Don't despise your sister

It was inevitable, but it bruised me when it came—the first Christian Kim Davis hate mail to fall under my eye. In response to an online column of mine, the brother called her “the fraud Kim Davis.” My heart leapt to an ancient lament:

“For it is not an enemy who taunts me—then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me—then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. We used to take sweet counsel together; within God’s house we walked in the throng” (Psalm 55:12-14).

This is the cruelest cut of all. For the brother did not say, “I believe my sister Ms. Davis is mistaken”; he went straight to “the fraud,” followed by invidious comparison to heartless “Jonah, who preferred Nineveh enter Hades with its eyes wide open than get their dirt on his feet.”

As a nation we are entering unchartered waters, a Christian generation unused to being the hated minority in a country once predominantly Christian. Brethren will have different views. Kim Davis evidently reasons from the civil disobedience of Peter and John, who “greatly annoyed” (Acts 4:2) the powers that be to the point of getting themselves locked up. Upon release from jail they were warned by the judge (a striking parallel with Judge Bunning and the Davis case) not to violate law again, and they replied, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (verses 19-20).

Even if you think Davis is wrong (I don’t), she is following her conscience before her God and that is all God requires in debatable matters.

That’s the way I see it too. But even if you don’t—“the fraud Kim Davis”? Really? What happened to Romans 14: “As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one … despise …, and let not the one … pass judgment …, for God has welcomed him” (Romans 14:1-3).

You don’t want to get before the Judge someday and have to hang your head like Puzzle the donkey for having despised a sister whom “God has welcomed.” If God has welcomed her, who made you heaven’s dean of admissions? Even if you think Davis is wrong (I don’t), she is following her conscience before her God and that is all God requires in debatable matters:

“Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (verse 5).

This requirement to be “fully convinced in his own mind” is no low bar in the debased sense that people nowadays seem to reach “conviction” out of nothing more than emotion, hunch, or digestive issues. It is a stern requirement to investigate the matter thoroughly (Deuteronomy 13:14; 17:4; 19:18) and to arrive at a stance grounded in one’s best assessment of the situation and of Scripture. The author of “the fraud Kim Davis” epithet invokes Joseph and Daniel as examples of “believers who, even though somehow bound to secular, and more often than not, vile and wicked governments, … continued to perform their assigned duties.” But there is no evidence that Joseph and Daniel agreed to violate God’s law in deference to government law—and much evidence that they did not.

I have seen photos of frocked church leaders in Nazi Germany giving the “Heil Hitler” salute in tandem with Joseph Goebbels and Wilhelm Frick. They didn’t reach that silly posture overnight but by a series of small capitulations. In Jesus’ time it was Pharisees with gotcha questions about divorce, eating with unwashed hands, and plucking grain on the Sabbath. In our day it’s homosexual couples targeting certain courthouses with gotcha requests for a marriage certificate. Picture Jesus giving in an inch to the request to affix his initials on a document pronouncing Fred and Harry husband and husband.

The Apostle says to “arm yourselves” with the idea that you are about to suffer (1 Peter 4:1) and not to react “as though something strange were happening ” (verse 12). Kim Davis, a new believer, has been made to suffer for her faith in a way usually reserved for more seasoned Christians. Are you at odds with her? Then pray for her. But bear in mind that “God has welcomed” her.

Email aseupeterson@wng.org