How Political Correctness Came to be the Enemy of Christianity

Political correctness has become the bane of American Christianity. It’s made us angry, and has us aking, “Why should we allow these growing numbers of voices to dictate what we can and can’t say?”

Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist and Christian leader, Billy Graham, sums up our frustration:

“Do you see the insidious nature of all this? Inclusiveness now means excluding anyone who speaks out firmly for truth. It is happening everywhere in the country. Wishing to offend no one, our nation’s politicians, leaders, and decision-makers now stand for absolutely nothing. The very foundation of our Judeo-Christian morality is severely threatened.”

Many of us have voted a resounding “no” to inclusiveness and political correctness, seeing it as a threat to our right to speak and act as we see fit. We’re the marginalized ones.

The world has lost it’s mind, giving a voice to anyone who believes that they’ve been mistreated, even if they haven’t.

Anyone except us.

And that’s scary.

What’s next?

Should we fight? Many Christians in the US say yes. If we don’t defend ourselves, who will? Regardless of what that answer might be, it’s clear that this isn’t a fight we’re winning, which makes us even more angry. We lost the “traditional marriage” war, and the “abortion” war before that. To us, the world is more un-Christian than it’s ever been.

Political correctness is simply another arena where we seem to have lost our voice, our influence, the control we think we ought to have. We want a seat at the table when it comes to policy and morality in our country, but we don’t have one.

We’ve been kicked out.

And that might be a good thing, because our problems, according to scripture, might go far deeper than who gets to say what, or who gets to marry whom, or what war we’ll lose next.

When Nobody Wants to Listen to God’s People

There’s an episode in the Bible, in the New Testament book of Revelation, where God threatens to strip a particular congregation of it’s voice – its ability to impact and influence the world around it. This “church in Ephesus” is guilty of a certain kind of sin, one that’s easy to slip into, especially in areas of the world where powerful, wealthy people are rubbing up against everyone else.

God has this to say to His people in Ephesus at the time:

“But I have this against you: You have abandoned your first love. Therefore, keep in mind how far you have fallen. Repent and perform the deeds you did at first. But if you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this to your credit: You hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.…” ~ Revelation 2:4-6

They’re God’s people to be sure, and they’ve taken a stand against something that God Himself abhors, but that doesn’t matter. If they don’t learn to recover whatever love that first enslaved them, they’re going to lose their “lampstand.”

It’s super important to understand what that means, but we’ll have to get a little nerdy to do that, so hang with me here.

After this passage, there’s only one more place in the book of Revelation where this word “lampstand (λυχνία)” is used. It describes two future prophets who come to speak out against the evils of the world. They are “lampstands,” or, lights in the darkness, something attractive, sent by God himself, and they have a message from God.

“Lampstand,” in this instance, means “attractiveness,” “influence.”

“Voice.”

This says a ton about the purpose of God’s people. We’re hard-wired to be a group that others listen to, and we used to play that role in America. Christian leaders, even the Bible, used to wield a ton of influence in our culture.

But our ability to speak, to influence, to attract, is all but gone. The only people who now want to listen to us is us.

We’re compelled to ask why.

Is it our fault that nobody wants to listen to what we have to say?

When we declare our stance on sexual orientation, or traditional marriage, or abortion, and the whole world says, “please, stop talking,” is that because the world has become evil and isn’t interested in the things of God, or is it because we, like the wealthy, ancient Ephesians, have fallen out of love with Jesus?

Our anger, our vitriol, and posture towards people begging for a different language suggest the latter.

We’ve fallen in love with being “right.” We’ve taken for ourselves the mantle of legislating morality, directing culture, and making sure the world operates as we see fit.

If you know your scriptures, you’ll know that’s God’s job.

Our love for things that aren’t God has supplanted our love for God and driven us to a place where nobody’s interested in what we have to say.

So, when we tell others, “please, stop talking,” or, “don’t tell me what to do,” etc., it’s further evidence that we’ve got some hard questions to ask ourselves.

Our “lampstand,” the one God gave us, the one we’re hard-wired to bear, has been removed. According to scripture, there’s only one scenario where that can happen.

Getting our Voice Back

We don’t need to have a huge corporate pow-wow about recovering our voice, or crafting strategies for speaking in ways that people will listen.

We need to find something we’ve lost.

And we need to remember that, to be in love with Jesus is to be in love with humanity, regardless of whatever foul, Godless, heathen lifestyle they might be swimming in.

It doesn’t hurt to remember that, Biblically speaking, my life – your life – isn’t any more or less detestable/acceptable to God than anyone else’s.

I know, things like gender-neutral bathrooms are driving us crazy. But, again, according to scripture, the overall direction of a culture is God’s job. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t vote, or speak our minds, but the anger, and worse – the judgments, and worst of all – the fear that’s driving all of this, need to go away.

And there’s only one thing that drives out fear.

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear” ~ St. John

Whenever you see large groups of God’s people getting angry at the not-God crowd, you can bet that fear’s running the show, and that love has left the building.

Our #1 priority in this chapter of humanity is to personally and corporately plumb the depths of ourselves, asking hard questions about our level of trust in, and love for, the founder of our religion…

… the one who walked on water, rose himself from the dead, fed thousands with naught but a lunchable, turned the religious world forever on its head, and in so, so many ways, longs to save us from us.

The next time an indigenous North American asks us to stop saying “Indian,” or when we’re tempted to label a Black Lives Matter rep “terrorist,” or call someone who doesn’t embrace our politics an enemy of the state, it’s a great opportunity to ask ourselves, and, more importantly, the Almighty, what’s underneath?

Love? Or something that has a long history of driving out love.

And lampstands.

If we refuse to do that, we’ll always be at odds with things like political correctness, fighting the wrong fights, and blaming everyone else when we lose.

photo credit: The Ugly Earthling