Excommunicated from the church of self

Excommunication is back, baby!

Many on the left are responding to their electoral losses by cutting ties with their Trump-supporting friends and family. Take, for example, John Pavlovitz, a left-wing pastor who once wrote a book titled If God Is Love, Don’t Be a Jerk. Following the election, Pavlovitz went viral for tweeting, “I will never forgive my family members and former friends for voting for him. Never.” Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us—unless it was by voting for Donald Trump. Love your enemies—unless they’re political enemies.

There is a spiritual as well as political sickness in this.

The political ailment is obvious. If we cannot break bread together as friends and family despite political disagreements, then we will find it difficult to live peacefully as citizens of the same nation. This is a decidedly post-liberal vision in which democratic coexistence becomes impossible due to irreconcilable moral disagreements on fundamental matters.

This division is encouraged and enabled by overstimulated leftists insisting that President-elect Trump is not just a bad man or a bad president with bad policies but Hitler reincarnate, and his supporters vote for him because of this. This cacophony of catastrophizing excuses the incompetence, failure, and wrongdoing on their side and justifies any tactic against Trump and his supporters. When there’s Orange Hitler to beat, there is no time to worry about inflation, the border crisis, or why we were lied to about President Joe Biden’s advancing senility. And there certainly is no time to love your MAGA neighbor.

This is, of course, hysterically overwrought. Nonetheless, the champions of this view are correct that Americans are faced with a great divide between different moral visions. This realization ought to have led them to consider why, despite this division, the friends and family they are hurrying to cut ties with did not do so to them long before now. Why wasn’t conservative media filled with calls to disavow liberal friends and family after each Democratic victory?

After all, looking at it from the conservative and especially conservative Christian side of the moral divide, those on the left who are most eager to start shunning people tend to be those who might most justly be shunned. Why, for instance, shouldn’t Christians cut ties with those who support the monstrous evils of abortion on demand or the sexual mutilation of children?

Nonetheless, there has not been, either now or after previous elections, much interest on the right in disavowing leftist friends and family, even when they are championing evil. The cause of this is not a lack of moral fervor or conviction on the right, especially among faithful Christians, but a different perspective on our moral and political conflicts.

We know that we are sinners who need God’s saving and sanctifying grace as much as our political and cultural foes do. Rather than writing them off, we desire their good, especially their eternal good. And though walking the line of loving sinners without endorsing their sin is often difficult, it is our calling. When we see our own sin and need for our Savior, we will follow His lead and therefore sometimes break bread with tax collectors and sinners—and even those who voted for the other candidate.

We know we are impure, and our righteousness comes only through Christ. Thus, we must resist the temptation to minimize our sins while magnifying those of others. Instead, we must strive to judge rightly and impartially and extend grace to others. And we should be reluctant to shun people, for this impulse is often rooted in self-righteousness and pride rather than a legitimate need to protect ourselves and those in our care. Even when limits are necessary—for instance, to protect children from being exposed to evils they are not prepared to face, we should still maintain hope that the prodigal will repent and return.

In contrast, those seeking to justify themselves through their own self-righteousness will readily shun those whom they deem impure. There is a spiritual illness behind acts such as announcing that one will never forgive family members for voting for Trump. This reveals a self-righteousness verging on self-worship—pridefully but ridiculously taking the place of God by pretending that a small affront to one’s own opinions is a great sin. This is rebellion against God and the disdainful spurning of the mercy He offers to us all in our desperate need.