Why Delete a Link ?

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

For the first time ever, I've deleted a link on my home-page to a blog I used to read and recommend. 

That won't make the national news.  It's probably not a big deal to anyone but me.  But it is a big deal to me.  It feels like I'm personally rejecting someone I've considered a friend and a brother in Christ, and saying his thoughts are of no value: more than worthless, harmful.  And that is exactly what I'm saying.

I'd followed this person's blog for some years.  His meditations were often more "pious," than I cared for, but sometimes spot-on in glorifying God, and reflecting a believer's experience of God.  "Sometimes" on those scores is probably the highest any Christian blog can achieve.

But over the past couple of years, his views of world and national events and personages had become increasingly strident and out-of-touch with reality.  In a recent interchange, for example, he asserted that the Nazis' destabilization of German society on their path to power was like America today, where "...people’s fanaticism for the previous president has caused the kind of riots we see at College campuses and so on where any speaker, not given to a certain ideology, is shut down either by intimidation or by violence."

I didn't bother to call him on that.  Strident unreality is enough of the "Evangelical" profile that I've learned to try to look past it to see if there's actually something of Christ's Spirit in what "Evangelicals" are saying.  But his claim that violent pro-Obama riots are rampant, and created to bring about a "leftist" dictatorship, doesn't seem to match up with any reality this side of Breitbart News or World Net Daily's headlines.

Such "conspiracy-thinking" is another prominent part of the "Evangelical" profile (a "profile," I'd hasten to add, Evangelicals created for themselves to distinguish themselves from their "enemies," including Christians who don't share their politics).  But it's a part of the "Evangelical" profile I find it impossible to "look past."

It's a breaking-point, for me, when people choose to assert a "reality" contrary to the one God created and sustains, the reality that sane people believe in and live in.  But unreality too seems to be something "Evangelicals' " have chosen for themselves.

My preference is always to try to reason folks back to reality when they go off on a self-destructive tangent.  That's how I understand Galatians 6:1's teaching on "restoring" a brother.  But to reason together, people have to share some basic point of agreement.  There has to be some shared belief that a transpersonal "good" exists, for example; and that seeking that "good" benefits an individual, but also everyone else.

When Jesus teaches how to restore a wayward brother, He emphasizes at each step that a brother will be restored "IF he listens to you..." (Matthew 18:15; my emphasis).  The unfortunate fact of people who choose a "personal reality" is that they put themselves in a mindset where they (sometimes literally) cannot hear any reasoning unless it's predicated on the "alternative facts" of their counter-reality.

Trying to reason people out of their delusions is almost always fruitless, and only makes them mad.  Affirming reality to a person vested in a counter-reality is only ever perceived as an attack.  A personal attack, most of all, on the "god" who created and sustains the "personal reality" they choose to inhabit.

So it was in this case.  And as in the case of many "Evangelicals," the breaking-point was political: a spiritual battlefield on which satan has been particularly active, and successful in capturing American Christians.  Pointing out that the current president manifests the character that Jesus said shows satan's paternity (John 8:44, Matthew 5:21-22) infuriates his "Christian" followers.

That was when the blogger responded with his claim of rioting pro-Obama fanatics (presumably in the intention of showing that what he perceives as "my side" is just as evil as the pro-Trump fanatics he seems to side with), and an angry dismissal of speculating about who anti-Christ is.

The latter I responded to, since I'd never said the current president is the anti-Christ, and I hate that kind of misleading speculation.  I pointed that out, with some scriptural reasons why I don't, at present, consider him the anti-Christ.  Pointed out too that I John 2:18 says there are "many antichrists," and that any human being who manifests satan's character must be seen as one of that "many"...which is not to identify him as THE Anti-Christ.  (A summary of my present thinking about Anti-Christ was posted here a couple days ago.)

I presume that the blogger read my latter responses, though he didn't post them.  Since they were calm and straightforward, and reasoned from scripture, I presume he didn't post my comments because he didn't like what I said.  I run into people who don't like what I say often enough not to get upset about it: I think we all have to.

But it does seem that when you maintain a public blog, you open yourself to hearing what other people think (indeed, hearing other peoples' thoughts is one of the great benefits of blogging); and you have to expect some people will disagree with you.  It seems basically dishonest to censor civil responses solely because you disagree with them: especially, on a Christian blog, civil responses based on scripture.

I re-read the interchange, to make sure all my responses had been civil.  I have strong scriptural reasons for insisting that Christians should love Truth...since that's Who Jesus says He IS (John 14:6)...and that Christians must recognize reality, since nothing exists except what was created by God's word (logos, Logos: (John 1:1-3).  I'm totally convinced of those two facts, and adamant about them.  I sometimes speak more adamantly than gently (as Galatians 6:1 commands us in restoring a brother), when I'm affirming those facts.

But nothing I'd said was more vituperative than "Surely you can see that...:" which is a gentle reminder to people that they can avail themselves of the Spirit's discernment, even when their perceptions are being manipulated by propagandists.  Certainly in "urging" the blogger "...to take an honest look at today’s socio-political reality" I implied he's been dishonest in that regard... but without angry accusation.  And the warning I gave, against breathing in "the spirit of the age," was deliberately phrased impersonally, in hopes of circumventing his tendency to regard criticism of his "personal reality" as personal attack: "All who do so are in very great spiritual danger."

I'm satisfied I gave the blogger no reason to cut off my comments except that he didn't like what I said.

The conclusion these reflections have led me to, about the man and his blog, make me feel I can't in good conscience recommend his blog here.  I know God sees the heart, so it may be, and I hope it is, that He sees there more love of Truth than is manifest in the blogger's words and ways.

But there is such a thing as condemning ourselves by what we approve (Romans 14:22; a scripture I recommend to those who "support" the current president).  I can no longer approve anything of that blog and its writer, when they currently manifest the spirit they do.