Cutting Off Our Nose To Site Our Faces: The Potential Fake In Our Awakening

Cutting off the nose to spite the face is one of humanity’s basest propensities: overreaction. To partake in this fine human tradition all one must do is hate a problem so much that they accidentally self-destruct instead of deconstructing the problem. If my roommate leaves shower dirty, so I set remove every shower and sink in our house, then I’ve certainly stopped one particular problem, but I have also created some new ones. 

Qualifications 

This is one of those articles that is trying to get after a very specific problem, and I hope to address that problem as clearly and specifically as possible. Unfortunately, it is also an inflammatory topic—though I am trying to be very non-inflammatory, I promise. Because of that, numerous qualifications are in order. 

This article is not an attack on one someone or “someones.” Put another way: I’m not writing this with someone in mind. This is all written with one goal: that of pushing people as lovingly as possible to a calmer, Christ-like, Word-centered approach to our lives. I am just trying to a share a concern, and hopefully a solution, to something I see trickling its way through my generation of Christians. 

The problem that I worry about is this: Are we cutting off our noses to spite our faces because of politics? Are we cutting off our morals to spite our other morals? Are we awakening to one set of political pitfalls only to snooze our way into others? 

Yes, this post is about politics, but not so much about politics. This post is about the political tenor and theater we are living in, and how we have chosen to go about navigating it. This article is definitely not an endorsement of a candidate. This post is definitely not trying to bind the conscience of a fellow Christian to a particular vote or a particular non-vote. The only thing this definitely is, is an attempt to get us to consider ourselves circumspectly, humbly, and biblically. 

The subject is simple, and it’s an indictment of the tenor of any quasi-political topic that I had to disclaim this for as long as I did above. However, here goes. 

Have we really awakened? 

If we think that we are awakened politically simply because we currently hate everything we used to be for, then we are still immature in our thinking. And we have to ask ourselves: is distaste for one side my motivation for an embrace of the other? On the surface, we will always rationalize, telling ourselves that our decisions are because of our noble and perfect enlightenment. However, we need to ask ourselves the tough question: if I have new perspectives, is it a result of the Bible reshaping my conscience, or is it the result of a reaction or popular swing?  

If we think that we are critical thinkers now just because we traded our political tribe of one for the tribe of the other, then we are still not thinking like adults.  

Our goal is to be like the sons of Issachar, “men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). We need to have understanding of our times, not merely be swept along in our time’s current. We need to know what we ought to do, which is only known through God and His Word. Our goal should be destroying arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and taking every thought captive to obey Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5). We ought not let any politicians or policies go blindly past our brains. We have to be vigilant, taking every thought captive unto the knowledge of God. Even more, we need to desire to be renewed by the transforming of our minds, not according to the movements of our day or the decisions of our tribe. Instead, we are to be transformed according to the mind of Christ. (Romans 12:2). 

Christians don’t fit in to the two-party system. That statement is not a cover for “Christians really ought to vote blue this time around.” The point of not fitting into the system is that we actually become independent thinkers who critically engage with the leaders and politics of our day—standing solely upon the Word of God, not party, popularity, platitudes, emotions, or tribe, as authority. 

What I see happening 

There is always a ditch on the left and the right side of the road. The drunk man on his horse is likely to fall off on the right and consequently be so paranoid about doing it again that he leans too far and falls off on the left. Simply put: problems multiply themselves unless you solve the root cause.  

The problem isn’t that the man on the horse went to the right, it is that he is drunk and doesn’t know how to balance. What he needs to do is get off the horse, not just lean the opposite direction as before. He may lean the other direction and successfully avoid the right ditch, but he has the same problem as before. Would anyone come up to him and congratulate him on his progress simply because he fell off on the other side? Or, would you splash cold water on his face, get him strong coffee, and tell him to sober up? 

This is the phenomenon I currently see among Christians in their social/political thinking. One potential piece of the issue is that we have bought into the lie that social and political thinking is divorced from moral and theological thinking. At its root, though, all questions are moral and theological. There are no exceptions to this rule. But if we believe that somehow political thinking is a third category, completely off on its own from theology, then it is easy for us to go ahead and swap opinions around as though they mean nothing in an ultimate sense. It makes it easy for us to trade in the Word’s categories for the World’s categories. This also leads us to being tossed and swept about by every wind of political doctrine. “Why not,” the thinking goes, “It’s not like God cares much about this, right?”  

The real locus of the problem that I see is that we might abhor the ditch on the right side of the road so much that we now become more about avoiding any association with it instead of actually fixing our problems. In our politics we might feel like our parents lead us into the ditch, or the church we were raised in pushed us in that direction, or that our evangelical leaders did. We might feel like this ditch has a bright red sign above it that reads, “G-O-D and G-O-P.” That sign might have illuminated itself for you somewhere around 2016. 

Here’s the problem—and I am quite glad you noticed the flashing sign—we might hate the ditch we recently stumbled out of. But, we haven’t magically become more intelligent just by hating the pitfall into which we fell—and then picking a new ditch. We have to actually learn to stop falling into ditches. To break from our analogy for a second: if the failure was that we compromised away the Bible with the GOP and Trump, then simply hating the failure so much that we compromise away the Bible with the Democrats doesn’t do us any good. It might make us feel good because we’ve avoided the failure all those other fools are still stuck in, but we aren’t actually any better off—we’re just in a new ditch. 

The Real Problem 

This is what I mean by cutting off our nose to spite our face. Keep in mind that I’m speaking to a very particular mindset, and I am not accusing anyone reading this post of having it. It’s possible that this whole thing is something I’ve diagnosed incorrectly, so I trust that the Spirit is strong enough to convict those who ought to be convicted, and to help others ignore me. 

An example of the mindset is this: “Donald Trump is so horrible that I used to vote Republican, but now I could never vote red, celebrate anything they do, or co-sign on their line.” 

Before you freak out, I am not trying to get you to vote for Donald Trump this fall. I am not trying to get you to vote Republican. I am not a Republican. I am not a Democrat. My motive is only to help us try to think more rationally and Biblically.  

Why is this mindset an issue? Well, I see it in huge numbers amongst kids my age, kids who grew up in the church and now feel politically homeless. They feel like the home they grew up in is full of rats, ugly carpet, and rotted floorboards, and they do not want to move back in after college. 

A lot of us think that the problem is that we were brought up to “be Republicans.” In reality, that the precise problem is being brought up to be non-thinking.  

I’m not sure how you were brought up, or how your parents, school, or church leaned. There are some ditches with blue and some with red neons flashing. What I am sure about is that if you were brought up to be loyal to one party (more honestly, one tribe), then we have some work to do.  

The Problem of Tribalism 

Human beings are tribal by nature. In our sinful condition, we find reasons to divide, dislike, and disdain each other. We see this manifest in hatred aimed at specific ethnicities, classism, etc. I think, though, that one of the worst forms of sinful human tribalism today is political. We seem to enjoy having a license to treat outsiders of our political tribe as less than human. 

So again, I want to say that the problem is not necessarily having a tribe you tend to stick with, we will all normally end up with a tribe that we “fit in with” a little more than others. The problem arrives when we drink the Kool-Aid of our tribe and stop being righteously critical of them; or, when we drink the Kool-Aid of being unrighteously and feverishly critical of the opposing tribe. 

We may notice such dramatic failures in our tribe (in this example, the Republicans) that we swear off everything Republican all the time, no matter what, no matter who. This is an understandable response, but it isn’t a rational or mature one. What we should do when we notice problems is learn to think critically and righteously about them. We shouldn’t simply switch our minds to the opposite of whatever “they say.” If we do, we are simply picking out a new ditch; we aren’t learning to stay on the road. 

If you used to be an un-thinking Republican, and now you are an un-thinking Anti-Republican, then you are still un-thinking. You are still swerving back and forth on the road. We need to solve the problem. Before anyone thinks I’m playing favorites, there are plenty of examples of people being un-thinking Anti-Democrats. There is plenty of un-thinking Anti-___ from all directions. The problem, again, is not the party that you hate/love. The problem is that if your social/political thinking is ruled by this hate/love of a tribe (or singular person) instead of being ruled by the categories and truth of the word of God, then you have a political idol. It’s simply an idol you hate or an idol you love. Either way the idol is calling the shots for you when God ought to be. 

Cutting off our nose 

For example, let me speak to who I presume to be the majority of Millennials and Zoomers and Generation Xers who grew up in the church. And remember, this is not some stump speech to get you back to the GOP. I wouldn’t spend 2,500 words trying to get you to move into a house I never lived in. Here goes:  

If all of your moral outrage at the failures, compromises, and corruption of the GOP (that you recently awakened to) leads you to simply reverse roles and then turn a blind eye to the numerous moral failures, compromises, and corruption of the Left, then you haven’t actually changed. We don’t somehow re-gain the moral high ground just because we reject some compromises and turn a blind eye to new ones. Sure, you might feel good about your new thoughts on necessary criminal justice reform, but have you forgotten about babies being murdered in the womb? We re-gain a Biblical view of the world by submitting all things, all people, all ideas, both parties, to Christ. We need to learn to call a spade a spade, whether or not our team is the one holding the card. 

I am painfully aware of the fact we don’t get to make ideal candidates or laws—choices do get forced on us at times—and sometimes all we can do is refuse the choice period. I’ve been there. That topic is a complicated post for another complicated time. What I would suggest, in short, is that we need to weigh things as scripture weighs them, and develop our list of things and priorities that we believe the Bible prioritizes. We need to be certain that we aren’t simply prioritizing what our culture tells us to prioritize. We need the cold water and the strong coffee of the Word to sober us up. We ought to have our list in mind of what we think God would not compromise on, and we need to be content to sit on that list when it’s carved into the Rock. 

We need to make sure that we learn what it means to put the Bible first over our tribes, not simply swap our tribes out because the one we used to feel loyal to has done something we don’t like. We need to actually lose our tribalism, not just join a new tribe. We need to think with the Bible first, not Democrat/Anti-Democrat first. We need to think with the Bible first, not Trump/Anti-Trump first. 

We need to think. We actually need to think. 

That’s my prayer. 

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