Did We Not Prophesy in Your Name?

The proprietor of a restaurant in Seaside, New Jersey, recently took to flying a “F*** Joe Biden” flag.  Apparently, this step was not meant to offend supporters of the President in this oceanfront town, but rather, to signal that this particular eatery was a safe space for those who do not hold a kind view of Mr. Biden’s administration.  In a municipality of 2,000 inhabitants, where registered Republicans appear to outnumber registered Democrats by a margin of two to one, it would seem a bit strange that people need a safe space to dine. The mere fact that a relative minority of inhabitants of this particular municipality are considered so abhorrent that the majority needs to be assured that they are safe from them when dining signals something deeply troubling and deeply anti-Christian in America.

A Divided Nation

Nearly sixty years after terminating the legal structures of racial separation in the US, Americans seem to be re-segregating themselves along political lines. Numerous studies show that Republicans and Democrats hold one another in mutual contempt, seeing each other as fundamentally dishonest, untrustworthy, and corrupt. Americans do not want to live near people of the other party, do not want their children marrying them and apparently do not want to dine under the same roof as them. If the country continues along its current trajectory, segregated airplanes and buses with Republican and Democratic sections, does not seem all that inconceivable in the near future.

The current state of affairs in which Americans increasingly view their fellow citizens of a different political stripe as inherently and irredeemably evil – and themselves as unimpeachably just – appears rather like the situation that Christ found when He walked the earth some two thousand years ago.  Much of His ministry directly confronted deep-seated prejudices and hatreds and broke through barriers between religious leadership and laity, Jews and non-Jews, men and women, clean and unclean, and good and bad.

The Master’s Example

Christ specifically did what Americans seem increasingly unwilling to do with their own countrymen and women. He ate with people of low moral character: cheats, liars and prostitutes. It is safe to assume that many of them never changed their ways, and yet as the omniscient God, knowing this, He did not turn them away. Christ makes clear that until one’s dying breath, there is always an opportunity for redemption, and, beautifully in the Catholic tradition, even after, in Purgatory. The wheat and the weeds are allowed to grow together until the harvest. Scripture makes clear that God desperately wants none to be eternally lost (1 Timothy 2:4). This is the point of the parable of the lost sheep. God always sees something in His creation, despite its depraved state, that is good, yet He does not nullify their ability to choose good or evil.

In the United States, however, it seems that many view their fellow citizens as beyond redemption.  News programs on both the left and right relish finding real or imagined evidence of the unbounded evil of members of the other party. C.S. Lewis used this exact point as something of a litmus test when he asks Christians if, when a supposed enemy turn out not to be quite as bad as they thought, they would be disappointed rather than relieved or actually happy that there is an apparent spark of good in the other. By this measure, many Americans, with the help of the Internet, are failing a basic Christian test.

Charity for Enemies

In the current environment, it is easy to understand how Americans would be falling flat on this count. There are real and legitimate reasons for this inability to extend more charity to actual or perceived enemies. The world is changing at a dizzying pace, and it is clear that many of those effecting this change do not have Christians’ best interests in mind. The current system seems to be rigged against many who, as much as they try to work hard, abide by the rules, and be charitable, fall behind while the unjust profit. At the same time, media figures of both political sides goad their listeners and viewers toward justifiable anger about the state of affairs in the world.

Human nature does not make the job any easier. The brain is hardwired to stereotype and to see the world in terms of in-groups and out-groups. These are part of the human survival mechanism. Unfortunately for Christians, God’s desire is that His children overcome their fallen human nature and obey His command to love one’s enemies as Christ did, even to the cross. Further, the Scriptures make clear that many kinds of injustice are effectively a fact of life with which Christians have to live in this world. The difficulty of these elements of the Christian calling is perhaps why Chesterton wrote that, “the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it had been found difficult and left untried.”

Christ’s own words make clear that there is no easy way around these challenging parts of the faith. His rhetorical question to His disciples, “If you love only those who love you, what merit is there in that?  Do not tax collectors and sinners love those who love them?” (Matthew 5:46) effectively shuts the door on the natural tendency to damn ones enemies.

Paul adds a practical note to these words of Christ when he writes to the Romans, “If your enemy is hungry feed him; if he is thirsty give him something to drink; for by doing so you will heap burning coals on his head” (Romans 12:20). Good will overcome evil.  Repaying a slight with a good deed is a proven way to show the true virtue and strength of one’s convictions and to potentially change the soul of an enemy by holding a mirror to the ugliness of his or her heart. In large measure, it was this response to the persecutions and discrimination visited upon the early Church that helped spread the faith in the Roman world to many of the people who were doing the persecuting.

The Logic of the Early Church

Following the logic of the early Church, and Christ’s own example, it would seem that the best course of action in contemporary American society would be for Christians to go beyond the safe spaces, be they restaurants catering to patrons on the left or the right, in order to show the truth and depth of their faith and convictions.

Christ stated that a student will be like his or her teacher.  If he makes clear that he loves the Church’s enemies and that they are redeemable, can the Church argue otherwise?  He also makes it apparent that there is not much wiggle room on this issue, stating, “If you love me, you will keep my commands” (John 14:15), not just the ones that are easy or convenient.

As if the point that lip service will not suffice was not made clearly enough, He also says, “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?’…Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you.  Depart from me, your evildoers’” (Matthew 7:22).  So whose students are we anyway?