

Stuff that needs to be said? Not so much.