Thread by @sometimesalight

Now that the political calculus has changed in US...

I don't accept the notion that one must critique both right & left in the same way or even give equal time to critiquing them in order to have a fair & faithful public witness. Why?

1. Critiques that aim for equal time will end up missing underlying dynamics of power & responsibility. Those w/ power are responsible in different ways than those w/out it. And those who claim the name of Christ have distinct repsonsiblities from those who don't.

2. Critiques that posit right/left as mirror images miss that while each may operate on different principles, they do so w/in the same set of social shaping forces. IOW, they might be swimming in different directions but they're in the same stream

3. Critique emerges from a specific ethos & is directed to a certain audience. Critiquing those outside your tribe is so much easier than those w/in it. B/c of this, faithfulness might sometimes mean more focused critique of your own group & less of your ideological opponent.

4. Critique of opponents requires extra work to do fairly b/c it means understanding their arguments as they understand them. It requires asking right questions, hearing answers, & being able to find true sources of disagreement, not superficial ones.

All this to say, faithul public witness does not necessarily look like equal time or "both sides"-ing it which can be little more than "whataboutism" turned inside out.

Instead, faithful public witness rests on humility, self-awareness, & sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.

Faithful, fair witness means speaking truthfully while honoring the limits of our own knowledge & recognizing the needs & temptations of the audience to which we speak.

For conservatives, this might mean critiquing conservatives more directly than critiquing progressives. For progressives, vice versa. (Faithful are the wounds of a friend, after all.) But it also means receiving Qs & challenge from the other side that we're likely to might miss.

In end, social commentary is hard to do w/out simply becoming a partisan hack & using issues to reinforce our own sense of righteousness. Faithful, fair witness to the ways of God is much harder. Like Him, it should both confront & offer hope. It should both humble & surprise.

B/c just as Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it, the aim of our public witness is not to crush those already under condemnation. It is that the world might be saved. That all might find true hope & true freedom.