In "Stop Falling for Weaponized Empathy" Michael Clary, the author warns: "For all the gullible Christians angrily venting about ICE, your Christian love is not pure. You're functioning as agents of chaos. Stop it." He explains:
False teaching almost always bypasses the mind and works directly on the emotions. That’s why scripture warns us to watch out for it. Paul says false teachers “cause divisions and create obstacles” by using “smooth talk and flattery” to “deceive the hearts of the naive” (Rom 16:17-18). That’s exactly what Benjamin Cremer was doing in his post.
He was using emotional manipulation to make error feel like love. It works like a charm on naive people.
That’s a big problem in the modern church. Too many people are gullible, and gullible Christians are causing a lot of harm in the church. These people aren’t blue-haired radical leftists we see at ICE protests in Minneapolis. No, they are ordinary Christians who sit next to you in church on Sunday but are led by their emotions. They are the nicest people you’d ever meet. They just don’t have the stomach to face hard realities. They think being “Christlike” is whatever seems “nice” or makes them feel good.
But here’s the truth: it isn’t Christlike to be gullible. It isn’t Christlike to believe and share debunked propaganda. It isn’t Christlike to be led by your emotions. It isn’t Christlike to outsource your critical thinking skills to the left-wing activists in the media.
These gullible Christians don't actually believe in Christ, anyway. They believe in what I've heard referred to as "Teddy Bear Jesus" who is always warm, loving, and, most significantly, accepting no matter what. Or, as the host of the Cwic Show describes it: "A 'teddy bear Jesus' is a concept of Jesus as only comfort and no consequences, where 'all is well in Zion'."
But this goes beyond merely believing that Christ's mission was to make us feel warm and fuzzy. These people are foot soldiers in one of the greatest evils of all time: the genocide of white Europeans and their descendants. Because even if that is not what they intend, that is what they are advocating for when they support mass immigration, welcome refugees from across the word in the tens and hundreds of thousands, or speak out against deportation.
Some of the gullible may be Christians, and some pretenders. But their theology is "mushy mush squish squish."
ReplyDeleteThey engage in the modern equivalent of standing on a street corning and praying so everyone will see them praying.
DeleteI believe C.S. Lewis was right in pointing out that most Christians no longer understand what is meant by love, nor what is meant by "loving thy neighbor as thyself."
ReplyDeleteTo quote Lewis directly:
"Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment—even to death. If you had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. ... I imagine somebody will say, ‘Well, if one is allowed to condemn the enemy’s acts, and punish him, and kill him, what difference is left between Christian morality and the ordinary view?’ All the difference in the world. ... Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves—to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not." (Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 7)
Great point. Thank you for sharing the quote.
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