Demonizing the Left

As I mentioned in my last post, the books Velvet Elvis and The Prodigal God both comment on how we as evangelical Christians can set-up our children for a shock when they enter the real world. In the first case, Rob Bell talks about how those who are raised in evangelical churches and especially in Christian schools can come away from that with the impression that the only truth that exists is located in their church or school. In the other case, Timothy Keller talks about those same kinds of home and school environments in terms of the people who have liberal, leftist views about sex, politics, and culture and that anyone outside the circle of their faith is not to be trusted. The one is about truth, the other about people, but they are similar. When those children go off to college they find that there is some truth to be found in the liberal universities and some loveable people to be found, causing them to doubt what they had been taught, including their religious teaching. In trying to protect our children, we often go too far and demonize those we disagree with and it later comes back to haunt us when our children abandon the faith because it mislead them about truth and about people with too extreme a position.



In The Prodigal God Keller points out that the father of the prodigal son would have been the object of derision by his peers for giving the prodigal his inheritance early. He would have been told that he let that child walk all over him; he would have been called weak; he would have been told to stand up to those boys! Instead, he was more than patient and forgiving, taking the loss himself by allowing the prodigal to blow his inheritance and later accepting him back. He would have been told by his peers to refuse to take him back, that the son needed to live with the consequences of his actions. Indeed, that is exactly what the elder brother wanted. In other words, he would have been demonized by his peers for failing to uphold the honor of the role of father. Similarly today in the Arab world fathers are 'shamed' into killing their daughters who balk at their parents arrangements for marriage or who become Christians, among other things.


When we demonize the left, we do something similar to what peers of the father would have been doing; trying to cut them off, teach them a lesson. It is similar to what the Arab world does to those who embrace Christianity. We don't recognize the similarity to these things many times, but it is there just the same. To demonize those we disagree with we simply cut off or at least reduce the possibility of redemption.


I must admit that I do get tired of hearing how awful Obama and company are every day on talk radio. I disagree with most everything Obama does and, as with his predecessor Carter, most of what he does will have to be undone later. But demonizing does not help. As with the examples in these books about how demonizing the left sets up our children for a shock when they enter the world, this constant demonizing of the left sets us up for losing all support from moderates as they must get more tired of this than I do as conservative. And he may accidentally do something good along the way.


Disagree? Yes. Make the issues clear? Yes. Demonize? No.