As a pastor, one of the things I have found most frustrating about leading a church is that people don’t just hear what you say. They hear what you say and all the things they assume go along with the thing you say. For example, if you point out that the Bible only talks about homosexuality five times (whereas it talks about money and generosity hundreds of times) and that the issue of sexuality is incredibly complex, people assume you’re saying that you don’t believe in any form of traditional sexual ethics… and perhaps that you support abortion, the legalization of marijuana, and modern monetary theory.
Why? Logically speaking, how do those things go together? What is the inherent connection between all of these issues and a particular set of positions on them? The answer is simple: there isn’t one!!! The idea that Liberals and Conservatives are diametrically opposed and that they are united around particular clusters of issues, is taken for granted in our culture. However, the truth of the matter is there is little, rationally or morally, that unite the collections of issues that formulate the conservative and liberal agendas in America.
There is no objective reason fiscal conservatism has to be linked with gun rights. It is perfectly possible for someone to believe in balanced budgets and also believe in universal background checks (and perhaps even a ban on automatic weapons). There is also no reason that supporting environmental responsibility (and regulation) means you have to be “pro-choice.” Likewise there is no reason being “pro-life” means you have to deny climate change. In reality, if you oppose abortion because you believe in the sanctity of human life, it makes more rational and moral sense (in my opinion) to also be an advocate for environmental responsibility, which is also a protection of life.
Likewise, support for LGBTQ acceptance and rights is not objectively linked with abortion in anyway. Nor does it have to be linked with the wholesale rejection of traditional family values and sexual ethics (monogamy, marital fidelity, two-parent households, etc.). In fact, what many LGBTQ friends of mine are seeking is access to traditional family values. They want to get married and make life-long commitments to one another. They want to be able to have and/or adopt children. I think you could make a strong case that people seeking the right to get married and have children would more likely, at least in general principle, be against abortion. (I’m not saying this is how it has to be. I’m just pointing it out that it would not be an irrational position to hold!) Furthermore, there is no reason, as is often the case in the liberal paradigm, that LGBTQ rights have to be part and parcel of a laissez faire sexual ethic that disconnects sexuality from love, commitment, and family.
In other words, the way many of these issues have been packaged together is largely arbitrary and is neither mandatory nor coherent. There is no reason someone couldn’t be a tree-hugging environmentalist and find abortion to be a tragedy… or be a fiscal conservative that absoutely hates guns… or be a gun rights advocate that also staunchly protects the rights and freedoms of the LGBTQ community.
The reason these issues have been linked into two seemingly mutually exclusive platforms is not because of coherent logic. It is because of fear and tribalism. In reality, all of these issues have simply become shibboleths.
A shibboleth is a word that is largely meaningless but serves to identify you as a member of a tribe. The term comes from a story in Judges 12 in which the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh were in conflict with the “men of Gilead.” The people of Gilead had a slightly different accent than the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, so whenever someone sought to cross the Jordan river, the people of Ephraim and Manasseh would demand that they say the Hebrew word “shibboleth” (which just meant the head of a stalk of grain). If they pronounced it “incorrectly,” with the sh sound coming out more like an s sound, they were murdered on the spot.
The point of the story is, it doesn’t matter what you actually think or the content of your character. All that matters is if you’re one of us or not. So we blindly ascribe to the collection of positions were told to, because we don’t want to show we’re not fully committed to the tribe and be murdered on the spot! So we keep regurgitating the party line, whether it is coherent or not, whether it is what we truly believe in our heart of hearts of not!
In my experience, most people’s personal views are more complex and nuanced than the cultural narrative suggests. Studies show that a majority of Americans think abortion should be legal but that they would never have one themselves. Likewise, the vast majority of Americans are in support of universal background checks and closer regulation of firearm sales, but the rhetoric of a small minority prevents any movement on the issue. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many conservative evangelicals do not personally oppose gay marriage, but they fear expressing this sentiment in public for fear of judgment. The beliefs and opinions of real people are much more flexible and nuanced than the national conversation but fear of ostracization silences the rational majority, suffocating the possibility of discussion and compromise.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22, Paul says, “Test everything, hold onto the good, reject every kind of evil.” If we are to find a way forward as Christians in a divided culture, we must begin doing this again. Test everything. Use discernment and judgment. Reject the illusions. Reject tribalism. And actually begin having conversations again about what we truly believe and what can take our society forward in love, compassion, and unity. If we don’t, we’re just going to keep killing each other by the river!!!
Why? Logically speaking, how do those things go together? What is the inherent connection between all of these issues and a particular set of positions on them? The answer is simple: there isn’t one!!! The idea that Liberals and Conservatives are diametrically opposed and that they are united around particular clusters of issues, is taken for granted in our culture. However, the truth of the matter is there is little, rationally or morally, that unite the collections of issues that formulate the conservative and liberal agendas in America.
There is no objective reason fiscal conservatism has to be linked with gun rights. It is perfectly possible for someone to believe in balanced budgets and also believe in universal background checks (and perhaps even a ban on automatic weapons). There is also no reason that supporting environmental responsibility (and regulation) means you have to be “pro-choice.” Likewise there is no reason being “pro-life” means you have to deny climate change. In reality, if you oppose abortion because you believe in the sanctity of human life, it makes more rational and moral sense (in my opinion) to also be an advocate for environmental responsibility, which is also a protection of life.
Likewise, support for LGBTQ acceptance and rights is not objectively linked with abortion in anyway. Nor does it have to be linked with the wholesale rejection of traditional family values and sexual ethics (monogamy, marital fidelity, two-parent households, etc.). In fact, what many LGBTQ friends of mine are seeking is access to traditional family values. They want to get married and make life-long commitments to one another. They want to be able to have and/or adopt children. I think you could make a strong case that people seeking the right to get married and have children would more likely, at least in general principle, be against abortion. (I’m not saying this is how it has to be. I’m just pointing it out that it would not be an irrational position to hold!) Furthermore, there is no reason, as is often the case in the liberal paradigm, that LGBTQ rights have to be part and parcel of a laissez faire sexual ethic that disconnects sexuality from love, commitment, and family.
In other words, the way many of these issues have been packaged together is largely arbitrary and is neither mandatory nor coherent. There is no reason someone couldn’t be a tree-hugging environmentalist and find abortion to be a tragedy… or be a fiscal conservative that absoutely hates guns… or be a gun rights advocate that also staunchly protects the rights and freedoms of the LGBTQ community.
The reason these issues have been linked into two seemingly mutually exclusive platforms is not because of coherent logic. It is because of fear and tribalism. In reality, all of these issues have simply become shibboleths.
A shibboleth is a word that is largely meaningless but serves to identify you as a member of a tribe. The term comes from a story in Judges 12 in which the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh were in conflict with the “men of Gilead.” The people of Gilead had a slightly different accent than the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, so whenever someone sought to cross the Jordan river, the people of Ephraim and Manasseh would demand that they say the Hebrew word “shibboleth” (which just meant the head of a stalk of grain). If they pronounced it “incorrectly,” with the sh sound coming out more like an s sound, they were murdered on the spot.
The point of the story is, it doesn’t matter what you actually think or the content of your character. All that matters is if you’re one of us or not. So we blindly ascribe to the collection of positions were told to, because we don’t want to show we’re not fully committed to the tribe and be murdered on the spot! So we keep regurgitating the party line, whether it is coherent or not, whether it is what we truly believe in our heart of hearts of not!
In my experience, most people’s personal views are more complex and nuanced than the cultural narrative suggests. Studies show that a majority of Americans think abortion should be legal but that they would never have one themselves. Likewise, the vast majority of Americans are in support of universal background checks and closer regulation of firearm sales, but the rhetoric of a small minority prevents any movement on the issue. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many conservative evangelicals do not personally oppose gay marriage, but they fear expressing this sentiment in public for fear of judgment. The beliefs and opinions of real people are much more flexible and nuanced than the national conversation but fear of ostracization silences the rational majority, suffocating the possibility of discussion and compromise.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22, Paul says, “Test everything, hold onto the good, reject every kind of evil.” If we are to find a way forward as Christians in a divided culture, we must begin doing this again. Test everything. Use discernment and judgment. Reject the illusions. Reject tribalism. And actually begin having conversations again about what we truly believe and what can take our society forward in love, compassion, and unity. If we don’t, we’re just going to keep killing each other by the river!!!
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