The following was first posted in January of 2019:
I'll volunteer the question.....maybe you wondered the same thing. Why do I write very aggressive political posts.....followed by pious Christian posts? A better question might be how I do this? Does it seem odd.....even hypocritical to you? Here's my answer:
I would never have worked on these posts....almost every day for the past ten years....(thirteen years now).....if they were just politics.....not even if they were all on liberty and freedom and our Constitution. Let others do that. Yet if I wrote only on Christian topics....there would be far fewer visitors....and they would mostly be Christians. I don't know if you have noticed but I try to alternate political posts with Christian posts?
We have today confused meekness with piety in the church....not a biblical individual piety but a Pietism that has wreaked havoc in Europe....and in America. For one thing it produces a liberal church. It takes our focus off of what Christ accomplished....and places it on how pious we appear. Luther's personality was rough. Calvin's was more tempered. The Puritans could produce a Luther personality and a Calvin personality. Folks, that's what is great about this. It's diversity in God's creation. This personality variety I suspect could even be seen within the Apostles....or between Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.....or maybe even even R.C. Sproul and Billy Graham....and certainly between a seminary trained Reformed Theology pastor and a Bible-extending Fundamentalist pastor who as in the case of D. L. Moody after guest preaching in the Metropolitan Tabernacle....Charles Spurgeon lovingly commented that...."He was able pronounce Mesopotamia in two syllables."
We're in this together. I'm on the edge while you may be sitting back observing. You're going to make mistakes and so am I. What we do not want to do is eliminate half of our resources because they either are on the one side too opinionated or on the other side too easy-going....too rough or too smooth.....too educated or too redneck....and yet we cannot compromise the gospel for the sake of tolerance....and we cannot fear being perceived as failures....for folks....a winnowing is coming up if the Lord's return is imminent....and we're all going to be in not only a small minority....but a despised minority. We cannot fear appearing to be on the losing side in the eyes of the world or of family or of friends or of anyone!
Appearances today are everything. We don't want to emphasize the nearness of Christ's return too much because someone might snicker....or eventually call us out on it. We can also see this fear of losing face as it relates to Donald Trump....we evangelicals put him over the top in the primaries. We threw everything we had in that 2016 election....and won....and now we're supposed to admit that we made a mistake in those primaries?
What we should have done upon realizing in early 2017 that Donald Trump was not who he said that he was....was pick up that sledge again....and continue to pound rail spikes like we did for the eight years of Barack Obama. We thought that the track was long enough in November 2016.....but it wasn't. We miscalculated. Pick up the sledge again friends! This track we were working on for so long may not lead to "peace and security" but in the last election it at least took us out of Petrograd 1917....and in the next....should the Lord tarry....might help us pass right by Mar-a-Lago and a Roaring Twenties repeat.
Do my words seem too syrupy at times? Sorry...can't help that. About twenty-five years ago I showed up at a real Presbyterian church session meeting with some questions and concerns about Reformed Theology. The teaching elder listened politely....I remember him smiling. He looked at me as our time ended....and beckoned me with...."Keep on coming!" Well I did....And I see the sovereignty of God so much more in election than in free will....yet try as I always do....I still cannot adequately describe the majesty and the power and the glory of Jesus Christ. If you yourself are a little drawn by this....if the syrupy words stir something within you.....then 'Keep on coming!"
