The silly season takes a reprieve. . .

Having endured endless political ads that were quite adept at misrepresenting an opponent's position and equally adept at misrepresenting the candidate's record, I am happy to have found a somewhat quiet reprieve.  The end of the silly season was too long in coming and will surely not last for long until it begins anew.  Sadly, however, this silly season has been more brutal than most and is testament to the difficulty we have in debating positions instead of merely disparaging the candidates themselves.  Some attribute this to the post-Trump era and its hardened positions on the extremes.  I am not sure it has all that much to do with Trump at all.  Instead, I fear, it has more to do with the dead ends of the roads we have left in our pursuit of an illiberal liberalism and a conservatism that destroys more than it conserves.  Such is the end of those who have abandoned morality in favor of a pragmatism of what works.

How can it be that the legal default is the murder of the unborn?  How did we end up with a view toward a comfortable social contract that consumes an ever increasing portion of the federal budget while forgetting that fewer and fewer workers are left to pay the bill?  How is it that even conservatives have made their peace with divorce as a right, with contraception as the norm, with education that exists to each job skills more than learning, and with art that offends and insults?  What kind of world trades a male dominated world for one in which a female world also promotes a feminized masculinity as the only tolerable form?

As a Christian I should expect to be rebuked by the world for my intolerance but instead I find Christianity pleasantly open in comparison to those who refuse honest conversation in favor of a politically correct world in which certain things cannot be said without being labelled hate speech.  If there is ever a champion of the poor, of the oppressed, of the down-trodden, of the weak, and of the helpless, it is the Church of Jesus Christ where neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, or male nor female provide exclusive class before God or claim special privilege of His grace.  The world has attempted to marginalize our Christian witness and we Christians have too quickly surrendered our voices instead of raising up the cause of virtue to both sides of the political spectrum.

Though we certainly proclaim forgiveness to the sinner apart from atoning works he or she has done, we dare not excuse, justify, or deny these sins or they will stand apart from grace and leave the sinner naked of righteousness before the judgment seat of God.  Neither can we be faithful and be silent before the scandal of sin enshrined in civil law without the higher voice of God's will and purpose or lose our voices before those who insist that an impotent Christianity is the only legal form to be tolerated in our land.  We have come to live and we have resigned ourselves to a culture of coarse speech, to arts that lift up vulgarity, to media intent upon celebrating our basest desires, and to a culture in which virtue and morality are reduced to what feels good in the whim of a moment.  The world has not done it to us as much as we have allowed it to be done.  We dare not turn the other cheek to these things for we shall not simply be judged for ourselves but most profoundly for our stewardship of the blessed mystery of Christ.  Be silent no more, people of God.  Rend your garments before the world and your hearts  before God.  Speak the truth in love but speak it bluntly and in all its saving glory.  Holy people of God must speak as God has spoken, not to redeem a nation but to call its people to the cleansing of His blood and the promise of real hope.