When a four-year-old boy (who may be
suffering from a sensory-processing disorder) was refused entry to his
Silicon-valley school because he refused to wear a facemask in August of 2022,
he and his father were confronted by a police officer and removed from the
premises. Worst of all, according to one
article “On Friday, the day after the incident, Mountain View Whisman School
District changed its policy, in response to a new CDC guideline. The students at their nine primary schools and
two middle schools are now no longer required to wear face masks.
How have we come to a point in our country when unreasonable adults have decided to play power games by calling the police over a political signaler like mask-wearing?
In the last two years, it has become surprisingly common to see signs posted outside of houses that say, “In this house, we believe that: Black Lives Matter. Women’s rights are human rights. No human is illegal. Science is real. Love is love. Kindness is everything.”
Although the words themselves seem benign, these signs are almost exclusively used by politically orthodox leftists for whom these innocent phrases actually refer to specific policy positions over which good-faith disputes can occur without either side being simplistically “good” or “evil.”
These signs are a fascinating example of a secular anti-message of the common wall hanging that can be found in Christian homes across the country quoting Joshua 24:15: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Although these signs do not appear in exclusively right-leaning homes, it is interesting that these two messages seem to duel one another in a game of virtue-signaling. While Christians tend to be rightists, people on both sides of the political aisle (including independents and moderates who lean one way or the other) refer to themselves as “Christians” and often claim that God is on their side.
Although no one is fully qualified to resolve these disputes, we can confidently say that there are many self-described Christians for whom this has led to an ugly division within Christianity. The hyper-politicization of policy discussions has created both necessary and unnecessary splits within Jesus’ church.
This is not how the relationships within the church were intended to function. As 1 Corinthians 1:12-15 recounts politicized divisions in the early Church: “One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that you were baptized in my name.”
The church must adhere to biblical principles and allow those principles to dictate its politics, not the other way around. The left must move away from secularism and return to biblical values while the right must be careful not to confuse political affiliation with biblical righteousness. Candidates, elections, and public policy must all be secondary to the Word of God.
Our politics have torn us apart unnecessarily and it is time for Christians to reunite. We must all remember that we are one in Christ. While there are certainly times when it is necessary for the faithful to break away from heretical beliefs, the degree to which the American church (and Americans in general) have turned on one another needs to be reversed. We must return to the foundations of Christianity so that our nation can re-establish a shared set of values that will allow our country to move forward.
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