I love and respect Tim Keller, immensely. Not only was he our pre-marital counselor when my wife and I were in seminary back in 1987, but his teaching has been a significant blessing to me both theologically and apologetically. I also pray for him daily as he deals with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. However, when he wades into discussions of politics he often loses me. Over the years I’ve always questioned the way he focuses on “social justice.” The phrase is loaded with political and ideological baggage, specifically Marxist baggage, and I do not believe Christians should use it. All justice is by definition social, so there is no need to use the phrase, and when they do Christians play into the hands of the leftist mob that dominates so much of political and cultural discourse. But here I want to address the issue of Keller’s moral equivalence between left and right.
My contention is that there is and cannot be any moral equivalence between the current political/cultural left and right, yet Keller does it often without ever qualifying his statements. I came across an example of this in an article in World called, “Handling a hostile culture: Assessing how the Church is responding to shifting cultural pressures.” I will give a few examples, and comment on why this is such a problem. Number one:
The mainline church wedded itself to liberal political parties, and the evangelical church has done that with conservative political parties, and so we are now seen as nothing but a political power bloc.
Keller assume, unfortunately, there is no moral difference between what he calls liberal and conservative political parties. This is demonstrably not true, not today. Maybe prior to the leftists’ takeover of the Democrat Party in 1972 with the nomination of George McGovern, and the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973, but not since then. A political party that believes fetal genocide is a constitutional right is morally bankrupt. That was only the beginning of the Democrats’ transformation from the party of the traditional liberalism of Roosevelt and Kennedy, to the progressive leftists that totally dominate the party today. There can be no moral equivalence between a party that believes babies in the womb are objects of convenience to be killed by a woman’s “choice,” and a party that believes life in the womb is sacred and must be protected. Example number two:
[I]n a highly politically polarized environment, anyone who is not fully, loudly, and explicitly supporting you is now seen as supporting the other side. During the last election I simply said that, as a minister, I could not bind Christians’ consciences (see Westminster Confession Chapter 20) and tell them how to vote. That angered many conservative people who believed that any effort to be “apolitical” was really to be on the liberal side.
As a minister of the gospel this is not unreasonable. It becomes problematic when the minister is unwilling to explain the difference or acknowledge it, morally, between the parties. I’ve only identified abortion as one issue, but these could be multiplied many times, even if not so starkly as issues of life and death, or what is in fact murder of the unborn. To think that anyone, minister’s included, can be “apolitical” in our day is naïve at best, and delusional at worst. I’ve heard it said, you may not be into politics, but politics is into you (see vaccine, COVID). Example number three:
[T]he culture is definitely more polarized than it ever has been, and I’ve never seen the kind of conflicts in churches in the past that we see today. In virtually every church there is a smaller or larger body of Christians who have been radicalized to the Left or to the Right by extremely effective and completely immersive internet and social media loops, newsfeeds, and communities. People are bombarded 12 hours a day with pieces that present a particular political point of view, and the main way it seeks to persuade is not through argument but through outrage. People are being formed by this immersive form of public discourse—far more than they are being formed by the Church. This is creating a crisis. No, I haven’t faced anything like this in the past.
This is probably the most disappointing quote in the article. The phrase, “radicalized to the Left or to the Right,” is a completely unjustified. There is simply no comparison between the two because there is no “radical right.” It all turns on how one defines “radical,” and Keller never bothers to do that. In the summer of 2020 the truly “radical” left in the form of BLM and Antifa rioted in cities throughout the country with the countenance of Democrat politicians, and the media called them “mostly peaceful protests.” There was billions of dollars of damage, and many lives lost. Show me something even close to comparable on the right. And don’t tell me it’s the “insurrection” of January 6, which was undoubtedly an FBI setup to demonize and silence Trump supporters and the entire MAGA movement.
Further, his point about what are in effect political feedback loops is absolute nonsense. The secular left dominates all the organs of cultural influence, has the biggest megaphones, and their messaging cannot be escaped. They own all major media, practically all education, and entertainment. People don’t have to do anything to be programmed in leftist groupthink. On the contrary, if you want alternative conservative views you have to search for them. The left is fond of bringing up Fox News (a huge disappointment since Nov. 3, 2020), but they have ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, and every news room in pretty much every state in the country, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, the AP, Reuters, and I don’t think I need to belabor the point.
There hasn’t been this big of a political and cultural divide in the country since the runup to the Civil War. In fact, many people believe we are in a cold civil war, but it’s a lot hotter than many think. It is impossible to stand above it or outside of it, or claim that left and right, Democrats and Republicans, are merely two sides of the same coin. They are not, and pastors while they possibly shouldn’t be overtly partisan, need to speak the truth. These statements by Tim Keller are not that.
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