Not Helpful.

[Disclaimer: If you are here and decide you feel like you need to argue with or disparage me, then stop right here. I have no interest in your argument. If, however, you want to express your disagreement or concern with what I've written in respectful dialogue, I'm all ears.]

I really don’t think that self-professed Christians (Republican, Democrat, or otherwise) who slander presidential candidates with categories and labels such as “fraud” or “terrorist” or “warmonger” or whatever other entirely flippant appellation they want to give voice to are being very helpful to the world seeing the church as anything but divisive and abrasive.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe there are very serious short-comings on BOTH sides of this ballot. But we need to remember these are people, children of God regardless of their stance on abortion or war or whatever else. They are still people deserving respect. Have we entirely lost our capacities for mercy and grace?

It’s easy for us to see them as monsters or terrorists or frauds or liberals or fundamentalists when we don’t have to meet them face-to-face and look into their eyes and see that they are no more or less human than ourselves. We’re all capable of the same evils. Let’s remember:

Mt 7:1-5 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person’s eye.

In the end, it’s God’s prerogative to condemn the guilty, not ours.