Read on Twitter
It must feel good to go onto Twitter and accuse conservative Christians of rejecting biblical justice, and other cultural/actual sins. With this feeling should come empathy for same conservative Christians. After all, that's how they feel, criticizing "the world" in similar ways.
Old Moral Majority types: Movies and TV and pop culture promote rebellion against God's law! Flee from secular-worldliness at all costs.
New moral-majority types: Bad churches and conservative cultures promote injustice and worse! Flee from church-worldliness at all costs.
New moral-majority types: Bad churches and conservative cultures promote injustice and worse! Flee from church-worldliness at all costs.
Seriously: However they were flawed, you are flawed. They condemned the sins (both real sins and made-up sins) with little grace and less creativity. They had no imagination for kindly, cleverly *subverting* The World's problems and joyously pointing to the gospel. How about you?
It's time to stop blasting your fellow Christians with the dull bludgeons of "durrr, if you don't like social justice then you don't like Jesus" types of rants. Even on Twitter. It's a type of "witnessing" just as fake and effective as the corny altar calls in evangelical movies.
Feels real good. Effective. Gets lots of likes and Support. It's just new tech but the old moral majority structure-building. With this approach, you're just doing *that* all over again, and in about a generation if not now you'll have the same structural problems over again too.
A simple solution starts here: Whatever you wished your old Church Back Home would have done instead to engage the secular culture, that is how you must engage the conservative culture. Know their stories. Be a neighbor. Speak their language. And for God's sake, stop bludgeoning.
Otherwise, the bludgeoning approach is getting so bad that I'm going to start unfollowing otherwise solid Christian leaders, even people I know and trust. They're not. Being. Missional. And they do not seem to have a clue about this (speaking plainly now) blundering incompetence.
Unless you aspiring Christian leaders who bludgeon conservatives quietly consider "conservative culture" too Bad to be considered a mission field worth a missional strategy? If so, switch the subject: How would you like it if the conservatives treated any people group like that?
My conclusion: If you claim to love God, but do not show love for the conservative Christian brother in front of you, and I see that, then I assume that you are a liar (1 John 4:20). Then my own charity kicks in. It's so easy to love platonic-ideal People over actual persons.
Why this thread? Because I also want reform in conservative churches! We must be more biblical, mindful of justice, diverse, active, and effective in evangelism. But anti-conservative bludgeoning will not help the Church any more than anti-"liberal" bludgeoning helps the world.
