Pastor's Blog: Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right

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In my younger life, I often rationalized my inappropriate and at times unruly behavior to my parents by pointing out various wrongdoings my friends were committing. It seemed perfectly reasonable to my immature mind to do so. After all, why should my parents hold me to a standard that others clearly weren’t interested in following? Of course, my parents had none of it. They wasted no time rebuking my baseless thinking by teaching me how “two wrongs don’t make a right.” In other words, I couldn’t justify my inappropriate and unruly behavior by deflecting my guilt to others.

I’d like to say that I have always abided by this particular teaching, but I haven’t. It’s hard to stay so self-aware when self keeps showing up in ways that too often cause me shame.  

That’s why, as I have watched the events of the past year that began as protest and ended in violence, destruction, and the loss of life, I haven’t done so from a high horse. Whether it was the BLM protests from this past summer or the post-election ones of last week, I’ve been reminded of how easily my righteous indignation can devolve into brute rage, and how the worst part of it is when I cloak it in Christian garb. There’s no way you can baptize a wrong by calling it Christian. Of all the things that have bothered me in this past year, and especially in this past week, nothing has troubled me more than to hear people justify their inappropriate and unruly actions as somehow serving the cause of Christ, a justification I unfortunately know too well.

In recent days, however, a term has emerged that bears exploration – Christian nationalism. Let me be clear. This term is insidious. It is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. It is fallacious and specious. What sounds to be a match made in heaven is in reality a man-made construction that points people in the other direction. While our Christian faith doesn’t require us to check our patriotism at the door, our commitment to the Great Commission does require us to consider how our witness might extend far past Birmingham and Alabama and the United States of America to the ends of the earth, and how we might do so without coercion or constraint. It used to be that whenever someone represented himself as a Christian “anything,” I always watched my wallet; now that people are representing themselves as “Christian nationalists,” I’m watching my soul. Simply put, “Christian” is not merely an adjective; it is something so much more.

I invite you to watch your soul with me. How might we do that? For one thing, we can watch our souls humbly and meekly. When we see something that presses buttons deep inside of it, we can see how it may be speaking to unresolved anger, unbridled ambition, or inordinate self-love, none of which are Christian virtues. And for another thing, we can separate our confession of Christ from our gratitude for our citizenship in a land where we are afforded cherished liberties, such as those promised by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free expression thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Most importantly, we can straddle the gap between peace and justice, which admittedly is cavernous, but was one Jesus himself straddled, even to the place of the cross.

Two wrongs never make a right, and the distance between those wrongs is never best bridged by deflection; it is always only bridged by faith, hope, and love. So, let us do our part in the power of Christ to let the bridging begin. The way I see our current situation, it can’t happen quickly enough. 

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  But when I became a man, I put childish things behind me” (1 Corinthians 13:11).