Thread by @hlgriffin

The same people who bought the Southern Strategy are gobbling up anti-CRT hysteria mongering. It's terrifying to reckon w/ the possibility that we laundered our racism when it was no longer respectable to our own consciences or in public to be overtly racist.

https://twitter.com/literalgriffin/status/1456364789932900364

Many people whose judgment I previously trusted have proven themselves to be gullible & easily manipulated by any pandering idolater who tells them whatever their itching ears want to hear so they don't have to face the truth about themselves, their own elders, or their country.

Our capacity for self deception is terrifying. The longer we have had a blindspot & ordered our lives around it, the more it feels like an abyss of fear & shame that will suck us in along with all the sunk costs of our misdirected activities & misplaced priorities.

To find out that we have been blinded when we thought of ourselves as sincerely wanting to see threatens not only our own goodness, but the goodness of God and of everyone who we have trusted to shape us.

It is terrifying to me how many people who I love, who have legitimately helped me, loved me, trained me, & walked patiently with me have either gotten sucked into lies or have been complacent & "apolitical" as God has brought a moment of reckoning.

The people that they are when they are sharing conspiracy theories or praising wicked leaders seem so different from the people who they were when they were praying for me & teaching me to live in reality with Jesus.

I still don't know what to do with that.

Did I need them to be good & suppress awareness of the unaddressed vices that were there all along? Have they deteriorated since I was living with them? Had I been so shaped by them that I had the same blindspots? Do I still have them & manifest them differently?

Am I going to fail in a time when people need wise elders & are looking for me to stay in reality & model walking in the truth? Is this something that happens when facing the truth about things we have avoided or not prioritized means rethinking our entire lives & identities?

At my most hopeful moments, I am able to hold onto the good that I received. I think the best way I can honor the people who helped me is to continue to walk in what I know to be true in what they passed onto me.

I can't make them see. I can't trust their judgment anymore in a lot of areas. I'm angry at what they have become when I needed them to continue being the people who I thought they were or who they actually used to be before they were seduced by the false comfort of lies.

I can seek Jesus & ask him to deal w/the blindspots that were formed or reinforced in me when I was imitating them. I can ask him to help me to not take on reactionary vices out of the wounds caused by the deep sense of betrayal.

I can ask Jesus to do whatever it takes to make me into someone that can help.

We cannot stop growing. We cannot retreat & abandon our shared community life.

We cannot abandon the next generation & leave them without elders because our elders abandoned us.

We have to be the grown-ups now, even if we feel like we aren't ready.

People can forgive us of our mistakes if we show that we are still willing to learn & grow to do better.

I can't tell you what it would mean to me to see someone in my parent's generation look back on how they have behaved, especially over the past six years, and admit that they were wrong & commit to becoming someone who can do right.

I understand how we get played. I understand how scary & shameful it is to face our failures, especially when we have been deceived for a long time & when people who we loved & trusted shared the same blindspots. I just want to see people come back from it. I want that hope.