Tag: American Christianity

What is Wrong with Christian Nationalism?

I was recently invited to speak at an online web conference titled “Better Citizens for a Better World.” The conference addressed various aspects of how to live out our Christian citizenship in the here and now.

The conference addressed a wide range of subjects, including an opening talk about “God and Empire” followed by my talk, “Why Christians Can’t be Nationalists.”

My friend Dr. Rob Dalrymple does the first presentation, ending at the 20:15 mark. I then follow up with my presentation outlining what I believe are the proper Christian approaches to patriotism, nationalism and Christian nationalism.

My talk ends at 48:20 when Rob and I begin to answer write-in questions from viewers.

I hope that you find this interesting and helpful in this election season. Thanks for watching:

A Review of Eric Metaxas’ New Book, Religionless Christianity

Review of Eric Metaxas, Religionless Christianity: God’s Answer to Evil (New York: Regnery Faith, 2024, $24.99)

Religionless Christianity is Eric Metaxas’ follow–up to his best–selling book, Letter to the American Church (see my review here). As in the earlier work, Dietrich Bonhoeffer remains Metaxas’ paradigm of Christian cultural engagement striving to effect societal transformation. By going so far as to participate in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Bonhoeffer exemplifies the kind of pious extremism expected of all truly radical Jesus–followers. (Yes, let the irony of that statement sink in.) According to Metaxas, Christians must reject “the idol of purity” (79). “Daring to act” (i.e. trying to kill Hitler), even if it means “making some mistake” (i.e. committing the sin of murder) is Metaxas’ exemplary motto for faithful Christian living (100).

Metaxas’ tone is strongly apocalyptic in response to the spreading “horrors” he believes have been encouraged by the Biden administration. What a difference four years of Democratic governance can make! (I say this with tongue firmly planted in my left cheek.) The dangerous implications of Metaxas’ valorization of Bonhoeffer’s decision to embrace violence are clear. Killing political opponents because they are judged to be God’s horrific opponents continues to be an important part of Metaxas’ message.

According to Metaxas, American society has become the resurrected analog of Nazi Germany complete with the demonic evils (and Metaxas means this literally) of socialism, cultural Marxism, critical race theory (all terms he never defines) as well as transgender advocacy. To his mind, one of the premier examples illustrating America’s slide into the pit of demonic thought and action is “the insane lie of the 1619 Project” (57). According to Metaxas, the 1619 Project’s lessons about the history of American slavery and the ongoing challenges of institutional racism are “lunatic,” “wicked,” “intentionally malevolent,” “dark and accusing,” and “diametrically opposed to God’s idea of grace” (58). In Metaxas’s mind, his political opponents are not well–intentioned human beings who hold different opinions or draw different conclusions from the historical evidence. No. Metaxas insists that all Democrats, liberals (whatever that label now means), progressives and left–wing social activists are involved in a dark, Satanic conspiracy.

According to Metaxas, the main instrument used to propagate this demonic, Nazi–like degeneration is the promotion of “cancel culture” (chapters six and seven). By this he means the suppression of one set of ideological voices by those on the opposite side of the debate. Metaxas warns that “at the dark heart of the evil we are seeing in our time lies that hideous thing called ‘cancel culture’” (55). His primary example of cancel culture concerns Christian voices being criticized or condemned on social media platforms. Combatting cancel culture is elevated to the status of spiritual warfare since “the spirit of cancel culture always operates in environments that are openly anti–God” revealing nothing but “a satanic spirit of accusation and cursing” (59).

In Metaxas’ worldview, only conservatives suffer the oppression of cancel culture. He remains blind to the many instances where either conservative and/or establishment forces have worked to “cancel” progressive/liberal voices in public conversation. (For instance, notice the absence from mainstream media of: anti–Zionist critiques of Israel’s war against Gaza, or any discussion of the war in Ukraine that places primary responsibility not on Russia but on the provocation created by NATO expansion. My political opinions are never represented in mainstream media. Yet, I restrain myself from imagining I am a victim of demonic forces.)

Metaxas’ believes that it is the church’s responsibility directly to attack such demonic phenomena as cancel culture and the 1619 Project. An obedient, socially active, politically engaged church that explicitly promotes conservative policies via Christian nationalism (120–25) is the only hope for national transformation.

The Christian church controls the tiller of society, according to Metaxas. A degenerate society, such as ours or Nazi Germany’s, reveals an apostate church. Bolstering his case by way of analogy to the German church prior to World War II, he lays the largest portion of blame for the rise of Naziism at the feet of the German church—a church that had surrendered to the demonic powers of secularism and religion.

This is where Dietrich Bonhoeffer reenters the picture. During Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment (for plotting to assassinate Hitler) he began writing about the need for “religionless Christianity.” Though I am not a Bonhoeffer scholar—by all academic accounts, neither is Metaxas—I understand Bonhoeffer’s call for a religionless Christianity to be a doubling down on his condemnation of “cheap grace” made so thoroughly in his book The Cost of Discipleship.

Rejecting the empty formalism and pietistic trappings of religious posturing, which includes the brand of rationalism that excludes the possibility of supernatural miracles, Bonhoeffer called for a thoroughgoing surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in every dimension of life. This would be religionless, i.e., authentic Christianity which is exactly what both Germany and America require(d). A truly religionless American Christianity would lead to the final victory of conservative values in a Christian nation worthy of America’s Christian heritage.

This brief review of Metaxas’ arguments in Religionless Christianity has already indicated the book’s major problems. A little elaboration will fill in the picture.

Sections of this book sound as if the author has recently emerged from a time capsule. He seems to have missed the decades–long history of political activism instigated by America’s Religious Right movement, including such organizations as the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and more. The problem, obviously, is that acknowledging this piece of American history undermines Metaxas’ insistence about the ability of a politically active church to control the tenor and direction of American society. Why hasn’t the Religious Right’s decades of religious, political activism created a more moral, Christian society? Metaxas ignores the question because the answer undermines his thesis.

Metaxas also fails to grasp the internal problems of the German, Christian church in the early twentieth–century. Thus, his comparisons to American society consistently miss the mark. The German church’s two principal problems were theological before they were pragmatic.

First, the German church adhered closely to Martin Luther’s two–kingdom theology in which secular, political leaders—including a man like Adolf Hitler—were believed to be divinely installed by God’s providence. The Christian’s duty was to obey government leaders not to dissent; for civil disobedience was rebellion against God.

The second issue was closely related to the first. The Christian church in 1930s Germany wholeheartedly embraced its own form of Christian nationalism. Germany was God’s exceptional nation, carrying out God’s purposes in attempting to conquer Europe. Germany was establishing the kingdom of God on this earth, on both the eastern and the western fronts.

The supreme irony of Metaxas’ book resides in his failure to notice the overlap between his own political views and those of the Nazi, German Christian church which he criticizes. Though he calls upon the American church to follow in the footsteps of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he fails to recognize that he is defending the very political positions— [1] Christian nationalism and [2] seeing God’s “blessing” on one’s preferred political leader, i.e., Donald Trump—that Bonhoeffer condemned. Metaxas’ partisan applause for Trump, especially as Trump promises evangelicals that he will protect Christian dominance throughout America, are mirror images of the theological posture taken up by the German church. THIS was the “secularism” condemned by Bonhoeffer’s call for a religionless Christianity. Yet, it is the very brand of American civil religion propounded by Metaxas.

But Metaxas is too busy promoting his own right–wing political ideology to notice that in riding the wave of today’s MAGA movement and blatantly manipulating Bonhoeffer’s legacy, he has styled himself as one more political hack pretending to write as an historian–theologian. Unfortunately, I suspect that Religionless Christianity will become another bestseller for Metaxas. But then Naziism was also a bestseller among members of the German Christian church.

Check Out My Recent Article in the “Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies”

Today the Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies published my article  titled “Echoes of Slavery, Racial Segregation and Jim Crow: American Dispensationalism and Christian Zionist Bible-Reading.”

Below is the abstract, that is a brief summary of the article:

The apologetics of pro-slavery, pro-segregation Christians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were identical to the methods of biblical interpretation used by Dispensationalist Christian Zionists today. The ideology’s specific rules of ‘literal interpretation’ and ‘antecedent theology’ led both groups to similar conclusions about slavery and racial segregation, on the one hand, and Jewish privilege and Palestinian displacement, on the other. Abolitionist efforts to promote a Christ–like hermeneutic rooted in Christian morality points the way forward to correcting modern theologies, such as Dispensationalist Christian Zionism, that continue to sanction human oppression.

I believe that clicking the highlighted title above will allow access to the article online. However, if this does not work for you, let me know and I can send you a copy.

Yes, I too am disappointed by the numerous formating and editorial errors in my article. Yuck! Unfortunately, it is too late for me to do anything about it now…sigh…

Wheaton College Prof, Vincent Bacote, says US Evangelicalism is Fractured Due to a Lack of Discipleship

I have been reading Tim Alberta’s new book, The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory (HarperCollins, 2023). The book analyzes the rise of Donald Trump and MAGA Christianity within American evangelicalism.

How is it that Christian devotion to such a pagan politician has succeeded in splintering American evangelicalism?

I believe that Vincent Bacote, theology professor at Wheaton College, hits the nail on the head when he accuses American evangelical leaders of failing to disciple, to catechize, their people.

I couldn’t agree more.

For instance, the so-called “Great Commission” is not a command to evangelize unbelievers. It is a command to disciple, to teach and rigorously instruct believers into faithful Christian discipleship. Evangelism is crucial, but it is only the entry point for the radical demands of true Christianity.

Jesus commands his followers, “Go and make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20).

A Christian disciple is someone who puts into practice all the upside-down, crazy, counter intuitive, radical lifestyle choices that Jesus taught his disciples, and us, to embrace. That requires a lifetime of sacrificial self-denial and devotion.

Along these lines, Alberta quotes Professor Bacote:

“Jesus loved them [the 12 disciples] but he did not infantilize them. Time and again, when His disciples got something wrong — or even when they simply showed human weakness — Jesus rebuked them. He chided them for being faithless. He censure them for the vanity and biotry and prejudice. He criticized them for not grasping His instruction.”

This is what discipling loopks like And this . . . is what’s absent inside much of the American evangelical Church.

“If you ask me what’s the biggest problem with evangelicalism, I’d say it’s a catechesis problem. It’s a formation problem, a discipleship problem. These are people who are supposed to have a knowedge of the Bible, but many of them don’t . . . A lot of these people are just not going deep enough.”

By remaining shallow in the scriptures, Bacote said, too many American Christians have avoided a necessary showdown between their own base cultural proclivities and God’s perfect standard. When Christians are discipled primarily by society, inevitably they look to scripture for affirmation of their habits and behaviors and political views. But if the Bible is the word of God, then God ought to be interrogating those things.

Check Out My Conversation About Christian Nationalism This Thursday (4/4/24)

This coming Thursday (April 4th) I will be a guest on the Determinetruth podcast. My friend, Dr. Rob Dalrymple, will interview me on the subject of Christian Nationalism. We will be discussing such questions as:

What is Christian Nationalism?

Is it an issue on the US political scene?

If it’s a problem, what’s wrong with it?

If Christian Nationalism is wrong, how ought Christians to think, and behave, in the realm of politics?

If you have not read it already, you can prepare for the conversation by reading my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship  in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018).

You can listen to the podcast this coming Thursday (at 1 pm Eastern, 11 am Mountain, 10 am Pacific). Just click on the link below when the time comes. You can watch the Livestream, or you can return later to watch the recording at a more convenient time, if need be:

Christianity Today Pedals More Malicious, Illogical Tomfoolery

Let’s watch a video together, then check  out my analysis afterwards:

Yes, Frantz Fanon was an anti-colonialist writer, activist and fighter who worked to liberate both Martinique and Algeria from French colonialism.

His two famous anti-colonial books (which I have read), The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks, advocated violence as the necessary means for overthrowing western, colonial rule throughout Asia and Africa.

On the basis of this association, the Christianity Today (CT) video implicitly assumes that, like Fanon, all anti-colonial movements must advocate and engage in violence, by definition. Since this particular video is set within the broader context of CT’s current pro-Israel, pro-Zionist video series, I can only assume that this critique of “violent” anti-colonial ideology is somehow related to Israel’s current war in Gaza.

The most common framing of anti-Zionist criticism of Israel nowadays is to describe the country as a settler-colonial state in need of an anti-colonial deconstruction. Hamas is sometimes described as an anti-colonial, revolutionary movement.

Implicitly, then, CT is portraying the Hamas attack against southern Israel on October 7, 2023 as a contemporary example of Frantz Fanon’s violent, anti-colonial philosophy working itself out before our very eyes.

Again, by saying that “anti-colonialism is not value neutral” we are meant to conclude that all anti-colonialism embraces Fanon’s perspective on the use of violence. Hamas becomes the implicit proof of this implied conclusion.

So, what’s wrong with all of this?

First, notice how much of the heavy lifting in this CT presentation is being done through implication. Very little is said explicitly. The supposed lessons to be learned about the inherent violence of anti-colonial movements today – which includes the majority of folks, like me, who are criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank – are a subtle subtext resonating between the lines of what CT is saying out loud.

This method of communication is a common feature of political propaganda: don’t openly accuse your opponents of being horrible monsters, but sprinkle enough rhetorical breadcrumbs to lead your listeners to the intended, malicious conclusion. It will become embedded in their consciousness as an “obvious” conclusion they arrived at under their own steam.

The second, more important problem with the CT video is its implication that Frantz Fanon’s embrace of violence is representative of all anti-colonial movements. But, of course, this is not true. One of the largest and most successful anti-colonial movements of the twentieth century was led by Mahatma Gandhi, a staunch advocate of non-violent resistance. Gandhi led the campaign to shed India of British colonial control and succeeded through using a variety of non-violent actions.

It is simply alse to suggest, as this video does, that all anti-colonial activists embrace violence as a legitimate means of resistance.

It is also worth noting that this argument is not only historically false, it is also illogical. The CT video draws out its false implication by means of something called a false syllogism. Here is an example of a false syllogism:

  1. Socrates is a philosopher
  2. Socrates is Greek
  3. Therefore, all Greeks are philosophers.

The conclusion (C) is obviously false even though the two premises (A, B) are both true. That is the essence of an illogical false syllogism.

The illogical argument embedded in the CT video goes something like this:

  1. Frantz Fanon was an anti-colonialist
  2. Frant Fanon was an advocate for violence
  3. Therefore, all anti-colonialists advocate violence

The scurrilous accusation implicitly embedded in the CT video – that I, for instance, encourage violence and warfare because I embrace an anti-colonial philosophy – is a politically conservative, pro-Zionist attempt to demonize my criticisms of the way Israel is prosecuting its war against the people of Gaza.

It is also ignorant of, or deliberately ignoring, the many Palestinian activists who follow the way of Gandhi by embracing non-violence in their anticolonial, anti-Zionist activities. Some of these brave men and women are my friends, and I have seen how frequently they are physically assaulted by violent Israeli soldiers while maintaining their peaceful behavior.

In this way, the video perpetuates American misinformation regarding the Palestinian people and the oppressive circumstances under which they live in Gaza and the West Bank.

In any case, according to international law, the Palestinian people have every legal right to employ violent measures in their attempts to rid themselves of Israeli colonial rule. Personally, I am a passivist, and my sympathies lie with my non-violent friends who are pursuing peaceful means of resistance.

And, yes, Hamas committed war crimes on October 7th for which the guilty should be prosecuted. But as a matter of law: Palestinians have a right to use force to free themselves, despite the video’s protestations. Here is another matter where American’s display their ignorance of Israel’s history and the current realities on the ground.

Israel is the blatant aggressor in the current Gaza conflict.

No amount of scare-mongering, illogical argument, false syllogism, or historical falsehoods can change that fact. Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by CT’s lazy, malicious tomfoolery.

MAGA Pastors Hear More False Teaching from Eric Metaxas

This summer Charlie Kirk hosted another Turning Point USA conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, targeting Christian leaders, especially

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk introduces Brazil’s right wing ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, at a TPUSA event at Trump National Doral Miami, Friday, Feb. 3, 2023, in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

MAGA pastors. Although, one would be hard pressed to find anything explicitly Christian about this gathering.

Below is the conference mission statement taken from the conference website:

“Turning Point USA empowers citizens of all ages to Rise Up against the radical Left in defense of freedom, free markets, and limited government. Join millions of patriotic supporters to Save America.”

Aside from the fact that Mr. Kirk would undoubtedly categorize me among “the radical left” he is fighting against, even my wildest imaginations cannot conceive of one Biblical argument requiring me to include free markets, limited government and saving America (from what? from myself?) as goals for Christian discipleship in the kingdom of God.

What does any of this have to do with Christian leadership? I’ll give you a hint: Nothing.

One of Kirk’s favorite speakers is Eric Metaxas.

Since writing his biography about the German pastor/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Metaxas has doubled down on styling himself as an American prophet following in Bonhoeffer’s footsteps, warning us about the imminent destruction of our nation.

Supposedly, just as Bonhoeffer resisted the Nazis on behalf of Christ, Metaxas (and his followers) are called to combat their political opponents for the sake of God’s kingdom.

In his most recent book, Letter to the American Church (which I reviewed here), Metaxas implicitly encourages Christians to resort to violence, if need be, as they fight to restore a godly America.

Godly, that is, insofar as Eric Metaxas understands godliness.

Furthermore, never in a million years would Bonhoeffer have said that he was resisting Hitler in order to restore a godly Germany. He was far too good a theologian to have deceived himself in that way.

Metaxas tells us that American Christians are now called to engage in spiritual warfare more than ever. Today’s American scene somehow making godliness and truth “many times more important than it was ten years ago.”

Really? Are you telling me that the contemporary relevance of God’s kingdom is determined by the ephemeral phases of human politics?

Are you kidding me?

Below is a clip of Metaxas’ Turning Point address where he exhorts Christians to pick up their weapons for holy war as did Bonhoeffer.

What Metaxas continually fails to tell his listeners, however, is that Bonhoeffer did not die because of his Christian witness.

No. That’s not what caused the Nazis to seal his fate.

Bonhoeffer was arrested and finally executed because he participated in a plot to assassinate Hitler.  Bonhoeffer did not die for Christ, though he certainly did live for him — faithfully and unfaithfully, as we all do.

Bonhoeffer died for attempted murder. Something that no Christian should boast about.

Ironically, in valorizing Bonhoeffer as he does; in stirring Christians to “fight” in “spiritual warfare” as he does, Metaxas is encouraging the American church and its MAGA pastors to repeat Bonhoeffer’s final failure.

And I suspect that this is exactly what Metaxas intends to say.

This is leading unthoughtful people to repeat the error of Esau, who gave up his rightful inheritance in exchange for a bowl of soup.

In much the same way, Eric Metaxas is asking us to betray God’s peaceable, eternal kingdom for the inconsequential rumblings of political skulldugery.

Don’t be deceived. Metaxas is a false prophet, a false teacher, who now points people away from the crucified Jesus.

Chris Hedges: The Pedagogy of Power

[Headline image: Plato and Aristotle debate in the school of Athens]

Chris Hedges’ latest article at ScheerPost offers a great explanation of why we need to strengthen liberal arts education in this country, not gut it as is currently happening everywhere.

All across America, history, English, and philosophy departments are being downsized or eliminated altogether.

Conservatives want to reduce higher education to streamlined vocational training, while liberals want to sift it through the latest, reductionistic filter of identity politics. Both are equally ruinous.

Thomas Jefferson is purported to have said that democracy’s survival depends on having an educated populous. Truer words have never been spoken, as the current state of American politics attests.

Check out this excellent essay at SheerPost written by Chris Hedges about the foundational significan of education for a functioning democracy:

Here is an excerpt:

Plato

The ruling classes always work to keep the powerless from understanding how power functions. This assault has been aided by a cultural left determined to banish “dead white male” philosophers.

I am standing in a classroom in a maximum security prison. It is the first class of the semester. I am facing 20 students. They have spent years, sometimes decades, incarcerated. They come from some of the poorest cities and communities in the country. Most of them are people of color. 

During the next four months they will study political philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli,  Friedrich  Nietzsche, Karl Marx and John Locke, those often dismissed as anachronistic by the cultural left.

It is not that the criticisms leveled against these philosophers are incorrect. They were blinded by their prejudices, as we are blinded by our prejudices. They had a habit of elevating their own cultures above others. They often defended patriarchy, could be racist and in the case of Plato and Aristotle, endorsed a slave society.  

What can these philosophers say to the issues we face — global corporate domination, the climate crisis, nuclear war and a digital universe where information, often manipulated and sometimes false, travels around the globe instantly?  Are these thinkers antiquated relics? No one in medical school is reading 19th century medical texts. Psychoanalysis has moved beyond Sigmund Freud. Physicists have advanced from Isaac Newton’s law of motion to general relativity and quantum mechanics.

You can read the entire essay here.

What is ‘Cultural Marxism’ and Why is It the New Conservative Boogyman?

[I must thank John Fea’s blog The Current for drawing this Jacobin article to my attention.]

One can rarely find a conservative discussion of America’s so-called

Karl Marx

“culture wars” without discovering that most, if not all, “liberal” activism in favor of social justice or cultural transformation, alongside CRT, BLM,  feminism and gay rights, can all be solidly dismissed as scurilous examples of “cultural Marxism.”

Cultural Marxism is one of the Right’s new magic words. Somehow, by simply linking the two words together nothing else needs to be said;  incisive critique and definitive dismissal are miraculously accomplished, simultaneously. Voila!

My own attempts at uncovering the intended meaning of the label “cultural Marxism” has led me to conclude that — whether or not the person using the term has thought this through — it is used to criticize any attempt at instigating social or cultural change. That’s it.

Apparently, since Karl Marx is considered a revolutionary who wanted to change western society, anyone else who tries to change something that they perceive to be a social problem must also be a (cultural) Marxist.

Black Lives Matter activists want to change policing practices in America, so they must be cultural Marxists.

Union activists who want better working conditions for America’s working class must also be cultural Marxists.

At the end of the day, cultural Marxism descibes anything that scares conservatives. (For me, personally, that means all vampires are cultural Marxists.)

Unfortunately, evangelical Christians who consider themselves to be cultural critics have become especially enamored with this label. But while it appears to make its user sound smart, it only reveals the shallowness and dishonesty of their analysis.

To better understand why this is the case, I highly recommend this article by Ben Burgis.

Burgis has written a good article at Jacobin titled “Conservatives Think ‘Marxism’ is Anything That Scares Them.” He clearly explains what Marxism really is and why this new label consistently misunderstands the issues involved:

Here is an excerpt:

Earlier this month, best-selling author Jordan Peterson declared that “climate justice” is “the new guise of murderous Marxism.” The same day, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis appeared at a town hall event sponsored by WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire. A voter asked DeSantis, who often rails against all things “woke,” to define his favorite term. DeSantis replied that “woke is a form of cultural Marxism.” Speaking of Manchester, a few days after the DeSantis event a member of New Hampshire’s legislature accused the city’s mayor, Joyce Craig, of promoting “Marxist indoctrination” in the public schools.

“Marxism” seems to be taking up a lot of space in the heads of contemporary conservatives. But, as they use the term, what does it mean?

All too often, it’s a catch-all term for every left-coded trend they find frightening. . .

. . . What does Marxism mean here? What could it mean that’s consistent with the idea that “major corporations” are in Marxist hands? One would think any “Marxist activist” would want those corporations to be either nationalized or turned over to some form of worker-ownership. Why haven’t the Marxist activists controlling them taken steps in this direction since the summer of 2020?

If Marxist activists have taken over “most important news media,” shouldn’t such media be agitating for expropriating the means of production? If they’ve taken over the universities, shouldn’t economics departments long filled with mainstream, pro-capitalist economists now be populated by, well, Marxist economists?

You can read the entire article here.

Remembering that Forgiveness is a Christian Imperative

Mark Galli, former editor at Christianity Today, now manages of personal blog called “Peripheral Vision.” His most recent post is titled, “What to Do with Notorious Sinners: Maybe Befriend Them? Really?”

It is a fine post which I repost here because the church struggles with implementing Jesus’ teaching on this subject.

Of course confession, repentance and a request for forgiveness are important components in the overal process of personal forgiveness. But the radical — and I mean RADICAL — nature of Jesus’ teaching on the necessity of forgiveness cannot be sidestepped by the seemingly reasonable, psychological provisos that so easily qualify the Christian imperative of forgiveness.

Sit down and reread  one of the Synoptic Gospels and notice how often Jesus emphasizes the importance of forgiving others with the same graciousness with which God has forgiven us.

I am afraid that, on this score, we regularly lose sight of just how unbelievably radical is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here is an excerpt of Galli’s article:

A friend has committed a grave sin, and even broken the law—let’s say by having sex with a minor.  We may find it morally reprehensible even to remain friends, especially if we have a teenage daughter.  We may wonder if continuing the friendship will signal indifference to what the offender has done. Or we simply may be confused about how to reach out. In the end, we may not make a conscious decision to reject the offender, but we simply don’t reach out, we don’t stay in touch, we just slowly walk away from that relationship.

That response is understandable—we’ve all done it. But at this personal level, here’s the deal: Though God lets sinners walk away from him, he never walks away from sinners. (my emphasis)

You can read the entire article here.