Scarlet Letters

Nine times out of ten an accusation of hypocrisy becomes exposure of hypocrisy. The left believed they had caught the right in hypocrisy when it sought to brush off President Trump’s sexual sins, having insisted that when it was President Clinton’s sins, character matters. Touche. Point scored. That said, the left is just as guilty, for they insisted President Clinton’s private life didn’t matter, while President Trump’s private life did. Hypocrisy is a pox on both houses.

So it is when riot sauce for the goose became riot sauce for the gander. Those who downplayed riots in our streets last summer want blood from those rioting in the Capitol this winter. And those who insisted in the summer that rioting is a plenty bad thing are now using the rhetoric of their ideological opponents from the summer- “We just want to be heard.” The hypocrisy infection is taking root on all sides.

Nothing in the past few days has changed my position with respect to Christians and our political situation. I believe ignorance is a besetting sin to many Christians, leading many to vote D. They shouldn’t vote that way. I believe a Christian can, in good conscience, vote for a man of questionable moral stability, a man who is both refreshingly unmoved by the hatred of the mainstream media and his political opponents and seemingly dangerously uncaring about the niceties of Constitutional law. I believe in fact that Christians can and should cheer on the appointment of good justices, and rejoice over the refusal to practice political correctness, all while withholding a generic approval of the man or his presidency.

What is happening, however, is yet another double dose of hypocrisy. Those who vote D, including evangelicals, will insist that everyone who voted for President Trump wear a scarlet R over the riots. CNN’s Don Lemon on air said as much,

“If you voted for Trump, you voted for the person who the Klan supported. You voted for the person who Nazis support. You voted for the person who the alt-right supports. You voted for the person who incited a crowd to go into the Capitol and potentially take the lives of lawmakers…”

Those who vote R among the evangelicals insist that support for the President is limited to the good things, and will take no responsibility for anything bad he has done. In the meantime, those who vote R will insist that everyone who voted for President elect Biden be forced to wear a scarlet D for death through abortion. Those who vote D will insist they abhor the murder of the unborn, that they only voted for him for the sake of their “witness.” And we will witness, once again, hypocrisy on all sides.

The above is not an argument for moral equivalency, that Biden and Trump are equally evil. It is not an argument that we bear no responsibility for what those we vote for do once in office. It is an argument, however, that Biden, Trump and every mothers’ son who voted for either one are evil, too evil to be proudly claiming moral high ground. Would that both sides would get on our knees in repentance that it has come to this.