Christians Analyzing "The Left"

Must Christians love everything that those who are not Christians criticize? Just because someone is not a Christian, does that require that they call everything good "evil" and everything evil "good"? I frequently come across both believers and unbelievers who think that the answer to these questions is Yes.

Such agreement requires the view that man is so depraved that unless a person accepts Christ, their judgements of good and evil will always be wrong. On this view, a simple way to find the truth about any matter is to just affirm what is contradictory to what an unbeliever believes about the matter. Christians who hold this view apply this logic to different areas of knowledge including moral knowledge.

Unfortunately many unbelievers think that these Christians' thinking represent the thinking of all Christians. The unbelievers recognize the fallacious nature of this kind of reasoning (though not the second step of their own reasoning) and conclude that all Christians are illogical. From there they further conclude (in a third misstep) that Christianity cannot possibly be logical either, much less the correct worldview. Some even take it so far as to be the mirror image of what these Christians believe and say that everything a Christian says is true must be false and everything they say is false must be true. This often leads unbelievers to approach the evidence for Christianity with the idea that there must be a way that the evidence or logic is incorrect thus even if they cannot respond evidentially or logically, they will still reject the conclusion and hold out hope of some future discovery (an appeal to what they do not know) that will overturn the evidence.

For sinners' sake, Christians must abandon this kind of logic! And for their own sake, unbelievers must abandon it as well (along with the subsequent logical errors).

Christians, not everything "the Left" criticizes is unworthy of criticism. Like all humans, those members of "the Left" are also created in the Image of God, so they have the moral law written on their hearts. This allows them to still (despite their sin nature) correctly identify some evil in the world. This would include sin within the Church. Should Christians love the sin in the Church? No, that would be absurd. So we can join hands with "the Left" in criticizing it, yet we can offer solutions that actually work (see "Magna Carta of Humanity" by Os Guinness).

The Absurdity Leads To Rejection of Christ

It is this kind of logic that those who disagree with us use as an excuse to say that Christianity is illogical and should be rejected. It is this kind of logic that stands as a stumbling block between the sinner and the cross of Christ.

If someone, with whom we disagree in general, rejects something, that not a valid reason to accept or reject that something. We must determine if it is worthy of acceptance or rejection based on its own merits- the evidence.

Believe it or not, many times the criticisms from "the Left" are valid. But they have incorrectly identified the source of the moral failure, which causes their further conclusions and solutions to fail miserably, and may cause people to question whether the original criticisms were even valid. "The Left" often blames Christianity for the moral failures they observe (again, see "Magna Carta of Humanity"). But we must show them that the moral failure belongs to the members of the Church not Christ. It is not Christ who has failed them but the Church who bares His name! They must reexamine their analysis of the root cause of their original critical observation and examine the evidence for Christianity. This, though, is where things get interesting (and hopefully, eye-opening towards salvation) for the member of "the Left".

Moral Criticism Requires An Objective Moral Standard

If the sin "the Left" criticizes is objectively wrong, so is their own sin. The criticizer is also a sinner in need of forgiveness. Forgiveness that is only offered through Christ to both the criticized and the criticizer. This reasoning is logically sound, but it requires humility. Humility (seemingly rare these days) is required to follow the logic and evidence. "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:8-9).

Conclusion

"The Left" does have valid and accurate moral criticisms that should not be rejected by Christians, rather the accurate moral criticisms need to be recognized as such with more logical and accurate root cause analysis (further criticisms) presented with viable solutions. These solutions will not only address the existential moral issues of the culture around "the Left," but they will also address the eternal moral issue of their own hearts. Rejection of this illogical type of reasoning is an opportunity to recognize where "the Left" gets things right and how so and an opportunity to demonstrate evidentially and logically where "the Left" gets things wrong and how to correct the thinking and the solutioning. Rejection of this kind of thinking can remove a stumbling block between members of "the Left" and their salvation through acceptance of Jesus Christ.

For more on this topic, I highly recommend these articles and books:

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