Excerpted from my article published today at WorldMag.com.
One of the most telling, and failing, aspects to conservative evangelicalism is the propensity to define ourselves by what we are against. The striking aspect of this is that it is precisely the opposite of what Christ came to do. While we decry liberals, gays, name-it-claim-it types, and more, we forget that Jesus came to seek and save the lost. He came to be a physician for the sick. In short, he came for something.
Our againstness is lazy. We seek it to position and define ourselves according to those people, ideas, subjects, or organizations to which we are opposed. But this isn’t truly positioning ourselves at all. It’s just floating off the shore of whatever we are against. It doesn’t land anywhere solid or go anywhere productive; it just avoids the opposition. Being defined by what we are against is a hollow label that says little about what you are seeking to be or where you are seeking to go.
