— The first, and most important point to note in any political discussion is that opinions are not people, nor should they define the person. If you are the kind of person to call someone who disagrees with your position racist or transphobic or whatever pejorative fits the occasion, two of three things are true. The first, is that you’ve never been challenged on your beliefs and/or your favorite pejorative. The second is that if you have been challenged on it, then the accusation was enough to either get your opponent to shut up, or realize you were beyond reason. The third is that you have nothing substantial undergirding your position, so a rather effective personal attack is the only bullet in your arsenal, so it had better work, or you will be reduced to flailing and all kinds of cruelty.

Consider Thomas Aquinas’ view of evil. In his discussions on the subject, he begins by noting that evil is the absence of God, and thus the absence of good. It infects, but it does not define a person. He compares it to blindness, the absence of vision. While blindness cannot be cured, ignorance can be. The analogy falls apart only in the sense that if you see yourself now as a doctor bringing about a cure, two things are true. You must take a careful, caring approach to the debate, and you may come to notice that you are in the wrong, and that you are the one with the evil worldview. Those who loudly and aggressively advocated for long-term lockdowns are making this discovery over the last several months in particular.

While you will discover whether you are doctor or patient in the course of an honest discussion, the point is that the person you are talking to is not inherently evil. He is an image-bearer of God, same as you. If you are a secularist, you don’t have much to grab onto.

—Two things are necessary for most people to support a major change to a law. The first is that it must be socially popular. The second is that it cannot adversely affect them in anyway. The most obvious example being the lockdowns. They were socially acceptable, and given their grievous educational and economic impact, which was known within a few months, it’s safe to say that anyone who supported them was likely able to afford them, and did not have to, or could very easily, bear the economic consequences to their family and the educational impact on their children. How those same people are coming around, lamenting the negative consequences of both, as if nobody knows why it happened, shows the dangers of the moral relativism inherent in politics.

— There is no secular equivalent to 2 Timothy 2:24-25; the call to avoid stupid or foolish arguments or to treat opponents in a way that indicates your self-worth ISN’T found in whether you’re right or run over your opponent like a truck. If there were such a call, twitter and reddit would look quite different. Indeed, some ideologies, Critical Race Theory for example, seem to be against the concept of civil discussion entirely (CRT: An Introduction, 3^rd edition, conclusion)

—All opinions are not valid. All opinions are free to be expressed. Their validity is to be determined by rigorous, honest discussion.

— It is the declaration of the activist that the ability to disengage from politics is a sign of privilege. Yet these same people will be back online ranting about how mental health is important.

If it is taking too much of your time and energy, or it is affecting your witness as a Christian, disengage. Certainly, from online politics, but from anything but reasoned expressions of opinions as well. While others are trying to explain how their chosen senile god is better than the other senile god and as they both insist that he is going to get around to saving America or making it great again in a second term, find something else to talk about and something else to do. “if there is anything worthy of praise” think on those things instead.

Consider it in terms of return on investment. The activist spends endless amounts of time and energy ranting about how their way will lead to new progress, gaslighting those they do not directly insult, then they get their way and spend the next 2-4 years explaining how it’s not as bad as it looks.

Meanwhile, you’ve helped build a house, and/or moved furniture for people who couldn’t afford it. More than once.  

Are you a better person? In a sense, sure. For one thing, you have no tenet in your work that advocates gaslighting or violence. But it is more accurate and less judgmental to simply observe that you have found the errors he has yet to find and allowed God to change you towards better ends. If you’re going to put any stock in that at all, make it enough to where you see some good in you (a long-time struggle). You are more efficient with your time and will spend less time defending your calling than the activist, even less time defending the outcome.

If you’re a secularist, everyone speaks their truth. You build houses, someone else fights for human rights on Instagram and Twitter. We’re all doing our part, being productive in our own way. Everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.

—“Seeking the welfare of the city” God has placed you in does not have to be, and in fact is not exclusively political. It’s just that the small stuff is infinitesimal.

— It is a common phrase, usually among the left that “freedom from speech is not freedom from consequences”. However, this is most often used in a similar vein as “go build your own (whatever)”; which is to say it was used from a position of, ironically, privilege.  As the speaker is usually among the mob determining the consequences for themselves, for which there were no limits. Doxing, threats, harassment, calls to the person’s place of employment, etc. were all considered justifiable. The classic rejoinder “Go build your own (whatever)” wasn’t as funny when Elon Musk took over Twitter.

— “A vote for Z is a vote for Y, and that is morally unacceptable. The only right way to vote is for my guy, candidate X”

Vote for Z
Candidate Z = 1
Candidate X = 0
Candidate Y = 0

Though most who would make this argument are college educated (as media loves to point out about Democrat voters), this argument reveals a deficiency in mathematics.

The moral argument that usually follows the failure of the mathematical one involves the speaker declaring “my candidate is not perfect, but”before proceeding to make a moral argument using standards that only apply to the other person and their supporters.

—- Gun control advocates cry “we need new laws”

The obvious response here is “criminals aren’t following the laws we do have”.

The inevitable, smug rejoinder follows: “Well, we should just have no laws then, HMMMM?! or we could, here’s a thought, do something. Wow, what a revolutionary idea”

It does not register with gun control that “doing something” is not in itself a good thing. We needed to “do something” in the early days of COVID, that something made everything that wasn’t COVID so bad, those who advocated for “something” are pretending these problems just got so bad on their own or by some unknown cause. Those who want to do something for the sake of doing something, phrase their ideas in such a way that they can absolve themselves of moral responsibility should their “something” fail.

It is not and has never been about having no laws, but now it is time to judge the law’s effectiveness, constitutionality and whether it arbitrarily burdens or risks criminalizing innocent people who already own guns.

Bear in mind, this is usually the set that considers “physical security” to be yet more locks and more, higher-quality cameras, as opposed to something that might actually, here’s a thought, neutralize the threat. Gun control is, like many ideologies of the left, founded first in gaslighting others in order to feel morally superior, while achieving nothing worthy of celebration.

—It’s an impressive thing that the terminally online, hyper-political, easily offended denizens of Twitter and Reddit, for all their reading and ranting, don’t see the basic flaw in some of their premises. It’s not even starting from the conclusion and working backwards, as though it was a straight line, but rather they start from their conclusion, and then accept or reject contradictions. For example, Reddit Atheists (the new term for Internet/New Atheists), still hold to the belief that, once Christianity loses its political power and secularism takes hold, we will, almost naturally, become a saner, safer country. Able to reason together and treat each other with respect.

That….hasn’t happened, certainly not on the internet and not in charitable giving or the call to serve others. The retreat is that we are still a Christian nation because a vast majority of people “identify as” Evangelical Christians. The problem here of course is that one, “identifying as” something, as we all now know does not necessarily make one what they claim to identify as and two, this encompasses denominations that believe in the bible like the PCA, those who use the pulpit almost exclusively to make political statements like the PCUSA, and prosperity nutcases like Joel Osteen under the same umbrella. The Christianity most seem to believe is running the country looks remarkably “American”, rather than being based a deep, powerful connection to and understanding of Scripture and God. Further, Christianity does not have any power in academia and culture. It’s weakness in academia is obvious and Christian movies and TV are almost universally shallow, pandering, cringeworthy works of utter nonsense.

Interestingly, you can tell it doesn’t have a lot of power by the general response of the occasional burst of actual Christian statements when contrasted with the secular world. The reaction, for example, to the He Gets Us Super Bowl ads, which quietly observed that there is no secular call to love our opponents, was met with the usual references to Pat Robertson and Chick-Fil-A instead of actually trying to contend with the main point. A 60-second Super Bowl ad was “Christians shoving their beliefs down everyone’s throat”. Whereas a whole month dedicated to an ever increasing number of, shall we say, non-biblical sexual worldviews, some involving children, need to be celebrated, or at least accepted when it’s not awkward.