The Art of Being Friends With Your Killer

The Washington Post has a very interesting story that comes in a long multi-year line of similar stories. Conservatives tend to have more friends who are liberal than liberals have conservative friends. The Post very helpfully starts the story with a liberal who had to abandon his friendship with a conservative who went down the QAnon rabbit hole. “See,” the Post seems to be saying, “you can’t be friends with people like that, but liberals are great for friends.”

The whole story is packaged in a way that does not dismiss the relevant data but makes excuses for why it is. It totally fails to grasp the real reasons.

First, progressives in America today tend to live in enclaves with other progressives. It is far easier for a progressive in San Francisco to go a full day never knowingly encountering a conservative than it is for a conservative in Atlanta to go a full day never knowingly encountering a progressive. Conservatives tend to commute into more progressive areas for work more so than progressives do.

Second, a growing body of progressives has substituted Christianity for politics to fulfill their souls. Christianity requires its adherents to love their neighbors and show grace to others. The secular religion does not. It is, therefore, easier for a Christian to befriend a heretic than for a secularist to befriend a heretic. A Christian knows he is going to heaven regardless of the heretic. The secularist thinks he is damned so long as the heretic can breathe his heresy and convince others. Vengeance is for God and when there is no God, the secularist must act.

Substituting politics for religion pollutes a soul and the data still shows people on the left are far more likely to have their soul polluted in that way than people on the right. The left’s retreat from the church of Jesus Christ into the church of secular idols ends badly for a lot of people, most especially them. Protest will never fill the soul like the Holy Spirit can. Casting out the heretics who refuse to embrace the idol of the day leaves no room for grace and forgiveness. Eventually, there’s a new idol of the day and the progressive is either forced to keep up or realize now they too are a heretic in an environment where grace has no home.

But…

When I talk about this and write about this, I increasingly get comments here or calls to my radio show from conservatives who are horrified I think they should be friends with a baby-killer, a communist, or — God forbid — a rabid Biden supporter. Sometimes, when I point out the Bible’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself” leaves no wiggle room to avoid loving the gay, the transgender, the progressive, and the atheist, I get comments like, “I love them by telling them to repent” or “I love them by avoiding them because they make me so mad.” In other words, you think you can love them by being a jackass.

Can you love your killer? Can you be friends with the person who is going to destroy your way of life or kill you?

The God of all creation cannot abide sin. He burns red hot with rage against sin. He wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins. He struck down the firstborn of the Egyptians. He forced the Israelites to wander for forty years in the desert for their transgressions and later sent them into exile for their sins and refusal to repent.

God hates sin.

But that very same God not only hung out with sinners and befriended sinners, he also died on a cross because of their sins. The very sins of the people he befriended caused him to be tortured, beaten to within an inch of his life, and nailed to a cross. Christ was friends with his killers.

He built real friendships with sinners and through those relationships, his friends repented and accepted Him. He meaningfully loved his neighbors so he could share his good news. Are you so much purer than Christ that you can’t be friends with the Planned Parenthood supporter who lives next door? Do you hate sin so much more than God that you can’t be friends with the person whose views you think will destroy this country that is not even your eternal home?

If so, your sin of pride adds to your pile while you disdain a helping hand to the sinner across the street because they sin a sin different from you that you hate more than your own sins. Jesus, on the cross, wishes he could have had your self-righteousness.

Love your neighbor gives you no loophole for jackassery. It gives no permission to avoid your fellow sinner because you disdain their sins. Jesus was friends with those whose sins sent Him to the grave. If you can’t be friends with someone because you think their political views are destroying your country, you’re not only behaving exactly like the worldly, secularist, but you’re also making an idol of a temporary place and putting it ahead of God’s direct command to love your neighbor.

Progressives have this problem way more than any conservative. They truly cannot love their neighbor if their neighbor holds views they despise. The data has shown this for years and it has gotten more pronounced in the last decade as secularism replaces the church and secular sacraments replace communion with the Lord.

But as politics gets more visceral and more all-encompassing, increasingly a lot of church-going, Bible-believing conservatives are behaving more and more like the left. They don’t want to have friendships with those with whom they have political disagreements. They don’t trust others who are willing to have those friendships. And they make copious excuses for why and how they don’t have to love their neighbor or twist loving their neighbor into jackassery so they can get out of God’s commandment.

Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided his clothes and cast lots.