A week ago, a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, forcing Washington into a temporary lockdown. USA Today has provided a timeline of that fateful day. Since then, various folks have asked me to write a blog about it. I’ve been reluctant to do so for several reasons:
My goal in blogging is to provide encouragement from the gospel, but this article is more about encroachment on the gospel.
Space is limited. I empathize with one evangelical writer who told his critics, “I am sorry that I could not address every specific issue, with the nuance and caveats you would have, dealing with every concern with the detail it requires, in this 1000 word article.” (That’s how long my article today will be.)
Countless writers far more capable than I am have already addressed key issues.
I don’t want to be misunderstood and then ostracized by my dear friends and colleagues as a result.
But I’ll say it anyway, because I think it needs to be said. I’ve picked just one aspect of this ordeal that evokes a haunting lesson from history: “the church in Germany appeared to be too preoccupied with the problems of the nation to see what was happening before its eyes.”
So wrote Erwin Lutzer over 25 years ago in his award-winning book, Hitler’s Cross: The revealing story of how the Cross of Christ was used as a symbol of the Nazi agenda. This book came to my mind after the Capitol riots began. A pastor friend of mine tweeted:
To the people storming the capitol with Jesus flags, please repent and promote peace and the rule of law. If not, please leave the Jesus flags behind. He’s nowhere near this.
The rioters who stormed the Capitol, destroyed property, killed a policeman, and injured others, were anything but “ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor. 5:20).
Let me add two qualifying statements:
Many of the peaceful protesters were sincere Christians who simply wanted their voice to be heard and were exercising their First Amendment rights.
I am NOT comparing President Trump to Adolf Hitler (as some have done).
My chief concern is not about any one person, but rather the people of God in America. Christians are allowing their political views and loyalties to color their perspective, confuse their identity, rearrange their priorities, and tarnish their testimony.
Scripture says, “Now the works of the flesh are evident…” (Gal. 5:19). Such sins include “enmity, strife, … fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions” (v. 20). The way that some Christians have expressed their opinions and handled their differences, especially on social media, is disgraceful.
Have we lost sight of the fact that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36)? Pastor Matt Chandler shared some good thoughts along these lines in a brief video message last week, saying in part,
I want us, by the grace of God, to pray for our nation [and] to consider how we got to this moment. Personally, I think it’s a mixture of biblical illiteracy, a lack of spiritual power, and a lack of serious discipleship.
In Hitler’s Cross, Lutzer points out that Hitler’s “political machine swallowed the church whole because the church had lost its biblical mission.” In the days of Hitler, “the Nazis wrapped the cross in the swastika, making the cross a weapon to further Hitler’s agenda.”
On one side we see the danger from the political Left. In his newest book, Live Not By Lies, Rod Dreher warns us that “a progressive — and profoundly anti-Christian militancy — is steadily overtaking society.” We see this in the destruction of the nuclear family, the erosion of moral values, plus the rise of identity politics, intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, cultural Marxism, and other humanistic ideologies and philosophies. Dreher writes, “the Left pushes its ideology ever deeper into the personal realm, leaving fewer and fewer areas of life uncontested.”
So it’s easy to see why Christians are concerned and want to “contest” such wrongs. But as Trevin Wax states in his critique of Dreher’s book,
My point isn’t that Dreher is wrong to warn against cultural currents that sweep us into soft totalitarianism. I only wish he had explored how this tendency toward soft totalitarianism could wind up being as much of a feature of a nationalist surge from the far right as it could … from the far left.
Dr. Albert Mohler addressed this same concern in today’s episode of his daily broadcast, The Briefing. The first segment is entitled “What is Christian Nationalism and What Is the Danger? Understanding the Different Roles of the Church and Nations in God’s Plan.” To listen to the broadcast or read the transcript, click here.
I’m already over my usual word limit, so I’ll wrap up quickly. I realize that I’ve mostly raised a concern rather than resolve it. But I think that’s fairly simple (if not easy), so long as we remember who we are, whose we are, why we are here, and what we’re to do. Dr. Daniel Aiken summed up the matter well in his tweet earlier today:
The Great Commandments
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matt. 22:37-40)
The Great Commission
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18-20)
Here endeth the lesson.