Dr. Smith once again showed why he is the leading Berean light with his recent series on loving your enemies–how do we engage in the public sphere while honoring Christ? As usual, he is hitting the key question which Christians should be wrestling with. His honest reflection is one that challenges and inspires us to think about how we do this, and is at least a starting point for this broad question that does not lend itself to sound bite answers.

In this post, I would like to highlight some of the strengths as well as some of the shortfalls of his approach. I will say upfront that the shortfalls of Dr. Smith are primarily related to the difficulty of the task that he faced, as well as the medium that we use (e.g., the blog)–his approach was limited and left many (critical) questions unanswered. Yet we must eat the elephant one bite at a time, and he gave us a foundational reinforcement of Christian engagement with Christ’s call for us to love our enemies. For today, I will offer a few short thoughts to summarize my take on each essay, and then in a subsequent post outline an alternative approach:

Essay One:

In his first essay, Dr. Smith began reminding us that there is an agenda behind stirring up our cultural conflict–what he creatively calls the “grievance industrial complex.” For Fox News and CNN/MSNBC, there is only downside to less cultural conflict. And for Bereans, we need to keep this uppermost in mind, because Satan is also interested in more cultural conflict. Remember he hates all of humanity, even those he has successfully deceived. Yet Dr. Smith starts moving toward thinner ice, “They have moved from the time-honored category of “political opponent” and into the more dehumanizing classification of enemy.” There is little doubt that he is on to something that the temperature has risen (dramatically), but this gets to one weakness of Dr. Smith’s series–he has never liked the use of the term enemy in our discourse, which I understand, but that requires careful delineation of what he means by opponent and what he means by enemy–because we don’t all have the same understanding. The Bible clearly presupposes that we do have enemies–and our true enemy inspires many that are in opposition to our work. I suppose we can choose to call them a different name than “enemy,” but I think that whether we call them enemies or opponents the real issue is remembering that we are called to love them.

Essay Two:

This essay seems to me to be Dr. Smith’s weakest area, as it seems to capture only part of a Biblically formed view of the world, and leads to a softer utopian strain of what should be.

Our love for even those who hate us should illuminate and warm them because love should spill from us, comforting them on first contact. Our love should be as obvious as the transition from the black of midnight to the blinding brightness of the noon. Our love should be unavoidable, unmistakable, and self-evident to all with eyes to see and ears to hear. This kind of love is abnormal in a fallen world.

Because of the various ways we can think about love, Dr. Smith could help by providing clarity on what he means by it. So for example, I think that whatever definition of love for our political enemies that we come up with, it has to be something that would include things like Jesus’ seven woes in Matt 23, which I don’t think would meet Dr. Smith’s idea here. I’m particularly fond of a definition used by another one of our CU profs from the Bible School, who says “Love wants for the other person what God would want for them.” And sometimes God gives us some very tough love. I don’t think our love will ever comfort our political enemies on first contact; indeed, if someone that is in hostile opposition to a biblical worldview feels comfortable after talking to you, something is probably wrong.* Nevertheless, Dr. Smith is reminding us of the dangers of the other ditch (while I think going too far himself to the other side), and we are well served to remember that God’s common grace is for all people.

Essay Three:

This is arguably Dr. Smith’s best contribution to the debate–we need to put flesh to the bones in terms of how to love one’s enemies and his discussion of Shane Windmeyer (LGBTQ activist) and Dan Cathy (Chick-fil-A), showed a practical yet unconventional and completely Biblical way of reaching across seemingly insurmountable barriers. The beauty of Mark’s reminder to us is that what seems impossible is possible. We may not be able to “fix” the issues, but we can make living in the middle of them better. This was a fantastic way to show us that there is a better way than ventilating against one another in various social media outlets.

Essay Four:

Results, no matter how worthy, cannot justify deliberate, sinful actions that birth them. Hating our political enemies, even while winning, isn’t good enough. For the believer, both ends and means have to be scrutinized. Attempting to argue otherwise leaves us, as witnesses, in an untenable place if we take the words of God seriously. 

In Dr. Smith’s final essay, he reminds us that we must be particularly careful about how we engage our political opponents. All of us that care about the results of the political process (definitely including me) can become so wound up about the results of the other side’s policies that our actions can be sinful, and this harms the broader cause of Christ. Our social media posts, our willingness to repeat (and like) other’s harmful comments without checking the veracity are all part of this mix. And his conclusion is that we must enter into relationships with our political enemies, if we are to have hope of a constructive dialogue. In this I think he is right–if we are ever to have hope of a constructive dialogue.

Yet it is this last idea that I think is questionable. So many of us yearn to return, not to the older days of specific policies (although we do wish in many areas we could go back–much of our “progress” has been terribly harmful), but to the days when we could at least have relationships with those that were of different political views, where the division was not so poisonous. Dr. Smith yearns for this in this series, Theophilus yearns for this in many of his responses to our posts. Even today, Peggy Noonan yearns for it in her lament in the WSJ. But I think that while we should do our part to see this happen, and Dr. Smith’s admonitions are appropriate, I don’t see that happening. We set ourselves up for a false expectation of what is likely, because we don’t understand the spiritual reality of what is going on here. And it is the reality of that spiritual conflict that I will describe in a subsequent post.**

* This does not mean they can’t be comforted; if your political enemy has a flat tire and you help them change it, of course your love should comfort them. And there are numerous ways that in the trials of life we should come along side them, and in those cases, that’s where our love should look like God’s common grace. But in discussing our social/political goals, this is not likely to happen, and my point holds.

** It may be a few weeks from now, as I’m particularly busy and need to put some care into developing this argument–but definitely out before the end of the semester!